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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 2, Issue 5 (September 1, 1927)

Other Benefits to Employees

Other Benefits to Employees.

In addition to the increase in the purchasing power of their wages and reductions in their page 24 hours of work, railway employees have been benefited in other ways by the improvements in the plants and in operation. Their work has been made safer. In 1906 one employee in each 387 was killed accidentally; in 1916 only one in each 631; and in 1925 only one in each 1,118. The amount of physical exertion required to do the work has been reduced in many ways. Stokers have been widely introduced on locomotives and in power plants. Pneumatic and electric tools in shops have reduced the amount of manual labour required. Section crews now go to and from their work on motor cars instead of hand-cars. Ashes and cinders are handled by mechanical conveyors instead of manual labour. To a large extent coal is dumped into locomotives by machinery instead of with a shovel. Likewise the shoveling of sand into locomotives has been superseded by the mere pulling of a handle. Much hard labour in shops is saved by autogenous welding and in tracks by the tie tampers. The buildings in which employees work are better lighted and ventilated. Good toilets and lavatories are provided. Pits are heated by steam heated coils. All these improvements have been effected partly or wholly by the investment of capital, and, while most of them have been introduced to increase efficiency and save expenses, they have had incidentally the effect of reducing the amount of back-breaking labour required from employees and of making their work more pleasant and healthful.

“In one impetuous torrent down the steep.” Bowen Falls, Milford Sound.

“In one impetuous torrent down the steep.”
Bowen Falls, Milford Sound.

It is hardly necessary to say that a large production per employee in the railway and other industries does not result in proportionately high, or even proportionately higher, wages merely because of a generous disposition of employers to pay high wages. Nor are advances in wages mainly due to the organised pressure of employees for them, because without increases in average output per employee there would soon be no source from which the means of paying higher “real wages”-that is, wages of greater purchasing power-could be derived. Increased production per employee results in increased average real wages per employee because of the operation of economic laws over which neither employers nor employees have much influence. Increased production will not increase the prosperity of industries without increased consumption of the products of industry, and since those who work for wages constitute the largest single class of consumers, they must, if industry is to prosper, be paid wages high enough to enable them to increase their consumption as production increases. Obviously, however, high production must precede and thereby make possible the wages of greater purchasing power required to enable the employees to become larger buyers and consumers of necessaries, comforts and luxuries.