"No Cuts or Reductions."

Mr Halsey also urges that to cut down the scale after it has once been fixed on the ground that under it the workmen are earning too much is a fatal step. For, as he says, "If the premiums are cut down the workman will rightly understand it to mean (as under the piecework plan) that their earnings are not to be permitted to pass a certain limit, and that too much exertion is unsafe." This, of course, can be safely prevented when you have an Arbitration Court like ours. The settled objection of trade unions to piecework system and progressive wage systems is based upon the painful experience that periodic "cuts," or reductions in the rate or alterations in the standard, were made as the increased exertions of the workers under these systems secured for them better wages. This ground of objection can in New Zealand be entirely removed, or rather, prevented. Mr Halsey's system increases the exertion wage in proportion to the degree of additional effort required in the different callings to exceed the standard. What has been the result of Halsey's system? Let me state his own words (I am quoting from Schloss [unclear: n] Methods of Industrial Remuneration,' which is the latest information I have—