452
STETTIN.
Something less than one half of those 45,000 are employed in establishments
subject to inspection as factories or workshops, and a classification of
these according to main groups of trades for the year 1905 is given in the following
Table :—
Workpeople employed in Factories and Workshops in Stettin in 1905.
Group of Trades.
Number
of
Establishments.
Building
Metal-working
Machine, implement and apparatus
making.
Clothing ... ... ... ... ••
Printing, lithography, bookbinding, &c
Paper ... ... ... ...
Wood-working and carving
Stone and earth ...
Chemicals, soap, oils, resins, &c.
Food, drink and tobacco
Other trades
Total ...
13
28
47
283
34
13
58
17
31
170
15
709
Number of Workpeople.
Males.
997
315
9,456
541
529
336
903
1,306
933
3,315
156
18,787
Females.
10
181
1.107
164
273
35
61
239
614
119
2,803
Total.
997
325
9,637
1,648
693
609
938
1,367
1,172
3,929
275
21,590
The method of grouping, together with the fact that the figures relate only
to persons employed in factories and workshops, impairs the value of the table
as a means of showing the relative importance of the various local industries.
Thus the shipbuilding industry, one of the most important in the town, is not
even mentioned, the large body of labour which it employs being included
under the heading machine, implement and apparatus making. The great local
importance of the ready-made clothing trade, too, is obscured by the fact that
home-workers dp not come under the factory laws as regards inspection. The
same applies to the dock and transport labourers, who are estimated to number
about 4,600, and to the building trades, in which the number of workpeople
cannot fall far short of 7,000 (in 1895 there were 4,878 workpeople employed in
the building trades).
It is estimated that only about one-fifth of the industrial workpeople of
Stettin are organised, and, as might be expected in such circumstances,
collective bargaining is not much resorted to in fixing conditions of labour.
General wages agreements are, however, in operation for the masons and
bricklayers, stone-cutters, carpenters, compositors, bricklayers’ labourers and
stevedores. In all but the last of these trades the time-wage system is the
rule, and, as the agreement also fixes the length of the working day, it furnishes
material for determining approximately the predominant rate of weekly wages
without seeking returns from employers or workpeople. In trades where no
wages agreements are in operation, information in the nature of returns based
on the records of the pay sheets had to be sought from leading employers of
labour or from their representatives, and this was in most cases readily
conceded. In the case of the joiners, plasterers, stucco workers, plumbers and
painters full particulars of wages and hours were obtained in a single return
furnished through the courtesy of the Secretary of the Mutual Association of
Employers in the Building Trade for purposes of Accident Insurance, an
institution which has at its disposal a complete record of the time worked and
wages earned by every man employed by any of its members in the course of
the year. For the staple industries of the town, such as shipbuilding, machine
construction, the manufacture of cement, fire-clay goods, chemicals and readymade
clothing, &c., returns were secured from the leading employers of labour
individually. As the majority of the workpeople in these trades are paid on
the piece-wage system, it was endeavoured to ascertain from the pay sheets the
most usual earnings in a full week without overtime during the month to which
the inquiry related—October, 1905—and in most cases the effort was successful.
Returns of the wages and hours of labour of the workpeople employed in the
various branches of the municipal service were supplied through the courtesy of
the Chief Burgomaster.
