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CHAPTER XII.
Raising Wages.
In our view, therefore, employers need not be deterred from
raising wages by any fear that they will be injuring the workers thereby.
Indeed, there have been times in most industries when valuable results
could have been secured by a more liberal policy in respect of wages.
Many workers are employed on low wage standards, and it is still
too generally assumed that poorly-paid labour is cheap. Many
who are aware that this is not the case are reluctant to act on their own
belief that better-paid labour will prove cheaper. As some employers
have shown, better results from the business point of view can frequently
be obtained by the payment of better wages, and it is impossible to
expect any high standard of efficiency on the wages now paid in many
branches of industry. Nor is it reasonable invariably to demand that
the increase of efficiency should be a condition precedent to improved
wages. In many cases, if employers were to offer better payment first,
they would be able to secure improved efficiency by the attraction of a
better class of worker and by the increased effort of many of the present
ones.
Profit Sharing.

We do not desire to imply that, with his existing standard of
efficiency, the worker has always obtained in the past a fair share of the
results of industrial enterprise or that he always does so now ; but so
long as his organisation is as weak as it is to-day, there will remain a
danger of his failing to secure a just share of the results of “industry.
Suggestions have been made from time to time that the difficulty
might be met by the general adoption of profit sharing schemes, but
this movement has made practically no progress in India and, in
the present stage of industrial development, such schemes are unlikely
to prove either useful or effective. Efficiency or production bonuses,
however, are in a different category. These are in operation in several
establishments and are a direct incentive to increased effort. There
is scope for considerable extension of these methods of payment in
industry.

Regularity of Employment.
We have been discussing methods of increasing earnings which
involve the raising of the wages bill, but it is important to observe that
in many cases the level of earnings of industrial workers as a class can be
substantially raised without extra cost to the employer. There is a wide-
spread tendency to look too exclusively at what the employer is required
to pay for work, ¢.e., at wages, and too little at what the worker gets for it,
i.e., at earnings. Liven when wage rates cannot be raised, it is often possible
to raise the standard of living by increasing earnings. The most obvious
method is to increase the regularity of employment. In many branches
of Indian industry, poverty is aggravated by the retention of far more
workers than are required. One of the worst examples is shipping.
The coalfields provide another striking instance, and in the factories cases
are pumerous Where excessive turnover results in swelling the number
of employees among whom the work has to be divided. In previous