Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1850495947

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-233603

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Off.

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xviii, 580 S.; graph. Darst., Kt.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter II. - Migration and the factory worker

Collection:: Economics Books

3 CHAPTER II. Change of Work. } } In working hours the change is no less complete. The worker is surrounded by conditions which are entirely novel to him. He has been used to spasmodic work with long intervals of leisure, and he finds himself expected to work continuously and to order. Disciplined hours of toil are a strain to the body that is not accustomed to them, and they involve a corresponding strain on the mind which is apt to be under- estimated. The difficulty and distress felt by most workers in accepting the discipline of factory work have important effects on their efficiency. The fact that they have not usually grown up in a familiarity with industry acts as a further handicap. The Western industrial workers owe not a little of their aptitude to being brought up with factory work- ers and in a factory area, even when they do not enter the factory at an early age. Home-sickness. All these factors tend, especially at first, to produce a state of depression, and when, as not infrequently happens, sickness supervenes, there is a strong inclination to return and endure the privations of the village rather than face the risks and hardships of the town. Among new recruits to industry there is a considerable percentage who are unwilling to face all that is involved in the change and find their way back to the village. And there must be many more who, in the early months, would yield to the impulse to return if circumstances allowed. But after the home-sickness of the first term is passed, the worker generally becomes more reconciled to the change and is ready to acauiesce in unsatisfactory conditions. Turnover. Finally, the constant changing of the labour force in individual establishments, which is associated with the present system, carries with it serious disadvantages, from the point of view both of the manage- ment and of the worker. It necessitates the continuous turnover of employees, many of whom may be entirely new to the particular factory and to its machines and methods of working, with a consequent loss of efficiency which reacts on both parties. It also places a serious obstacle in the way of establishing contact between employer and employed and of building up the sense of co-operation ; and the worker who returns after a spell in the village has, in most cases, no guarantee of re-employment on his return. In fact, as we show later, his position in this respect has been getting generally weaker in recent years. Too often he find it necessary to purchase his re-admission to industrial work at a time when his reserves of cash have either disappeared or been seriously depleted. Economic Advantages of Contact with. Villages. Such are some of the disadvantages accompanying the present system of migration. But there is another side to the picture, for the con- bact with the villages has big advantages. In the first place it means that most industrial workers have been brought up in more natural surroundings. They usually bring a better standard of physique than

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