Cost of living in German towns

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 866449027

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93831

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Cost of living in German towns

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stat. Off.

Year of publication:: 1908

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (LXI, 548 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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452 STETTIN. Something less than one half of those 45,000 are employed in establish ments 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 ready made 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.

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