Spread-the-Work Schemes

第8章 摊享工作机会

I HAVE REFERRED to various union make-work and featherbed practices. These practices, and the public toleration of them, spring from the same fundamental fallacy as the fear of machines. This is the belief that a more efficient way of doing a thing destroys jobs, and its necessary corollary that a less efficient way of doing it creates them.

前面我已经提到了工会制造工作机会和闲职就业的种种做法。这些做法的起因，以及公众容忍它们的原因，跟害怕机器一样，是源于同一个根本的谬误。人们相信，用更有效率的方式去做事，只会消减工作机会。这个信条换句话说就是，采用缺乏效率的方式去做一件事，反而可以创造工作机会。

Allied to this fallacy is the belief that there is just a fixed amount of work to be done in the world, and that, if we cannot add to this work by thinking up more cumbersome ways of doing it, at least we can think of devices for spreading it around among as large a number of people as possible.

与这个谬论相联系的信条是：这个世界上可做的工作是有限的，要是我们想不出更繁琐拖沓的做事方式来增加工作量，那么我们至少可以想方设法将事情分摊给尽可能多的人去做。

This error lies behind the minute subdivision of labor upon which unions insist. In the building trades in large cities the subdivision is notorious. Bricklayers are not allowed to use stones for a chimney: that is the special work of stonemasons. An electrician cannot rip out a board to fix a connection and put it back again: that is the special job, no matter how simple it may be, of the carpenters. A plumber will not remove or put back a tile incident to fixing a leak in the shower: that is the job of a tile-setter.

这一错误隐含于许多工会所坚持的细微分工之中。在大城市的建筑业中，这种细微分工众所周知。泥匠不许碰砌烟囱的石材，因为那是石匠的专有工作。电工不可以拆开再装回木板以处理接线不良，这是特种工作，无论多么简单，都属于木匠。管工若要处理浴室的漏水问题，不允许撬开和铺回瓷砖，因为那是瓦匠的专有工作。

Furious “jurisdictional” strikes are fought among unions for the exclusive right to do certain types of borderline jobs. In a statement prepared by the American railroads for the Attorney-General’s Committee on Administrative Procedure, the roads gave innumerable examples in which the National Railroad Adjustment Board had decided that

各种工会之间常因某种界限不清的工作的特权而争执、发动“隶属权”罢工。美国铁路公司送交司法部长行政程序调查委员会的一份报告就列举了大量的例子，控诉国家铁路调节理事会的诸多决定：

each separate operation on the railroad, no matter how minute, such as talking over a telephone or spiking or unspiking a switch, is so far an exclusive property of a particular class of employee that if an employee of another class, in the course of his regular duties, performs such operations he must not only be paid an extra day’s wages for doing so, but at the same time the furloughed or unemployed members of the class held to be entitled to perform the operation must be paid a day’s wages for not having been called upon to perform it.

铁路上的各项独立作业，无论多么微不足道，例如接听铁路专用电话或者扳道，至今都是特定职业雇工的专属权。倘若其他工种的工人，在当班时代 行了这类专属操作的话，那么，干这个活儿的人不但要得到一天额外的工资，而且公司还必须向有权操作的休假待岗的工人支付一天的工 资，因为没有召唤他们来做此项工作。

 It is true that a few persons can profit at the expense of the rest of us from this minute arbitrary subdivision of labor— provided it happens in their case alone. But those who support it as a general practice fail to see that it always raises production costs; that it results on net balance in less work done and in fewer goods produced. The householder who is forced to employ two men to do the work of one has, it is true, given employment to one extra man. But he has just that much less money left over to spend on something that would employ somebody else. Because his bathroom leak has been repaired at double what it should have cost, he decides not to buy the new sweater he wanted. “Labor” is no better off, because a day’s employment of an unneeded tile-setter has meant a day’s disemployment of a sweater knitter or machine handler. The householder, however, is worse off. Instead of having a repaired shower and a sweater, he has the shower and no sweater. And if we count the sweater as part of the national wealth, the country is short one sweater. This symbolizes the net result of the effort to make extra work by arbitrary subdivision of labor.

的确从这种微细随意的劳动分工可以令我们大家做出牺牲，而让一些人获益——前提是这种事只发生在他们身上。但是，主张将之作为一般办法加以推广的人士却没有认识到，这样做通常提高了生产成本，其最终结果就是做的工作更少，生产的商品也更少。房主被迫雇用两个人来做本来一个人就可以完成的工作，他的确会多给其中一个人就业机会，但是这么一来，他能够花在其他东西上面的钱就会变少刚好那么多，削减了生产其他东西同等的就业机会。由于他解决卫生间漏水问题多花了一份冤枉钱，他一直想买的新羊毛衫就只好泡汤。“劳工”并没有捞到更多好处，因为多雇用一名无所事事的瓦匠，就会导致另一名羊毛衫编织工或编织机操作工做不成事。但房主的处境却变得很糟糕。他本来可以修好管漏，并拥有一件羊毛衫，现在卫生间是不漏水了，却少了一件羊毛衫。如果我们把这件羊毛衫算作国家财富的一部分，那么整个国家就少了一件羊毛衫。这就代表着靠随意细微分工增进就业的最终结果。

But there are other schemes for “spreading the work,” often put forward by union spokesmen and legislators. The most frequent of these is the proposal to shorten the working week, usually by law. The belief that it would “spread the work” and “give more jobs” was one of the main reasons behind the inclusion of the penaltyovertime provision in the existing Federal Wage-Hour Law. The previous legislation in the states, forbidding the employment of women or minors for more, say, than forty-eight hours a week, was based on the conviction that longer hours were injurious to health and morale. Some of it was based on the belief that longer hours were harmful to efficiency. But the provision in the federal law, that an employer must pay a worker a 50 percent premium above his regular hourly rate of wages for all hours worked in any week above forty, was not based primarily on the belief that forty-five hours a week, say, was injurious either to health or efficiency. It was inserted partly in the hope of boosting the worker’s weekly income, and partly in the hope that, by discouraging the employer from taking on anyone regularly for more than forty hours a week, it would force him to employ additional workers instead. At the time of writing this, there are many schemes for “averting unemployment” by enacting a thirty-hour week or a four-day week.

此外，还有一些其他的“摊享工作机会”的策略，常常是由工会发言人和国会议员提出的。其中最常见的是缩短每周工时的提议，常常以法定工时形式出现。现有的联邦工资工时法中包含惩罚性的加班条款背后的主要思想就是认为这种做法有助于“摊享工作机会”和“提供更多的工作机会”。在各州原有的立法中，禁止雇用女工或童工每周工时超过一定时间，比如48小时，其依据是确信周工时若再往上加，必定有害健康与员工士气。此外还部分地是因为相信更长时间的工作有损工作效率。但是，联邦法律的条款中规定，只要雇工每周工作超过40小时，雇主就必须按每个小时的正常工资加付50%给劳工。这一条款的制定依据不是因为政府相信每周工作比如45小时就有害健康或有损效率，加入这一条款的原因部分地是希望籍此提高劳工每周所得，部分地希望通过遏制雇主要求员工每周工作超过40小时，而达到迫使雇主增雇员工的目的。就在我写作本书的时候，已有许多方案希望通过法定一周工作30小时或工作4天来“扭转失业”。

What is the actual effect of such plans, whether enforced by individual unions or by legislation? It will clarify the problem if we consider two cases. The first is a reduction in the standard working week from forty hours to thirty without any change in the hourly rate of pay. The second is a reduction in the working week from forty hours to thirty, but with a sufficient increase in hourly wage rates to maintain the same weekly pay for the individual workers already employed.

这样的计划，无论是通过单个工会推行，还是靠立法去执行，其实际效果会如何呢？我们将通过下面两种情况的分析来阐明这个问题。第一种情况是把每周标准工时从40小时缩减为30小时，而不改变小时工资率。第二种情况是把周工时从40小时缩减为30小时，同时调高小时工资率，以保证从业员工维持原有的周薪水平。

Let us take the first case. We assume that the working week is cut from forty hours to thirty, with no change in hourly pay. If there is substantial unemployment when this plan is put into effect, the plan will no doubt provide additional jobs. We cannot assume that it will provide sufficient additional jobs, however, to maintain the same payrolls and the same number of man-hours as before, unless we make the unlikely assumptions that in each industry there has been exactly the same percentage of unemployment and that the new men and women employed are no less efficient at their special tasks on the average than those who had already been employed. But suppose we do make these assumptions. Suppose we do assume that the right number of additional workers of each skill is available, and that the new workers do not raise production costs. What will be the result of reducing the working week from forty hours to thirty (without any increase in hourly pay)?

我们先来分析第一种状况。假设每周工时从40小时减为30小时，而小时工资率不变。若实行该措施时，恰逢失业潮，这么做无疑可以提供更多的就业机会。但是我们不能断然肯定，这一计划将提供足够的新增工作以维持同样的工薪支付和同样的工时数。除非我们提出一些不切实际的假设：每个行业的失业率都相同与每个工种新手的工作效率都赶得上熟手。我们姑且认为以上假设成立，再假定每项技术工作都有足够多的技术工人可雇佣，假定新雇的工人不增加生产成本。那么，将周工时从40小时减少到30小时（同时不增加小时工资），将有什么样的结果呢？

Though more workers will be employed, each will be working fewer hours, and there will, therefore, be no net increase in man-hours. It is unlikely that there will be any significant increase in production. Total payrolls and “purchasing power” will be no larger. All that will have happened, even under the most favorable assumptions (which would seldom be realized) is that the workers previously employed will subsidize, in effect, the workers previously unemployed. For in order that the new workers will individually receive three-fourths as many dollars a week as the old workers used to receive, the old workers will themselves now individually receive only three-fourths as many dollars a week as previously. It is true that the old workers will now work fewer hours; but this purchase of more leisure at a high price is presumably not a decision they have made for its own sake: it is a sacrifice made to provide others with jobs.

尽管雇用的工人多了，但每人工作的时间将减少，总工时并无增加。生产不可能会有任何显著的增加。工资总额和整体“购买力”不会扩大。即使在最理想的条件之下（这种情况几乎不可能发生），实际结果只可能是原有的雇员补贴原来的失业人员。因为，为了让新员工的周薪能够拿到老员工原有工资的四分之三，老员工现在只能拿到原有工资的四分之三。确实，老员工现在工作的时间短了，但是这种用高代价换来的休闲时间并非出于自愿。给别人提供工作对他们来讲是一种牺牲。

The labor union leaders who demand shorter weeks to “spread the work” usually recognize this, and therefore they put the proposal forward in a form in which everyone is supposed to eat his cake and have it too. Reduce the working week from forty hours to thirty, they tell us, to provide more jobs; but compensate for the shorter week by increasing the hourly rate of pay by 33.33 percent. The workers employed, say, were previously getting an average of $226 a week for forty hours work; in order that they may still get $226 for only thirty hours work, the hourly rate of pay must be advanced to an average of more than $7.53.

那些要求缩短每周工时以“摊享工作机会”的工会领袖通常都能认识到这一点，因此他们提出的方案就看上去让每个人都能熊掌和鱼兼得。他们告诉我们说，应当将周工时从40小时降低到30小时，以提供更多的就业。然后，通过增加33.33%的小时工资来补偿缩短工时造成的工资下降。举例来说，如果受雇的员工以前每周工作40小时，平均可领226美元，为了使他们每周只工作30小时仍能领到226美元，小时工资率则必须提高到平均7.53美元以上的水平。

What would be the consequences of such a plan? The first and most obvious consequence would be to raise costs of production. If we assume that the workers, when previously employed for forty hours, were getting less than the level of production costs, prices and profits made possible, then they could have got the hourly increase without reducing the length of the working week. They could, in other words, have worked the same number of hours and got their total weekly incomes increased by one-third, instead of merely getting, as they are under the new thirty-hour week, the same weekly income as before. But if under the forty-hour week, the workers were already getting as high a wage as the level of production costs and prices made possible (and the very unemployment they are trying to cure may be a sign that they were already getting even more than this), then the increase in production costs as a result of the 33.33 percent increase in hourly wage rates will be much greater than the existing state of prices, production and costs can stand.

这种方案实行起来又会怎样呢？第一个同时也是最明显的后果将是增加了生产成本。假设员工以前每周工作40小时，所得的工资低于生产成本、价格、与利润关系允许的工资水准，那么不必缩短每周工时，小时工资率也有可能提高。换句话说，他们每周工作与从前相同的时数，周薪就可能提高三分之一。而不是象他们在新的30小时工作制下那样仅仅得到与以前相同的收入。然而，如果在每周工作40小时的办法下，员工所领工资已经达到了生产成本与价格可允许的上限（其实试图解决的失业率问题正好表明，工资甚至超过了这个上限），那么小时工资率提高33.33%所造成生产成本上升的幅度，将显著超出目前的生产成本、价格、利润关系状态能够忍受的程度。

The result of the higher wage rate, therefore, will be a much greater unemployment than before. The least efficient firms will be thrown out of business, and the least efficient workers will be thrown out of jobs. Production will be reduced all around the circle. Higher production costs and scarcer supplies will tend to raise prices, so that workers can buy less with the same dollar wages; on the other hand, the increased unemployment will shrink demand and hence tend to lower prices. What ultimately happens to the prices of goods will depend upon what monetary policies are then allowed. But if a policy of monetary inflation is pursued, to enable prices to rise so that the increased hourly wages can be paid, this will merely be a disguised way of reducing real wage rates, so that these will return, in terms of the amount of goods they can purchase, to the same real rate as before. The result would then be the same as if the working week had been reduced without an increase in hourly wage rates. And the results of that have already been discussed.

由此可知，进一步提高工资水平的结果，将是出现更为严重的失业。那些效率最差的公司会被淘汰出局，那些效率最差的员工会被炒鱿鱼。整个行业的生产将缩减。生产成本上升、供应减少，这些将迫使产品的价格上涨，劳工以同样的工资能买的东西因而更少了；另一方面，失业率回升会削弱消费需求，导致产品价格下跌。最终价格是涨是跌，取决于当时的货币政策。若是通货膨胀政策，使价格能长得上去，从而支付得起上涨后的工资。但实际上，通货膨胀只不过是掩盖了实际工资率的下降，若以劳工能够买到的产品来衡量，劳动报酬和以前相比不会有起色。最终的结果必然是相同的，即周工时减少了，但小时工资率并没有提高。这种情况我们已经讨论过了。

The spread-the-work schemes, in brief, rest on the same sort of illusion that we have been considering. The people who support such schemes think only of the employment they might provide for particular persons or groups; they do not stop to consider what their whole effect would be on everybody.

简而言之，摊享工作机会的谋划，是建立在我们讨论过的幻觉上。支持这种方案的人，只考虑到他们能够向特定个人或群体提供就业机会，他们并没有静下心来思量，对于社会上的每个人来讲其总体影响将是什么。

The spread-the-work schemes rest also, as we began by pointing out, on the false assumption that there is just a fixed amount of work to be done. There could be no greater fallacy. There is no limit to the amount of work to be done as long as any human need or wish that work could fill remains unsatisfied. In a modern exchange economy, the most work will be done when prices, costs and wages are in the best relations with each other. What these relations are we shall later consider.

正如我们在本章开头所指出的那样，摊享工作机会的策略源于一个错误的假设：社会上可做的工作是有限的。恐怕再也找不出比这更荒谬的论调了。只要还有人的需要或愿望还没有获得满足，能做的事就没有止境。在现代的交换经济中，当价格、成本和工资彼此之间呈现最佳的关系时，完成的工作才最多。至于这些关系是什么，我们将在后面的章节中专门讨论。