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Spread-the-Work Schemes
第8章 分散工作机会的方案

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“限产超雇”的种种做法。这些做法的起因，以及公众容忍它们的起因，跟害怕机器的起因一样，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“细部分工”的行动准则之中。在大城市的建筑业中，这种细部分工的名声极坏。泥瓦匠不许碰砌烟囱的石材，因为那是石匠的专有工作。处理接线不良是电工的事，但拆装线槽木板这样的简单操作，却是木匠的专有工作。管工若要处理浴室的漏水问题，不允许撬开和铺回瓷砖，因为那是泥瓦匠的专有工作。

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隶属权而争执，甚至为此发动“管辖性罢工”。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.

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.

确实，这些特权阶层可以令其余大部分人做出牺牲，从这种细化的、强制性的劳动分工中得到好处——前提则是单方面享有特权。但是，主张将细部分工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。雇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，当然就削减了生产其他东西的就业机会。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泥瓦匠，就会导致另一名羊毛衫编织工或编织机操作工做不成事。雇主的处境也因此变得很糟糕。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，却损失了一件羊毛衫。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。这就是靠采取不合理的细部分工来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.

然而，还有一些其他的“分散工作机会”的方案，而且往往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案，以及由此形成的法定工时。他们认为这种做法有助于“分散”和“提供”更多的工作机会；这也是现行“联邦工资工时法”中，将惩罚性加班条款容纳在内的主要理由之一。在各州原有的立法中，禁止雇用女工或童工每周工时超过48小时（举例而言），其依据的结论是周工时若再往上加，必定有害健康，也不人道。还有部分立法依据，是认为更长时间的工作有损效率。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45小时（举例而言）有害健康或有损效率，加入这一条款的一个原因是希望籍此提高劳工每周所得，同时籍此遏制雇主要求员工每周工作超过40小时，进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“避免失业”。

（未完待续）

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