There are two kinds of opinion today concerning employee welfare, comfort, and security. One very conservative group believes that employees in the United States are being pampered, encouraged to take a game attitude.

This group feels that this is a handout” era, as contrasted with what they believe to have been the self reliant, “ruggedly individualistic” era of seventy five or more years ago. It is claimed that too many workers are looking too much for security, rather than showing willingness to risk and dare.

The opposite opinion is that the American worker is at last in a position where he can hope to share more of the good things of life. Now he has greater buying power, and he has the benefits of welfare and security provisions, all of which he regards as nothing more than humane values that no one should grudge him when he demands that they be included in his wage bargain.

This opinion even asserts that modern mass production can function only when the average folk of America do share most of the good things of life.

The truth of the matter probably is that today labor is in a seller’s market, after having long been in a buyer’s market. The employer, as buyer, can no longer arbitrarily set the terms of the labor bargain over labor’s helpless protest. It is labor’s chance, apparently, to turn the screw of trading rather hard in its own favor.

From a more impartial, soundly reasoned angle, it has been pretty well demonstrated that labor’s productivity is always advanced by every possible attention to labor welfare, higher pay, shorter hours, comfort, and security. Researchers have proved beyond a doubt that American labor places conditions of working, welfare outlook for advancement, and security benefits ahead of mere dollars in wages.

Furthermore, labor wants management to recognize its inherent right to ask for these good things, rather than to take the point of view that it is giving them to labor as a matter of philanthropy. It is hard for some old-line executives to see and appreciate this difference in the attitude of labor. The American workman of today resents being ‘given,” with a grand air of charitableness, those things which he claims as his just due for service performed. He argues that his health, safely, financial security, nutrition, comfort and welfare are integral parts of him and of his efficiency as a worker and that they must be calculated as part of his just remuneration.

Good modern executives are inclined to believe he is largely right, as these factors definitely do have a favorable influence on output per man hour, efficiency, labor turnover, absenteeism, and willing, hearty cooperation.

As for labor’s reputed unwillingness to dare, the answer may well lie in the fact that there are now far more owners of small businesses than ever, and that labor’s increased earnings seem to be willingly spent for all the gadgets and other goods which are offered it. The worker is “playing the game,” not hoarding.

Therefore we have, on an ever increasing scale, pension and profit-sharing plans, health and accident plans, house organs, employee clubs and vacation centers, paid vacations, labor management committees, contests, outing farms, social programs, civic programs, and educational scholarships. When operated with understanding, good rules, and cooperative methods, these benefits have certainly proved themselves worthwhile.

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