Pay Per Task instead of hourly wages

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by TheNightFly, Sep 16, 2017.

  1. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Most workers are only paid for the time they're at work, not the effort they put into it. There is little direct incentive for workers to make an effort and to work diligently other than to avoid punishment, and I'm sure this has a large impact on GDP.

    Perhaps a better way to pay workers is on a per task basis. Workers can 'standby', either on call (off the clock) or at a significantly reduced hourly wage (like $2-5/hr), for tasks to be received and earn pay for every task they complete on time and to the employer's satisfaction. Employers should rate their tasks fairly, like on a chart, according to the level of difficulty involved and the time it's expected to take. If a worker fails to complete a task to the employers satisfaction or they take longer than expected, they receive reduced pay or possibly nothing depending on the law.

    Pay-per-task is a more precise method of paying for labor and it encourages workers to make an effort and work diligently but also allows them to idle/rest between tasks without fear of punishment since it's no skin off the employer's nose. I stongly believe this method of paying for labor would make everyone happier and greatly improve GDP.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2017
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  2. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I think there is a direct incentive. And it is called Job Review. JRs are fairly common in upper-income levels. Taking the idea further down the corporate structure, for instance onto the work floor, is more difficult. But not impossible. Companies simply don't like the challenge of motivating floor-sweepers.

    Still, the Job Review is the best way to do it, and managers need only put their brain to the task. Which starts with promoting some floor-sweepers to higher responsibilities where possible. The best way to incentivize people (IMHO) I saw in Yugoslavia (when the country was called in that manner.

    There was a uniform law that stipulated that All Jobs had to be rewarded with "profit-sharing", and the level of percentage (of total profits) rewarded depended upon the Job Review. The sums involved were in a range from 10% of salary to 25/30%.

    Which seemed to work well as incentivization. It was a good idea, but I doubt it survived the explosion of Yugoslavia into what it is today ...
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2017
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  3. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    It's called piece work, and IIRC, it's against labor law.
     
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  4. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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  5. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So, change the law - especially on Minimum Wage, which is ridiculously low in the US ...
     
  6. Deckel

    Deckel Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Piece-meal doesn't always work, but when it does, businesses get rid of it fast generally. My brother's work did that because he among many others were always way ahead of the union-negotiated quota designed for women who couldn't otherwise make quota. He used to get about 20% more per year because of the quota system. My sister's work is kind of what you are talking about. Your wage is set on the machine you are assigned to most. If you change machines, you log out of the old one and onto the new one and your rate is based on the greater of that machine's pay or your assigned base pay. There isn't a huge difference on most machines unless they are super dangerous or require a lot of associated physical labor like loading products into the machines.
     
  7. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    Piece work is what sweatshops do. It's not what decent companies do.
     
  8. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    SURPRISE, SURPRISE

    Agreed, which is why we think should pursued and shut-down by law and their perpetrators brought before justice. But, researchers have found some interesting facts about sweatshops.

    See here (NYT, April, 2017): Everything We Knew About Sweatshops Was Wrong.
    E
    xcerpt:
    Of course, neither Europe nor the US is Ethiopia - so, the same study should be done to see if the same results are replicated. But, that last paragraph above is the qualifier. These jobs simply are not worth the harm they do to humans given the working conditions.
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2017
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  9. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I.e., this is necessary:
    *Close down the sweat-shops, jail those who create them and keep them "on record" nationally.
    *Shut down the cheap imports of clothing from sweat-shop export countries (which is a massive undertaking in scope).
    *The result will be "normal" production lines jobs at which it is worth working.
    *And, yes, higher consumer prices from some manufactured items.

    All that above is a lot of hard work, mostly on the part of authorities. (I know for a fact that French authorities are policing and shutting down sweat-shops mostly run by illegal Vietnamese/Chinese/etc. But it's not happening often enough. They are like weeds and pop-up everywhere in large cities where they can best hide and are closest to retail outlets.)
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2017
  10. james M

    james M Banned

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    so that the sweat shop workers can go back to sex trade and scavenging in garbage dumps, and so that poor french cant afford clothes?? This is a typical liberals idea of doing good?
     
    Last edited: Sep 19, 2017
  11. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    That's news to me. I've only ever heard of sweatshops paying really low hourly or daily wages. I only hear about piece work when companies pay people for making things at home. They mail you the tools and materials, you follow their instructions to make the items they want and ship it back to them and they pay you for the goods. There's nothing indecent about it. What makes a company indecent isn't how they pay for labor but how little.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2017
  12. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    A better style is profit sharing. A function taking your investment (time spent, expertise, resources expended) vs everyone else's, with the profits divided up based on that formula.
     
  13. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    Time is not an accurate method of measuring one's effective contribution.
     
  14. Just_a_Citizen

    Just_a_Citizen Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So, switch all labor compensation to commission, or negotiated/set monthly salary?

    Methinks productivity will stop on a dime.

    Theoretically it might work.

    Real-World tho?

    Not a chance... I mean outside of communism... & even that chokes on feces.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2017
  15. Thought Criminal

    Thought Criminal Well-Known Member Donor

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    I do the paid-per-task type of work. I like it a lot, for the reasons you give. I have control over how hard I work and for how long. I can work more, or less, as I choose.

    Sometimes, it comes back to bite me if I have problems and it takes me extra time to complete a job, but I still prefer this method.

    I work in an easily standardized industry, though. I can see how it could get really complicated in other jobs. Plus, maintaining quality could become an issue. "Piecework" pay does tend to incentivize cutting corners with quality and safety.

    The first job I had, other than delivering newspapers, was washing and waxing cars for a local dealer. At $2.50 to wash and $4.00 to wax, it was easy to make $5-$6 an hour. That wasn't bad money for a 16yr old in 1973.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2017
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  16. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not by itself, but it is valuable in that its the one thing we all have a very similarly limited amount of, and we should be compensated for trading it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2017
  17. TheNightFly

    TheNightFly Member

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    The value (v) of a worker's time (t) can only be measured in how productive (p) they are with it. Company's should pay their employees based on productivity over time. v = p/t
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2017
  18. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Ya think? I was a software developer for business systems. I didn't need such motivation, nor was it possible. I knew systems administrators, actuaries, engineers, accountants, and other software developers and none of them needed such "incentive". How do you propose arranging a piecework system for a system administrator? How about an operations worker who keeps the computer system operating?
     
  19. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    Pre-unions, paying by piece was done by unethical businesses, especially in the garment industry.
     
  20. gamewell45

    gamewell45 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    How would you work paying police, medical, fire, railroad, etc? suppose their are no fires during a shift? No medical calls for EMS workers for a given shift?? No calls for police assistance for a few hours??? Or if the train breaks down due to mechanical failure????

    What you propose will not work in this country; maybe in a third world country.
     
  21. james M

    james M Banned

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    capitalism is profit sharing. If owners don't share enough profit everyone quits and goes to work for someone who shares more. the owner must provide the best jobs and products just to survive.
     
  22. james M

    james M Banned

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    what's unethical?? if pay is not highest possible workers go elsewhere and company goes bankrupt. You don't understand Republican capitalism at all do you?
     
  23. perdidochas

    perdidochas Well-Known Member

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    In the past, paying by the piece was done so that employers didn't have to pay the prevailing wage--they would set the per piece rate at a level that unless an employee were working at 100%, 100% of the time, they wouldn't get the prevailing wage. Humans can't work at 100% capacity, 100% of the time.

    I'm a Republican and understand capitalism, but I've also read history and I have common sense. Employers are trying to get everything they can out of workers, and many employers will do things that are unethical to do so. Just being realistic here. The employer is not there to enrich you, he's there to enrich himself. I would never work purely by the task. It seems to me to be a way that an employer can use to minimize your wages. I'll stick to salary. I'm glad I have the skillsets that allow me the luxury of not having to work for just any employer.
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2017
  24. james M

    james M Banned

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    actually the market sets the wage if you have a free market. Do you get this at all?
     
  25. Bear513

    Bear513 Banned

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    I always wondered that, I used to travel for work all the time, in the late 1980s was at this manufacturing plant in the middle of no where and the owner was paying people by how many brooms they would make in a day.

    What about this local car wash, they only get paid if they are cleaning a car?


    .
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2017

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