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The factory and welfare board
In connection with the great factories, there has to be a tremendous movement of labor from one part of the country to another and this involves careful work, careful administration and a great intensification of the development of amenities in order to care for the workpeople transferred. For the purposes of dealing with this problem I brought into being the Factory and Welfare Board. The Factory Department of the Home Office was transferred for the period of the war to the Ministry of Labor, and that placed an experienced and a splendid staff at our disposal. But the problem was not confined to inside the factory only. The health and welfare and billeting of the people had to be dealt with, so while the factory inspector deals with the problems inside the factory, I had to create a staff of welfare officers to cater for people when outside the factory. We have now issued and strengthened the Welfare Orders to enable the Department officers to do their work more effectively.
We have made available opportunities for training welfare workers and agreed to pay them, while at the university or in the works, during training at a rate similar to that paid to other trainees. This gives an opportunity to anyone who has taken an interest in welfare to go in for these courses. I want this welfare work to be put on as high a plane as it can be, because we desire that more and more attention should be given by managements to the personnel. You can have the cleverest engineers and planners in the world, but unless you have someone who understands how to handle the human being you cannot get the desired results, and I do not limit this handling merely to the work of the psychologist or the efficiency expert. I take a broad view of this problem; it covers the whole field of health, recreation, advice and care. In the factories run by the Government, it is a matter of regret that the treatment of the welfare side has been behind—in many cases far behind—the more modern employer. Really the State ought to have been leading in it, and the Ministry has now raised the whole question in order that we may put it upon a proper footing. I know that those responsible for the actual management of these government factories will welcome this effort; they have realized the necessity for it, but it has been a question of policy and I am afraid the importance of it has not been appreciated as it might have been.
Everyone wants to shorten the war, and anything that can be done to give a sense of protection to the workpeople by increasing our defenses and at the same time by taking steps to prevent the cessation of production, will materially help us to reach our objective; for be it ever remembered the two things act and react on each other. If production does not cease, then the means for our defense are increased, the protection of our people is speeded up and the workpeople themselves are more securely defended. But those who take great risks to keep production going under these hazardous conditions are entitled—both they and their families—to be treated generously by the State, as indeed are all those who take risks, whether in the Services or in industry. We must not be niggardly. If production is carried on vigorously and this war is shortened by even a month, more will have been saved in cost than the State would be called upon to pay in relief to those who have suffered. Therefore, if production does not cease we shall shorten the war by many months and save the lives of thousands, and it will accordingly be wise for labor and management to consider the best methods to be adopted. This is a total war. We are all in it.
Welfare may be regarded as unimportant, but where I— and without any patronage, but as a right—have got it inaugurated the workpeople regard it as very valuable. The duty of the Factory and Welfare Board is to try and see to the needs of the people and report on them in toto—recreation, entertainment and so on. The idea behind this Welfare Board is this: I have been dealing with State Departments all my life, and whenever a problem has to be dealt with in legislation, finance or commerce, everybody else has his needs all tabulated and ready to be placed on the table. I wanted an organization whereby you would place the needs of the workpeople in a definite form so that when each step is taken in legislation, the workpeople’s views and their needs in housing, transport, and all the rest of it, would be brought forward in order that they might have an equal show with any other interest. If you could read about the work that has been accomplished in the interests of the people by that great institution which has only been in existence for a few months, you would agree it is an amazing piece of work.