McKay's Harvester Works and the Continuation of Managerial Control

Abstract

This paper traces the development of workplace industrial relations at McKay's from 1900 until the onset of the Depression in the late 1920s, highlighting the divergence in regulation between different sections of the workforce. Workers in the manufacturing sector faced an autocratic management, which rationalised the work process to deskill the workforce and introduced piecework and time and motion study, thus rendering the wage-effort bargain firmly in favour of management. While skilled workers employed by the firm on engineering work were not immune to these pressures, their labour market position and stronger union organisation gave them greater scope to resist management unilaterally determining working conditions. This paper assesses the influence of arbitration on the regulation of these developments in the employment relationship. It is argued that industrial tribunals had a limited influence at the works, with product and labour market conditions and management and union behaviour far more important in determining workplace outcomes.