That this holds of reductions in hours of work has become a truism
among trade unionists, who recognize that any reduction of hours
of work eventually, though not perhaps immediately, results in a
readjustment of wages, whether week-workers or piece-workers or both
be involved, till the original money wage at any rate is reached,
supposing, of course, that no other influence enters in as an element
to lessen rates of pay.
The question of equal pay for equal work involves indeed much more
complicated issues, as regards both the individual worker and the
whole body of women workers in the trade or branch of the trade
affected. But even here, the underlying purpose is the same, the
assuring, to the total number of workers whose labor has gone into the
production, of a certain amount of finished marketable work, of an
increased, or at the least, not a lessened share of the product of
their toil. It is not to be questioned that if women are permitted
to work at the same operations as men for a lesser remuneration, the
man's wage must go down.
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