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The Labour Process in the New Zealand Railway Workshops, 1890–1930
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
This paper investigates the history of the labour process in New Zealand's state-owned railway workshops and questions the idea that large-scale industry inevitably destroyed whatever agency skilled workers had enjoyed. It also shows that relations of production vary with the political and cultural contexts. Craft control of the labour process survived in New Zealand's state-owned railway workshops and the union played only a minor role. Jop control was more important in achieving bureaucratic instead of autocratic control over such matters as hiring and firing; the retention of apprentice-based crafts; the institutionalization of seniority; and in resisting both de-skilling and the “premium bonus”. The strength and vitality of shop culture, based on craft control of the labour process, also survived and modified the Government's vigorous attempt to introduce “scientific management”. In brief the article concludes that productive processes do not inevitably determine social relations of production, that capitalism has been neither homogeneous nor uniform, and that mechanization never inevitably results in de-skilling.
1 The quotation is from Lazonick, William, Competitive Advantage on the Shop Floor (Cambridge. Mass., 1990), p. 75.Google ScholarBraverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York and London, 1974) is widely considered the seminal work in the study of labour process.Google Scholar For more recent studies see Edwards, Richard, Contested Terrain: the transformation of the workplace in the twentieth century (London, 1979); Zimbalist, Andrew (ed.), Case Studies on the Labor Process (New York, 1979);Google ScholarMore, Charles, Skill and the English Working Class, 1870–1914 (London, 1980);Google ScholarLittler, Craig, Development of the Labor Process in Capitalist Societies (London 1982);Google ScholarPenn, Roger, Skilled Workers in the British Class Structure (London, 1985);Google Scholar and Edwards, Paul, Conflict at Work: a materialist interpretation of workplace relations (Oxford, 1986).Google Scholar
2 For international comparison we have relied on Kingsford, Peter, Victorian Railwaymen: The Emergence and Growth of Railway Labour, 1830–1870 (London, 1970);Google ScholarMcKenna, Frank, The Railway Workers 1840–1970 (London, 1980);Google ScholarMater, Dan, The Railroad Seniority System; History, Description and Evaluation” (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1942);Google Scholar and Licht, Walter, Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1982).Google Scholar None of these works focussed on the workshops, however, which were largely organized by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in Britain and twelve shop-craft unions in the United States and Canada; for these we largely used James, B. Jeffreys, The Story of the Engineers, 1800–1945 (Letchworth, [1945])Google Scholar and Perlman, Mark, The Machinists: A New Study in American Trade Unionism (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).Google Scholar For a good description of the metal trades see Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, Industrial Democracy (London, 1902), pp. 107–109.Google Scholar
3 Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (hereafter AJHR), 1905. D-2, p. ix. While this statement is probably meant to refer only to the period of direct ministerial control that began in 1895. railways had been seen as “adjuncts to the settlement of the country” from their origin.Google Scholar
4 By 1908, the Department claimed to be earning three and a half per cent per annum on capital invested; see New Zealand Official Year Book (Wellington, 1908), pp. 460–463.Google Scholar
5 Basic information about Hillside is assembled in “Hillside Railway Workshops: Items of Interest to Visitors” (New Zealand Government Railways. 1962). We have also used an excellent history paper by Duncan, Lucy, “Hillside Railway Workshops 1875–1920” (University of Otago, 1982).Google Scholar
6 In all countries workshops were organized in the same way; see Jeffreys, , Story of the Engineers, p. 57; interview with Jim Addison, 24 April 1987; and the evidence and reports of two investigations, both discussed later.Google Scholar
7 Henning, J.D., “Government Railwaymen and Industrial Relations: 1884–1894” (M.A. thesis, Uniersity of Auckland, 1984), ch. 1–3 and p. 83 for the quotation from New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (hereafter PD), 78 (1892), p. 436.Google Scholar
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9 Railway Review (hereafter RR), 9 01 1909, p. 10 and 7 05 1909, p. 134.Google Scholar
10 There was one Appeal Board for each island, consisting of a judge and two elected assessors, one from each Division; “Government Railways Act”, The Statutes of New Zealand (Wellington, 1894), pp. 165–170;Google Scholar and “Government Railways Classification Act”, ibid. (1896). pp. 114–127.
11 See Polashek, R.J., Government Administration in New Zealand (Wellington and London, 1958), pp. 101–105. By 1910 this system had become extraordinarily complex with “temporary casuals”, “emergency casuals”, “hour-to-hour casuals”, and “probationers” for each category; RR, 21 Oct. 1910, p. 456.Google Scholar
12 “Government Railways Classification Act”. The Statutes of New Zealand (1896), pp. 114–127. The new system appears to have systematized and bureaucratized the procedures that had emerged in the privately-owned British railway companies; Kingsford, Victorian Railwaymen, ch. 8.Google Scholar
13 RR, 11. 1897, p. 252 and 02. 1898, p. 35.Google Scholar
14 Evidence from an inquiry into allegations of “systematic loafing” at the Addington Railway Workshops; AJHR, 1909, Session II. D-4a. p. 45 [hereafter “Addington Railway Workshops””. This was also the situation in Britain and North America;Google Scholar see Kingsford, , Victorian Railwaymen, pp. 113–118, 254–255, 263–264.Google Scholar
15 PD, 96(1896), p. 570, Cadman.Google Scholar
16 Ibid.. (1896), pp. 647–648, Cadman. Until 1906 the General Manager's office dealt with all cases but the burden of work then forced him to devolve responsibility to specialist boards RR, 7 05 1909, p. 134. Railway workers in Britain and North America also demanded classification and seniority; see Kingsford, Victorian Railwaymen,Google Scholar ch. 8; and Licht, , Working for the Railroad, pp. 131, 212.Google Scholar
17 Littler, Craig, “Understanding Taylorism”, British Journal of Sociology. XXIX (1978), pp. 185–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 PD, 96 (1896), pp. 647–648.Google Scholar
19 ibid. (1896), p. 646, Captain Russell. One of the Lib-Lab Members reported on the meeting; PD, ibid., pp. 592–593. For Earnshaw. ibid., pp. 639–642. A grade of “journeymen”, paid below normal tradesman's rates, still existed in the early 1940s but was eliminated with the growth of union strength, according to an interview with Lionel Jones, a former Hillside apprentice.
20 Ronayne to Chief Locomotive Engineer. 26 Sept. 1896, R-3. 14/5281, Railways Department Mss, National Archives [hereafter RDM/NA]. By 1913 all apprentices graduated to the bottom of the scale for tradesmen classified grade 2 and were kept there for two years. Ronayne reported, “They are really Improvers.” See “Extract from [Ronayne's] Report […]”, 10 July 1913. R-3, 12/1505/1, RDM/NA.
21 This seems to have been similar to the situation in England; see More, , Skill and the English Working Class. pp. 141–142.Google Scholar
22 The newly-created Arbitration Court began to do this in the private sector; see Clark, Victor, The Labour Movement in Australasia: A Study in Social Democracy (London, 1907);Google ScholarSidney, and Webb, Beatrice, ‘Introduction to 1902 Edition’, Industrial Democracy (New York, 1965), pp. xliii-iv;Google Scholar and Erik, Olssen and Boyd, Judi, “The Skilled Workers: Journeyman and Masters in Caversham, 1880–1914”. New Zealand Journal of History, 22 (1988), pp. 118–134.Google Scholar
23 By 1880 the larger British companies either had created or subsidized various pension and superannuation schemes for senior employees. The first American railroad unions, like the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in Britain, put great stress on their insurance schemes: see Kingsford, Victorian Railwaymen, ch. 7, 9 and 10; and Licht, , Working for the Railroad, pp. 212–213.Google Scholar American companies followed suit after the violent railway strike of 1877: Licht, , Working for the Railroad, p. 263.Google Scholar
24 It is not clear when this policy was adopted but it was unquestioned by early this century; see AJHR. 1905, D-2, p. ix.Google Scholar American and British companies had also adopted similar policies at least a generation earlier; Licht, , Working for the Railroad, pp. 169–172;Google Scholar and Kingsford, , Victorian Railwaymen, pp. 148–149.Google Scholar
25 PD, 96 (1896), p. 643.Google Scholar
26 “Addington Railway Workshops”, pp. 45–50,Google Scholar for Ronayne's testimony. It was apparently generally accepted that railway jobs could be distributed as patronage. The papers of T.K. Sidey, the Liberal Member of Parliament for the electorate which contained Hillside, contain many requests from constituents and friends for his help in obtaining promotions, jobs or apprenticeships for their sons; see for example, Willis, E. to Sidey, 21 01 1907;Google ScholarCaldwell, J. to Sidey, 27 08 1908; J.S. Burnett to Sidey. n.d. (Mss 605/13), Hocken Library. University of Otago. Dunedin.Google Scholar
27 Ronayne to Chief Locomotive Engineer, 26 Sept. 1896; and Minister of Railways to Director Christchurch Technical School, 14 1915, R-3, 12/1505/1, RDM/NA.
28 Government inquiry into the Addington Railway Workshops revealed a lot about the labour process; see AJHR. 1909, D-4A, p. 48Google Scholar and D-4 for the report. For a fuller discussion see Olssen, Erik, “The Railway Workers and Scientific Management”. in John, E. Martin and Taylor, Kerry (eds). Culture and the Labour Movement: Essays in New Zealand Labour History (Palmerston North, 1991), pp. 128–141.Google Scholar
29 Interviews with W.M. Pimley. Lionel Jones, Robert Rutherford, David Fenby and Jim Addison. Pimley did his apprenticeship as a fitter at Addington and started at Hillside in 1915, he was interviewed 30 March 1987; Jones, who worked as a fitter at Hillside in the 1940s and 1950s, was interviewed 13 March 1987; Rutherford began his apprenticeship as a boilermaker at Hillside in 1915, he was interviewed 14 April 1987; Fenby, who began his apprenticeship as a fitter at Hillside in 1924, was interviewed 13 April 1987: and Addison, head of the Welfare Department at the Hillside Workshops, was interviewed 24 April 1987 (he had served his apprenticeship as a boilermaker at Hillside in the 1940s).
30 See James Riley to Sidey, 9 July 1916, Sidey Mss, Hocken Library.
31 Railay Statement, AJHR, 1898, D-2, p. ii.Google Scholar
32 Some evidence suggests that able young men disliked seniority and preferred promotion to be based on merit alone; see RR, 04 1908, pp. 6–7.
33 Duncan, , “Hillside Railway Workshops”, p. 17 and Table F, p. 18.Google Scholar
34 It is not known when the principle was conceded in Britain, although the National Union of Railwaymen were still demanding it in 1911, but in the United States the shop crafts obtained it only during the first World War and had to struggle to retain it; see Mater, , “Railroad Seniority”.Google Scholar
35 “Addington Railway Workshops”, p. 12.Google Scholar
36 Interviews with Fenby, Jones and Rutherford.
37 RR, 30 07 1909, pp 236–237.Google Scholar
38 Duncan, , “Hillside Railway Workshops”, p. 10.Google Scholar
39 RR, 15 12 1911, p. 593.Google Scholar
40 RR, 5 02 1909, pp. 34–35, 38; 2 04 1909, pp. 99–100, 104; and 7 05 1909, p. 134. See Olssen, “Railway Workers and Scientific Management”.Google Scholar
41 “Addington Railway Workshops”, p. 13.Google Scholar
42 Testimony of various foremen at Addington, e.g. Cole, W. H.: “Addington Railway Workshop”, p. 31.Google Scholar
43 Between 1896 and 1912 only 196 men secured this promotion. After that it became still harder. See RR, 28 06 1912, p. 277; and 21 09 1917, p. 406.Google Scholar
44 Calvert, MonteThe Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830–1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict (Baltimore, 1967), demonstrates that the champions of shop culture –which included many of the engineering-entrepreneurial elite – remained powerful until World War I. Their major opponents, the propenents of formal educaitonal requirements for mechanical engineers, scarcely existed in New Zealand. Nor did such industries as electrical engineering, however, which first accepted the need for educaitonal qualifications rather than an apprenticeship. In the US, however, all mechanical engineers agreed on the importance of productivity and profitability.Google Scholar
45 RR, 11 12 1908, pp. 9–11.Google Scholar
46 Interview with R. Rutherford.
47 “Addington Railway Workshops”, p. 34.Google Scholar
48 For instance see RR, 30 07, 1909, p. 229; 19 11 1909, pp. 381–382; 5 05 1911, p. 235; 25 08 1911, pp. 383–384.Google Scholar
49 Lazonick, , Competitive Advantage, pp. 196–201.Google Scholar
50 Taylor's best-known work, Scientific Management, only appeared in 1911, year after the main outlines of his philosophy had been worked out and widely publicized; see Nelson, David, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison, 1980)., pp. 102–103.Google Scholar
51 For a differrent view see McAloon, J., “Working Class Politics in Christchurch, 1905 – 1914” (M. A. thesis, University of Canterbury, 1986), ch. 2.Google Scholar
52 High- speed steel tools were used in almost every case at Addington; “Addington Railway Workshop”, p. 35.Google Scholar
53 Jenkinson, J. E.; “Addington Railway Workshop”, p. 8.Google Scholar
54 Interview with R. Rutherford; see also RR, 5 05 1911, p. 231.Google Scholar
55 Jackson, H. H.; “Addington Railway Workshop”, p. 16.Google Scholar
56 RR, 24 08 1917, p. 361.Google Scholar
57 Scott, George; “Addington Railway Workshops”, p. 21. David Fenby, who began his apprenticeship at Hillside in 1924, recalled the extraordinary contrast between the layour of the old shops compared to the new ones built in 1926.Google Scholar
58 See Nelson, David, Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States, 1880–1920 (Madison, 1975), and Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management for a thorough analysis of scientific management in the United States, including: systematic planning, routing cose accounting method, systematic analysis of each machine's capacity and the time needed for each operation, detailed instruction and supervision of each worker, the differetial piece rate.Google Scholar
59 “Addington Railway Workshops”, p. 24.Google Scholar
60 Interview with R. Rutherford. Men who had started later confirmed this; e.g. David Fenby, Lionel Jones, Jim Addison.
61 As earlys as 1904 the International Association of Machinists admitted to menbership anyone with four years experience and had sub-divided the machinist's job in the turner' shop into 25 distinct “crafts”; Weyl, Walter and Sakolski, A. M., “Conditions of Entrance to the Principal Trades”, Bulletin of the US Department of Labor, no. 67 (1906), pp. 687–688.Google Scholar It should be said, however, that recent work has, called in question the importance once attached to de-skilling in British engineering shops; see More, , Skill and the English Working Class, ch. 2 and 9.Google Scholar
62 Child, John, “Wages Policy and Wages Movements in New Zealand, 1914–1923”, Journal of Industrial Relations, 13 (1971), pp. 164–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
63 Interview with R. Rutherford; for Britain see Jeffreys, , Story of the Engineers, pp. 170–189;Google Scholar and Zeitlin, Johnathan, “Engineers and Comppositors” in Royden, Harrison and Zeitlin, (eds), Divisions of Labor: Skilled Workers and Technological Changess in Nineteenth Century England (Brighton, 1985), pp. 185–250.Google Scholar
64 More, , Skill and the English Working Class, p. 35 and ch. 9 makes the same point more generally and pp. 140–141, 186 discusses the British turner.Google Scholar
65 “Addington Railway Workshops”, p. 24.Google Scholar
66 ibid., p. 34.
67 Perlman, , Machinists, p. 28.Google Scholar
68 Olssen, , “Railway Workers and Scientific Management” p. 129–133.Google Scholar
69 See Ronayne to Sec. ASRS, 7 May 1913, R-3 12/2910/1, RDM/NA; and for wage rates at Hillside, Duncan, “Hillside Railway Workshops” Table C, p. 9 (she compiled wage rates from the D-2 list).
70 See Erik, Olssen and Brecher, Jeremy, “New Zealand and United States Labour Movement: The View from the Workshop Floor” in Jock, Phillips (ed.) New World? The Comparative History of New Zealand and the United States (Wellington, 1989), pp. 96–112.Google Scholar These guidelines shaped wage policy in the private sector; see Holt, James, Compulsory Arbitration in New Zealand: The First Forty Years (Auckland, 1986), ch. 3–4.Google Scholar
71 RR, 22 Sept. 1916, p. 429; 20 OCt. 1916, p. 476; 9 Feb. 1917, p. 87; and 4 may 1917, p. 183. Even in the late 1920s the Department used the fact that women had been capable of operating certain machines to resist wage claims; see RR, 30 July 1926, p. 31.Google Scholar
72 The shortage of apprentices created a shortage of trademen by 1920. The Department tried to cope by increasing the pay for apprentices (and so altering complex relativites) while hiring causals at the maximum rate of pay. Hundreds of anomalies ressulted. See General Manager to District Engineers, 20 Feb. 1920, R-3 12/2910/1 RDM/NA; F. W. Furkert (Under-Secretary), “Memo for Public Service Commissioner: Rates of pay for Apprentices” 4 Oct. 1921, R-3, 14/1505/1, RDM/NA.
73 RR, 2 06 1916, p. 231; and Tom Brooking David Thomson and Dick Martin, “Transience in Caversham”, Caversham Project working paper.Google Scholar
74 The Department informed the Milirary Service Board for Wellington that 2,600 employees had been given leave, which meant that they could return to their jobs; RR, 1 June 1917, p. 235.
75 The list of demands in the first document in a file named “Tradesman's Interview”, Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants Mss, National Union of Railwaymen's Head Office, Wellington.
76 Slade, Michelle, “Industrial Unionism in New Zealand: a Study of the Transport Workers' Advisory Board and the Alliance of Labour, 1916–1925” (M.A. thesis, University of Auckland, 1983).Google Scholar
77 Report of the Royal Commission into the Railway Service […] (Wellington, 1924), pp. xxxii–xxxvi; and RR, 9 Jan. 1925, p. 1.Google Scholar The fullest account of this investigation and the subsequent reorganizaiton is D., A. Crosado, “The Reorganisaiton of the New Zealand Railway Workshops 1924–1930”, unpublished ms, kindly lent by the author.Google Scholar
78 Spidy, , “Memo/3108”, R-3, 1925/343/1, RDM/NA. For teh Canadian backgroundGoogle Scholar see Paul, Craven and Traves, Tom, “Canadian Railways as Manufacturers, 1850–1880”, a paper presented to the Canadian Historical Association, June 1983.Google Scholar
79 Spidy to Cheif Mechanical Engineer, 1 Dec. 1924, R-3, 1925/343/1, RDM/NA.
80 Spidy to Chief Mechanical Engineer, 23 Jan. 1925, R-3, 1925/343/1, RDM/NA.
81 RR, 24 07 1925, pp. 375–376; and 2 07 1926, p. 339.Google Scholar
82 Hillside voted against striking and became a stronghold of the RTA; for the vote see ASRS, , “Biennial Conference 1925: Verbatim Report on 1924 Strike Discussion […]” (Wellington, 1925), p. 6. According to Jim Addison the patternmakers, fitters, turners, boilermakers, tinsmiths and blacksmiths joined the RTA while the “unskilled” – machinists, modulders, and fettlers – remained in the ASRS.Google Scholar
83 See “Railway Workshops: A Tour of Hillside […]”, RR, 28 May 1927, pp. 305–307 (reprinted from a major daily newspaper, The Otago Daily Times). Those who remembered the shift froim old to new shops were still impressed 60 years later.
84 Cited by Ken, Buckley and Wheelwright, Ted, No Paradise for Workers: Capitalism and the Common People in Australia 1788–1914 (Melbourne, 1988), p. 157.Google Scholar
85 Lazonick, , Competitive Advantage, pp. 227–228Google Scholar. Ironically, in Britain, engineering employers assumed that the introduction of piece rates would give them control of the labour process, but the belief proved wrong because, according to Lazonick, pp. 197–201, they “failed to make the investments in managerial structures that, in conjunction with the mass-production technologies, were needed to take control of work off the shop floor” (p. 198).
86 See RR, 24 Sept. 1926, pp. 507–508; and “ASRS Executive Council Interview with Acting Minister of Railways […] November 16, 1926”, RR, 22 Oct. 1926. Private-sector engineering firms in Christchurch also pushed for the premium bonus; RR, 22 Oct. 1926, pp. 572–573.Google Scholar
87 Price, Richard, Labour in British Society: an interpretive history (London, 1986), p. 4.Google Scholar
88 We use Giddens, Anthony, The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies (London, 1973), ch. 11, for the forms of class consciousness.Google Scholar
89 Giddens, Anthony, Social Theory and Modern Sociology (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 219–221.Google Scholar
90 The argument in this paragraph is indebted to Lazonick, Competitive Advantage.
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