19
ficiency by requiring the promotion,
or retention, of employees who are not
best suited for the jobs involved. They
maintain that the difficulty of mea
suring merit can be overcome by such
devices as careful job analysis and
merit rating, trial periods for em
ployees on new jobs,'¡and resort to the
plant grievance procedure in case of
disputes over merit.
' Over three-fourths of the 930 agree
ments analyzed required that varying
degrees of consideration be given to
seniority in establishing ’ the order of
lay-off. About 60 per cent of the
agreements made seniority the gov
erning factor in establishing the order
of lay-off. Almost half of these added
a qualifying statement to the effect
that the senior employees must be
competent to perform available work.
Another group of agreements (12
per cent of the total) made seniority
a secondary consideration, i. e., senior
ity governed the selection of employ
ees for lay-off only if the employees
involved were approximately equal in
ability,
Seniority was given most weight in
lay-offs in the mass - production in
dustries, possibly because a large pro
portion of employees have approxi
mately the same degree of skill and
ability-
In rehiring, seniority usually was
given the same weight as in lay-offs,
because agreements commonly provid
ed for rehiring in reverse order of lay
off. Application of seniority in rehir-
ing may decrease the mobility of la
bor reserves.
Almost 60 per cent of the agree
ments required some consideratioh of
seniority ip promotions. Most of them
specified that seniority would govern
only if the. employees were competent
to perform the work or only if the
employees involved were of »equal
ability. An example of the latter type
of provision Breads: “In making pro
a
12 N ew A lleys
motions, seniority shall prevail only
where other qualifications are equal.
The ‘qualifications’ as used in this
paragraph shall include süch matters
as experience, physical fitnpss$ skill,
knowledge, adaptability, efficiency,
responsibility, integrity, and the j like.”
Particularly interesting — especial
ly in light of widespread popular con
ceptions that unions almost universal
ly seek to base promotions on seniority
— was the finding that 136 contracts
covering almost half (46 per cent)
of all the workers made no reference
to seniority.
In general,, employers hold I that ef
ficiency is impaired and individual
employee incentive is stifled if senior
ity, rather than abilitygoverns pro
motions. Unions, in contrast, often take
the position that seniority should be
the primary factor in making promo
tions. They-contend that other factors;
are too difficult to measure objective
ly ^ - particularly if no joint machine
ry is set up to review these factors.
Approximately a fifth of the work
ers weré covered by contracts which
called for transfers from one job to
another according to seniority,
A fourth of the agreements, cover
ing about the same proportion of the
workers, provided that senior em
ployees were entitled to first choice
of shifts. Owing to the general prefer
ence of workers for the day shift, the
effect is to give older x employees first
(Continued on Page 22)
Dr. E. Boring
Dr. Sam Hughes
OPTOMETRISTS
at
Boring Optical
1194 Center Street Salem, Oregon
Phone 3-6506
"Bowl for Your Health"
7 Billiard Tables
UNIVERSITY BOWL
Phone 2-0631
O pen 11 A .M .-12 P.M.
1340 State St.