0910G[North America Flying] Argument178 by haunteagle

haunteagleUID: 2609432

TOPIC: ARGUMENT178 - The following appeared in the annual report from the president of the National Brush Company.

"In order to save money, we at the National Brush Company have decided to pay our employees for each brush they produce instead of for the time they spend producing brushes. We believe that this policy will lead to the production of more and better brushes, will allow us to reduce our staff size, and will enable the company factories to operate for fewer hours-resulting in savings on electricity and security costs. These changes will ensure that the best workers keep their jobs and that the company will earn a profit in the coming year."

The argument, while seems logical, has some faults in the following aspects. Firstly, the president oversees the potential reduction in the quality of the brushes and thus a drop in sales revenue. Secondly, the argument fail to provide substantial evidence that paid-by-number policy will reduce cost. Finally, the president does not rule out possibility that the best workers will leave the posts.

Paid-by-number policy will certainly issue a strong sign that all workers should do their best to produce more brushes. According to daily experience, the quality will drop if we enhance the producing speed. For example, if we type too fast we will have far more mistakes than typing in common speed. Similarly, as the workers focus on how many they produce rather than how well they produce, it is entirely possible the there is abrupt drop in the quality of the brushes. Thus the sales of the brush will also experience an abrupt drop. The drop will directly affect the profit of the firm.

Even we accept that the quality remains, the president fail to provide substantial evidence that the cost of product will drop. The enhancement of worker's efficiency does not necessarily indicate the potential reduce in number of workers. Since all the workers enhance their efficiency, the whole assembly line works at a higher speed than before, which means every segment, is working at a higher speed. Actually, since some segment can increase the speed easily, some segments are limited by the machines and experience. To improve the holistic speed more workers may be hired and the cost of the firm may increase.

Finally, the president does not rule out the possibility that the skilled workers may resign. To evaluate a worker, usually we will investigate how much profit he makes for the factory. An A's brush can be sold with much higher price than a C's. And the skilled workers can make much profit than the novices. Yet the firm adopts the new policy of paying according to how many they made. Skilled workers do not equal to fast workers. It takes tens of years to be an experienced worker. It is possible that they are too old to keep up with the accelerated working speed, thus they may choose to leave the factory. Without the guidance of the skillful workers, the whole quality of the brushes may drop and the proceedings of the firm may reduce.

To substantiate his view, the president should prove that the policy may remain the long-held quality standards to remain the incomes. He should also provide substantial evidence that the cost will drop and the skillful workers will keep loyal to the firm to strengthen the argument.