This article provides you with information about piecework , including interesting examples. Discover the details!
Piecework
When we try to define piecework , we find labor definitions that all center on the idea that it refers to relationships where payment is based on the output generated within a specific timeframe. This means that the worker is paid not by the hour, but by the finished product.
People under the piecework relationship usually establish with the employer the type of payment they want, it can be biweekly, weekly or monthly, everything will depend on what the two parties have squared.
However, in this order of ideas we can get organizations that use piecework as a contract to get payment canceled in different ways such as time work that focuses on the cancellation of hourly work. In the same way, you can get piecework wages under sales commissions, which are generally paid annually.
It is recommended that each of these conditions of sale be disclosed at the beginning of the piecework contract to avoid confusion or discussions at the time the contract is terminated or at the time the fees are to be paid.
Piece-rate work usually has its own characteristics which directly affect the worker, thanks to the fact that companies paying for work done can exert significant pressure on workers to quickly carry out the activity, in order to determine the value of what is going to be collected or canceled.
Another characteristic that helps to quickly identify piecework is that these activities have a high standard of work in order to be paid. Contractors do not accept work of dubious quality as they are usually given high payments.
These characteristics give employers an advantage over piecework or piecework workers, since the total payment will only be made at the time of complete delivery of the activity that we have determined. Generally, this translates as an incentive for the workers, which translates into greater productivity on the part of each of them, since as people with labor dependency they need important quality.
This type of piecework contract is usually seen in sectors where labor is not essential and when the activity ends they are no longer necessary, such as the agriculture or construction sectors.
To better understand how to calculate or use piecework contract systems, we leave you the following audiovisual material so that we can identify it quickly and easily
history of piecework
Since the beginning of time, work has formed part of the lives of human beings. There are different types of contracts and remuneration to what we know as an employment relationship. This is going to come hand in hand with the organizational structure and objective of the company, which is why it is extremely important that we have well defined the types that we can achieve.
If you would like to learn more about this topic, we invite you to visit the following link and learn everything you need to know about the classification of companies according to their size in Spain.
With regard to employment relationship contracts under the specifications of piecework, we get its beginnings from what is known historically as ancient Rome. Which is characterized by the placement of the capital of Rome as an avant-garde government that developed military, economically, socially, culturally and politically what we know today.
However, the definition of piecework appears in the year 1495, in the world of crafts, where apprentices of the art they developed were paid for completed pieces and not for the time they spend in the workshop. This modality was used since they could quickly determine the amount of work they had done in a day and could quickly establish the production that had been executed.
This thought was also introduced in the factory movement within the British government in this same period of time, where the workforce mass-produced different work tools and their payments were based on the total that was taken out in a given period of time, usually weekly.
Industrial Revolution
Historically, the Industrial Revolution is the process by which the social economy went from being purely rural to complete industrialization. This process of change occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century in the United Kingdom, this industrialization managed to spread throughout Western Europe and all that is known as Anglo-Saxon America between the years 1820 and 1840.
The Industrial Revolution not only changed the way in which new companies were established, but also the way in which new labor contracts were presented, which offered new strategies for economic and technological transformations for employees.
This happens thanks to the fact that the workforce was going to be supplanted by the machines, something that the employers took into consideration when establishing new employment contracts which would have new conditions given the labor reorganization that was being born.
It is necessary to understand that piecework arose in the Industrial Revolution due to the need to cover the spaces that modernization was leaving uncovered, which made employers or business owners take into consideration new strategies that cover these needs in an appropriate way.
In the year 1799, piecework had a new importance which was centered on what is known as the American manufacturing system, which denoted the importance of human resources within manufacturing to evaluate the results generated by the activation of the systematized activities that had been implemented within the businesses.
XIXth Century
As modernization was increasingly achieved in different organizational or operational spaces, piecework was gaining many more spaces of appreciation within the systems known as human resources.
In the mid-nineteenth century with the arrival of the modernization of the clothing sector in the world and the implementation of pedal sewing machines, the system was forced to recognize that although they had achieved an enormous advance in terms of technology, the human resource was still indispensable and necessary within any company.
This situation meant that most employers, when evaluating their hiring and segmentation capabilities of each of the workers within the company, managed to establish much higher demands for each of the employees under piecework hiring.
However, for idealists such as Frederick Winslow Taylor or Karl Marx, piecework contracts present a great disadvantage for employees since extremely complex and exhausting working hours are established, unlike predestined working hours.
Current system
At present, the labor system that applies work is much broader and more common within labor organizations. However, within the organizations that have not managed to make the transfer to piecework contracts due to technological considerations, they continue to maintain a concept of labor exploitation within the walls of today.
It is important to highlight that the companies are trying to make the necessary adjustments for the different needs and labor rights of the workers who are contracted for piecework in order to improve these benefits.
Jobs that manifest updates or options that are out of office are perfect for these new business applications. However, as we have established on different occasions, this will only benefit from the application of new modalities and updates within piecework contracts.
Management of piecework in the world
As we have defined throughout the article, piecework is those contracts that are made to a specific group of workers or employees to achieve specific goals within organizations, companies, companies or brands.
However, it is important to note that these contracts under the piecework system will have their specifications depending on the labor legislation of the country where we reside or want to form a workforce. That is why below we specify three different countries so that you can understand in a more global way how these specifications are handled.
Spain
One of the countries with the highest level of piecework that we can achieve worldwide is Spain. This happens due to the high level of immigration that this country sustains and to keep the country's productive apparatus active, these contracts are common and widely accepted within the market.
These characteristics are so specific within Spanish contracting that in the IV General Collective Agreement for Construction in Spain, it is declared broadly and in detail that piecework is the classifications that may arise from these specifications and the different incentives that arise within this type of hiring. Without analyzing article 29 of this agreement, we find that the Spanish workers' federation characterizes piecework under the following statements:
- If the employee performs or completely ends the activity for which he has been hired, the employer has the right to establish whether the employment relationship continues in new projects or simply the termination of the contract that has been established since the beginning of the employment. employment relationship.
- When the payment is going to be made for the activities that have been completed under the piecework treatment, we obtain in this agreement that the amount of work that has been carried out can be canceled as long as the different needs of us are covered as company, regardless of the time that has been invested or the period that has been used to achieve the objectives that we have set as an organization, company, company or brand.
- The incentives given to the workers who have been assigned to fulfill the objectives and who live under the statutes of the contracts known as piecework, will go hand in hand with the benefits that have been previously established or with the application, performance and execution by each of those involved at this point.
- In the same way, in the specifications that have been established for the fulfillment of these forms within piecework contracts, we find that there are three important specifications:
- Horas: The agreement refers to hourly piecework contracts when the worker will only be paid for the number of hours that he has gone to work, regardless of the productive specifications that he has reached within the working day.
- Unit: These types of jobs are considered payments based on the units that the workers have delivered in a certain period of time. The pieces will cover each of the requirements that we have determined.
- Quantity: this is the last modality that we are going to find in the agreement that we have mentioned previously. It focuses on the amount of work that the employee who has been hired under the piecework modality has managed to position and establish himself within the market.
United Kingdom
This is a clear example of how it is handled in a completely different way within the traditional elements of what is defined as employment. According to the legal establishments that regulate the labor force of the United Kingdom, each one of the workers who register within the productive force of the country must receive at least the minimum wage established by the executive government.
The fractional payment or fair rate as it is popularly known can only be calculated when the employees under piecework contracts get in a position where it is almost impossible to establish the hours they have.
These characteristics arise when employers manage schemes such as workers who do not have entry or exit times and contracts that are specified for the establishment of a specific activity such as an advertising campaign, remodeling of an office or training of personnel in any structure points out.
As a general rule, to establish the payment that is to be established within these piecework contracts, it is possible to measure an average of the minimum wage, average amounts produced by each of the organizations that are stipulated under this contract and the division of these characteristics of 1,2; In this way we can establish how the payment should be given to each of the employees who are under this modality in the United Kingdom.
It is important to note that this type of work configuration within this country is common to see in customer services or home deliveries, since employers can establish the number of packages or calls handled in a given time. In this way we can evaluate in a much more effective way the productivity and efficiency that the worker has towards the company, company or establishment.
United States
Finally, we are going to evaluate the piecework in one of the most important powers in the world at an economic level, the United States of America. The Fair Labor Standards Act that manages the labor material of each of the workers who live in the labor standards of this country knows that regardless of the specifications or labor contracts that we may contain within this country, the minimum payment that is stipulated is the minimum established by the executive of this nation.
That is why it is extremely important to understand that when piecework contracts are established within the United States, productivity levels or total pieces that workers or employees must deliver are evaluated to achieve the necessary quantities to understand what the point is. of productivity and efficiency that we can achieve under contracts and know how to appreciate the human resource that we are hiring.
It is necessary to establish that although within the country there are guidelines where it is determined that the salary payment is at least that established by law, we must know that there are exceptions to this rule, such as the fact that the employee is a direct family member of the company's employer. Another of the exceptions that we can achieve within the specifications is that if there are more than five hundred people who have established a schedule of less than one hour.
What we must remember regardless of the country where we find ourselves, piecework is going to focus on specific amounts within labor relations and specific jobs that allow us to achieve important results within a certain time.