Smiling for Profit

About the Book

About the Book

Employees hate to work their best - for a reason. Some 150 years ago, employees become aware that their labour is their property. They feel entitled to the profit on this property. Once the employer takes away this profit, employees feels exploited. Hence, adversarial relationship toward employers. An employer will regain his employees' full cooperation when he switches from employment to the entrepreneurial mode of labour utilization. This change will render the workplace more productive and efficient because workers will join forces among themselves and with the employer for profit maximization. The employer will be making profit exclusively on his means of production (work premises and utilities, machinery and raw materials). However, that "limitation" will increase his profit because workers will maximize it when the profit on their labour will come to them at the same rate.

The first enterprise that switches to the new mode will become the strongest competitor in its industry. Others will either follow suit or close doors.

Private employment started in the eighteenth century and brought massive progress to societies that embraced it. Human productivity soared to unheard of levels, along with living standards. The industrial revolution came about. Culture produced works of quality unsurpassed until this day.

The rise continued for some 200 years and then started to slow down. These days, human productivity is declining. Technological improvements yield only minor increases in general productivity, while raising unemployment. We are witnessing degradation in culture. While a few are gaining wealth bordering on fantasy, the general wealth is stagnating. Unions have lost their ability to advance wages without causing jobs to move overseas.

The entrepreneurial mode will resume the rise of human productivity. It will create jobs. Capital and labour will cooperate to maximize profits. General wealth will resume its rise and so will the culture.

About the Author

Born in Warsaw, Poland, 1935.

My father Joel Perel turned to the profession of care for mentally disturbed children and juvenile criminals. Problems and solutions to abnormal and criminal behaviour were the usual topic at our dinner table for many years. My mother Esther was teaching elementary grades and kindergarten. This intellectual environment prepared me for analyzing human behaviour.

I did not consider a teaching career. Engineering attracted me as practical and rewarding. No regrets.

The massive gap between potential human productivity at the workplace and its actual productivity puzzled me since I set my foot on a production floor. I was still a student at the time. Later, along my engineering jobs, the puzzle haunted me and demanded an answer.

In 1969, the answer to my puzzle suddenly emerged. It had been fifteen years in the making.

I attempted to apply my solution, first at two consecutive production facilities where I worked. Then I attempted to set up one myself. All to no avail. My attempts afforded me some notoriety that prevented me from finding professional employment.

I immigrated to Canada and after a while started to promote my solution here as well.

On the negative side, two important General Managers, one in charge of two plants of Inglis and the other one in charge of fifteen plants of Domtar, lost their jobs when they dared to recommend my A-Option to their superiors.

By contrast, the workers I met on picket lines and in the tube-production plant where I toiled for over three years did like my A-Option. The General Manager of this and two other tube-production plants of Jannock did understand me well, but he chickened out.

I have no doubt someone will implement my A-Option, with or without me.

Motty Perel