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To the Secretary of the Board of Trade.
Sir,
I have the honour to present herewith the accompanying
Report on Profit-sharing and Labour Co-partnership in the
United Kingdom, which has been prepared in this Department.
The work of investigation was at the outset entrusted to Mr.
David F. Schloss, who was eminently qualified to undertake this
duty. When, however, his work was nearing completion he was
unfortunately compelled to relinquish it owing to an illness
which, to the great regret of all who worked with him, ended in
his death a few weeks ago.
The last detailed Report issued by the Department on the subject
of Profit-sharing was also compiled by Mr. Schloss, and was
published in 1894. The Department has endeavoured, by
annual enquiries, to keep up to date the information contained
in that Report, and has published the results of these enquiries
in the Board of Trade Labour Gazette and in the Abstracts of
Labour Statistics; but it is clear that the time has now come for
another general survey of the whole subject.
In this Report, as in the previous one, Profit-sharing is understood
to involve an agreement between an employer and his
workpeople under which the latter receive, in addition to
their wages, a share, fixed beforehand, in the profits of the
undertaking. A grant or bonus, therefore, made at the absolute
discretion of an employer, and not upon any pre-arranged basis,
is not a case of profit-sharing for the present purpose. It may
further be remarked that, without a special inquiry, it would be
difficult to determine in the less well-organised trades in which
many of the profit-sharing schemes have been started, whether the
wages paid are the full current district rates.
Labour Co-partnership is an extension of Profit-sharing, enabling
the worker to accumulate his share of profit in the capital of the
business employing him, thus gaining the rights and responsibilities
of a shareholder. A still further stage is found in some
co-partnership schemes which provide for a direct share in the
management as well as a share in the profits, one or more seats on
the board of directors being expressly reserved for representatives
of the workpeople.
The present investigation has brought to light a large number
of profit-sharing schemes in private firms and companies which
were not mentioned in the 1894 Report, and the number of
schemes now known to be in operation is 133, the number of
workpeople employed by the firms having such schemes being
about 106,000. These 133 schemes are the survivors of nearly
300 profit-sharing arrangements of which 163 have been
abandoned.
(245 8—4.) Wt. 7032—3889. 2500 & 90. 11/12. D & 8,
A
