Report on profit-sharing and labour co-partnership in the United Kingdom

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1016336950

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-27123

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Report on profit-sharing and labour co-partnership in the United Kingdom

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: His Majesty's Stationery Office

Year of publication:: 1912

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (160 Seiten)

Digitisation:: 2018

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: II. Profit sharing and co-partnership in private firms and companies

Collection:: Economics Books

DETAILED ACCOUNT OF VARIOUS SCHEMES. 45 would forfeit all claim to bonus for the future, and must take their chance of losing the bonus for the past year, since it lay in the power of the shareholders to settle what bonus was to be given and to whom; and the men were told in plain terms that they had to choose between Profit-sharing and Trade Unionism. About one-third of the men stayed away from work, and were deprived of bonus until reinstated the following Christmas. During 1873, a year in which the coal trade was very prosperous, the relations between Messrs. Briggs and their men, though not so good as before, were fairly satisfactory; * but in 1874 a dispute arose about the use of “ riddles ” for sifting the coal in the pits. The use of riddles underground had, for reasons into which it is unnecessary to enter here, long been a grievance in the eyes of the Yorkshire miners; during the fat years, when coal was so much sought after that even smudge was saleable, the men had been allowed to send up the coal unsifted, a slight reduction being made in their ton nage rate of wages. Now that prices were falling, the employers wished to revert to the use of the riddle in their pits; but the Trade Union declared that never again should riddles be intro duced ; and Messrs. Briggs’s men for some time declined to use them. “ The events above described did not, however, lead at once to the abolition of the industrial partnership system. At the meeting of shareholders held in August, 1874, it was decided not entirely to abandon it, but to give it one more chance, modi fying, however, the rules regulating the distribution of the bonus, and making these rules more stringent. ”t Not long after this Messrs. Briggs, in common with the other employers of the I district, announced their intention of reducing the men’s wages. This reduction the miners, including those employed by Messrs. Briggs, declined to accept, and a strike of four weeks’ duration ensued. As the direct consequence of this fact, “ the final step was taken, and a resolution passed at the half-yearly meet ing of shareholders, held in February, 1875, that the payment °f a bonus on the industrial partnership principle should be dis continued. Many of the men themselves had expressed a wish io the same effect, having an idea that we were in some way merely keeping back a portion of their wages to be probably (but not certainly) returned to them at the end of the year; and they said they would prefer to be paid precisely the same wages, and be put on the same footing as men at other collieries.”% In connection with this case it is worth noting that the system adopted did not partake of the nature of a definite, binding agree ment between employers and employed, since the shareholders * At this time “ some of the surrounding colliery proprietors, anxious to attract men to their pits and secure as large a share as possible of the great prosperity, and finding the bonus o-iven by our company was a great inducement to men to remain with us, began to offer something beyond the regular wages of the district, saying it was 1 instead of Briggs’s bonus,’ thus strengthening the view already entertained by some discontented men that the bonus was something kept back out of the weekly wages to be given at the end of the year, and that if we could pay it then we could give it to them weekly just as well.” (Memoran dum by Messrs. Briggs in Sedley Taylor’s Profit-sharing, p. 125). t Memorandum by Messrs'. Briggs in Sedley Taylor’s Profit-sharing, PP- 1‘28, 129. + Ibid., p. 129.

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