EMPLOYER AND WORKER

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22336, 25 February 1938, Page 14

EMPLOYER AND WORKER

♦ SIR ALEXANDER ROBERTSpIN ROTARY IDEALS “To-day there are influences at work endeavouring to cause a cleavage be* tween employer and employee, and we in Rotary should do our utmost to ensure that non-success attends these efforts, because if we cannot work in harmony and friendship with those that are working with us. then is work worth while?” asked Sir Alexander Roberts, in an address on vocational service, to the national Rotary Conference yesterday. “I say quite candidly, and I am sure that:' you all as Rotarians agree with me. that you would rather accept a smaller return from your business and have the goodwill, friendship, and cooperation of those who are working with you, than to have greater returns .from the business at the cost of being hated arid despised by those under you. “The world has become at heart, much more democratic, and to attain success :in business we must have loyalty and co-operation which only friendship can produce,” Sir Alexander said. “How can we as individual Rotarians, do our part in fostering this goodwill and friendship in the commercial world? Surely by conducting our own businesses on true Rotarian lines by studying the comfort and welfare of those who work for us. “To many employees, there are two problems which confront them: (1) old age, (2) sickness. In any sound business these spectres can be adequately dealt with. Old age can be provided for by superannuation schemes contributed to by employer and employee. “My suggestion to you is. that every business should have a ‘staff benefit fund’ which. 1 am glad to say, In healthy New Zealand, requires to be quite small in proportion to the size of the business, and from that fund assistance be given in the payment of these extraordinary expenses. This is no Utopian idea, but a sound economic one, since, freed from this financial worry, the employee is able to give of his best to his employer.”