LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 227, 13 June 1918, Page 4

LABOUR CO-PARTNERSHIP

WHY it: has failed. "Real labour co-partnership, the association of workers in their own workshops, has not been successful/' said Sir. B. E. Murphy last night in his lecture before tho Accountant Students' Society. "The real obstacles to succcss have been tho managerial incapacity of the ordinary workmen, Uieir disliking to pay a competent manager anything like a decent -alary, and their disinclination to submit to shop discipline ill co-partner-ship establishments. These obstacles wrecked most or tho co-operativo workshops.'' A group of coopers in Minneapolis had formed a successful co-part-nership organisation, tho workers owning and running their own business. But when the venture was firmly established the original workers turned themselves into a joint l stock company and took other men into their employment.

ill-. A. W. Clinkard said that labour co-p-irtnership had succeeded in two instances in. France. A great firm of painters, Messrs. Tieclair, had been run 011 co-partnership lines for nearly a century. The most important shareholder was a mutual society composed of -a large number of the employees of tho business, and this society controlled tho organisation and appointed a manager at a fixed salary, the manager also holdins a substantial interest in the business. The concern was tun on absolute copartnership lines. Mr. Murphv said he knew of the firm mentioned. Then had been another successful co-partnership organisation i.n France before the war. but the Germans had destroyed the factory. The copartnership movement, however, had not grown, as it would have done if it had oeen the solution of tho problems of Labour and Capital.