PARTNERSHIP IN INDUSTRY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 5 August 1926, Page 8

PARTNERSHIP IN INDUSTRY.

ONLY HOPE FOR. FUTURE

"There is only one way that I can see which will really produce goodwill between employer and employed, and that is complete partnership in industry,” said Viscount Grey in a speech recent!v ‘‘Tluit •does not mean mere-mofit-sharing. Sharing in the management is what real partnership means. 13ut one recognises that there are difficulties. The employer will say that his management will be impaired, by being made more cumbrous, by admitting representatives of the men and consulting them about the management of the works. There is a complete answer to that. It is that practical, efficient management is no use if it is sterilised by the obstruction of labour; and the advantage that you could get if you could obtain the goodwill of labour by associating them with the management would far and away overbalance and outweigh any difficulty which might arise from making the management rather more slow.” Other dilticulties would be removed only when the point of view was changed, “lour real difficulty about partnership is l hat, until you have a real working partnership ' between 'employer and organised labour, you will not have goodwill; and until you have goodwill partnership will not work. 1 hat is a very serious dilemma. It is essential before you can make progress, that the points of view, both of employees •nid of organised labour, must be shifted. It is an exceedingly difficult tiling to sliift the point of view of large masses of men. You cannot do it \v .speeches, but it can be done when there is some great catastrophe or gome great upheaval; and the point in my mind is whether the upheaval of the general strike has been a sufficient lever to turn men’s minds in the direction of a real alteration in the relations between capital and labour.”