Patea & Waverley Press. MONDAY, JUNE 29, 1914. Profit-Sharing.

Patea Mail, Volume XXXIX, 29 June 1914, Page 2

Patea & Waverley Press. MONDAY, JUNE 29, 1914. Profit-Sharing.

The Statistical Department of the London Bjard of Trade have recently issued an interesting and instructive report on Profit-Sharing and Labour Copartnership Abroad. The report, which id a continuation of 0!:e previously issued dealing with profit, sharing in the United Kingdom was originally intended to be merely a summary of the published material available. It was found, however, that no other country had so far issued any report on profit-sharing and tlie report was consequently based on the result of enquiries made of individual 'firms, on the published works of private indiyiduals, and on special reports furnished by labour depart.

ments, The report is nevertheless instructive as it serves to show the position of the profit-sharing movement at the present time. Profit-sharing as defined in the Boaid of Trade's report is the existence between an employer and bis employees of an agreement to the effect that the latter shall receive in addition to their ordinary wages a share, fixed beforehand in the profits of the undertaking. When the worker accumulates his share of the profits and invests it in the business which employs him and thus becomes a shareholder, we have co-partner-ship. This definition rules out arrangements such as the much talked of one with the Ford Motor Company where the grant and the amount of the bonus is dependent on the will of the employer and may be dropped by

him at any time. In the United Kingdom in 1912 there were 133 profit-sharing Ecbomes in existence out uf 299 started since 1829, employing just over 106,000 men, the average bonus in the last ten years being 5.5 per cent. The Co - partnership Societies in Britain last year decreased slightly in number though the total trade increased by £392,000. In France the number of profit-sharing schemes actually in operation ,is between seventy and eighty. Most of these are almost co-operative aesociations such as the Maieon Leclaire (house painters and decorators) which added twenty per cent to the wages of its workpeople and staff by way of bonus in 1911. The question of State encouragement is constantly under discussion in France though no measures have yet been placed on the Statute Book. In Germany profitsharing has made little progress, most of the schemes being short.lived. At the present time there are less than thirty in operation, employing some 16,000 persons. In Holland and

i Switzerland the schemes in existence are all small. In the United States there are between' twenty-five and thirty schemes in operation, all of them of recent date, but since many of them are in connection with vast corporations the number of workmen under profit sharing conditioLs is relatively very large. For example the United States Steel Corporation allotted in 1912 over 60,000 snares to some 37,000 of its workpeople. The type of profit - sharing adopted by tho United States Steel Corporation is the issue of shares to employers on specially advantageous terms, which has not yet, however, resulted in any iuttauce of the holding by the workers of buiiicient shares to give them any ooneiderable voting power, still less to entitle them to appoint directors iu

any of the large businesses concerued. The report states that profit sharing is not regarded with any great favour iu the United States, either by business men or by economists. Trades unionism, too, strange as it may appear to some people, is, as in other countries, opposed to its growth, , the reason being that the profit sharing scheme is based on the different forms of industry and industrial distribution as they exist at present and which it is the aim of labour organisations to change. Like Socialism, profit sharing and copartnership are subjects that appear oscoHont in theory but with human nututo as it is ana the followers of labour aiming at ,iowei' houvs of woik each week it cannot bo expected to moke much greater headway in the world than it appears to be making at tho present time.