SHORTER HOURS AND COPARTNERSHIP.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15835, 4 June 1919, Page 4

SHORTER HOURS AND COPARTNERSHIP.

Reference is made in another column to the decision of Lever Brothers, of Port Sunlight, to embark upon a six-hour working day/or their employees. In a recent publication Lord Leverhuline says that from observation and experience he concludes that six hours a day are in many industries enough for a man to work. He postulates that within the eix hours the men will do the best that is in them. Given this, he thinks that in skilled industries where highly complicated machinery is used, the change will benefit both employers and employees—the employers localise the work done in mat time will be of the highest standard both in quantity and quality; the employees because more of them will be absorbed, and because they will be able to satisfy their desire for more leisure and a less monotonous life. The result will, of course, depend on the management as much as on the men. Men must be properly selected and grouped, if they are to produce as much in six hours as in eight. They must be prepared to work in consecutive shifts, and the juniors must be prepared to give some of their leisure to that technical education which they now approach with tired and sleepy brains. Co-partnership is also in operation at Port Sunlight, and was started to give employees an interest in the business and to overcome, one at least of the objections to the wage system. Certificates are issued gratis, which entitle the holder to slightly less than the ordinary dividend, and which had a nominal value of about oue-tenth of his wage. The dividends are paid into a Savings Bank, and the holder has the option of taking them out. or of exchanging them at par for a class of deferred ordinary shares created for his benefit. The certificates have no cash value ; the shares have, although they cannot be sold outside the company, and through them many employees have accumulated some thousand pounds worth of savings. Lord Loverhulrac claims for his scheme that it is not charitable; that it gives the employee an interest not only in the profit of his business, but in its losses; and that it distinguishes between two naturally distinct things—shares in profits and shares in management. Lord Leverhulme is a highly successful man of business and a model employer. He was a grocer and the son of a grocer. He is now at the head of one of the most important industrial' undertakings in the Empire, and is the founder of Port Sunlight, which is the model of a garden city and of a system of welfare work which is the unattained idea! of other industries. His arguments gain a triple strength from his experience and his example.