When we have pointed out that profit-sharing and bonus schemes introduced by so-called good employers were merely means to increase profit, effect economies, and attempts to subdue the growing unrest of the workers, we have been accused of being impossibilists, carping critics, or agitators actuated by malice. From time to time we have dealt with the boasted benevolence of the Levers’, the Cadburys, and the various co-partners, and now we have further confirmation of the correctness of our case from the profit-sharing proposals of Lloyds Bank, Ltd. Discussing these proposals, Mr. J. W. Beaumont Pease, the Chairman of Lloyds, said (Daily Chronicle), October 22, 1923;
“The directors firmly believed the scheme would improve relations between employer and employed and would be all for the good of the shareholders, the directors and the staff.”
To improve relations means, of course, to anticipate the stifling of future discontent, and the recent organisation of bank clerks may have helped the directors toward their latest decision. Further we read:
“The scheme was not likely to diminish the amount of profit available for the shareholders’ dividend, and it was quite possible it would not cost the bank anything. There was, Mr. Pease added, no question of the loyalty of the staff, but the scheme would increase the zeal with which they worked for the bank, and it would materially increase the profit. . . .With the large number employed, these economies in the aggregate would mean much.”
[From an unsigned article in the Socialist Standard, December 1923.]
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