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Sunday 26 January 2020

The co-opartnership scheme



THE CO-PARTNERSHIP SCHEME

'We humbly submit that if no idea was entertained by you of breaking our union a more successful scheme was never promulgated to accomplish such an unintentional result'.[1]


So said Mark Hutchins,  Chairman of the Gas Workers Union, about the profit sharing scheme set up by Livesey.  Why did George Livesey think that it would both answer his aspirations for the South Met. and at the same time destroy the Gas Workers Union?

The bonus was to be paid in exactly the same way as the shareholders' dividend under the sliding scale.  It was based on a relationship to the price of gas.  A base price was set and when the price of gas was below this the shareholders got a dividend. If the price of gas went up then the dividend went down.  So the employees received a bonus for every penny the price of gas fell. Initially there was also a 'nest egg' - that was a sum of money which they would have had had if the scheme been running for the past three years, plus interest.

The snag was that in order to get this the workers had to sign an agreement to work for the Company for twelve months at the current rate of wages. Also the nest-egg and half of the bonus could not be withdrawn for a set period – and the length of this period time was to be the subject of later discussions.  There were exceptions to these rules for deaths or other special circumstances but it – and this is the point – it was to be totally forfeit in the case of strike or 'wilful injury'.

In this way the workforce was linked into the sliding scale and gave them an incentive to help lower the price of gas.

As we have seen Livesey claimed to have thought up the whole scheme in a quarter of an hour - but he did of course have a track record of trying to bring something like this in. Back in 1882 he had said “to get the men to work heartily and thoroughly the men must have the motive of self interest'.[2] 

It is very difficult to discover how far this scheme is a replica of the one set up in 1886 for the Company Officers. This paid a bonus to officers linked to dividends but it is not clear if this was tied to the sliding scale. [3]

The scheme was announced to the men in late October or November and as many as possible were encouraged to sign agreements.  On 21st November a meeting was held in the Board Room at Old Kent Road of delegates of from those who had signed the agreements.   Representatives of the Union had been invited to attend as observers, but none came. The proceedings of the meeting were taken down verbatim and circulated later to the men.[4]


[1] Times 28th December 1889
[2] Journal of Gas Lighting 20th June 1886
[3] SMDM 7th January 1886
[4] Report of the Proceedings of an Interview

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