Profit Sharing and Co-Partnership

Abstract

So far in this book the terms ‘employer’ and ‘employee’ have been used frequently, suggesting that organisations. including business firms, consist of two sides whose interests are often opposed. This becomes most apparent when collective bargaining takes place about wages and conditions of work. The employer wants a low pay increase in order to keep down his labour costs, while the employees want as high an increase as possible — and may be prepared to back their claim with a strike threat. Stanley Jevons suggested 120 years ago that we should abandon this kind of thinking, and surely it is time to follow his advice.

We only need to throw aside some old but groundless prejudices, in order to heal the discords of capital and labour, and to efface in some degree the line which now divides employer and employed. W. S. Jevons. On Industrial Partnerships, 1870