This one is about co-operative production, profit-sharing, and industrial democracy - topics which I'm going to be writing about this week:
'Is John Lewis the best company in Britain to work for?' asks John Hegley, 16 March 2010 (at the risk of becoming a Guardian mirror site!)
The article picks up on the company's Edwardian origins, which is good to see. The biggest factor in its success, though, is the bottom line. The staff care about the company, and want it to succeed because they feel part of it. But they also work hard because they're getting what is deemed to be a fair share of the profits as bonuses (a straight percentage applies across the board). And the company is successful as a result.
Though there are other factors which help it succeed, its co-operative model doesn't do any harm. One could point to the strength of the brand but, after all, there have been several other long-established, trustworthy brands that have recently gone under (Woolworths). I wouldn't be surprised to see stuff about high-wage economies finding its way into the mainstream news over the next couple of weeks either.
J. Bruce Wallace, the Christian Socialist founder of the Brotherhood Trust, would have loved to have seen it. He always believed that such systems were not just morally better, but given the chance to become established, they would always outperform exploitative capitalist enterprises in terms of revenue.
And yet, and yet. It remains to be seen whether other businesses will actually learn anything from it. Many are still highly exploitative of their workforce, giving them only the legally-required benefits and concessions, and then only begrudgingly. How can they continue to be so stupid?
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