CO-PARTNERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 271, 6 February 1928, Page 11

CO-PARTNERS

GAS COMPANY SCHEME EMPLOYEES SHARE PROFITS SUCCESS FOR FIFTEEN YEARS fifteen years ago employees of the Auckland Gas Company decided to. apply for sha[es in the company. Now 270 of them hold 30.000 shares and belong to a Provident Association. Reporting to the shareholders at the annual meeting to-day, Mr. J. H. Upton, chairman of directors, said that the number of employees was now 750. “In late years it has been generally recognised that the interests of employers and employees should be harmonised,” he said, “and many attempts have been made by co-opera-tion, profit-sharing and otherwise to achieve this end. In the last 50 or 60 years not less than 500 schemes have been tried in Great Britain alone, but most of them have passed away leaving only a comparatively few bright examples of success. But no way has been found free from difficulties, and no plan that has met "with general acceptance from employers and employed. There seems to be so royal road to success; it depends ultimately on the old-fashioned virtues of industry and thrift. “Every industry Ha* its own special characteristics and no scheme for the betterment of the , workman can succeed that does not take account of that fact, and that does not receive the cordial assent of both employer and employed. “It was therefore with great pleasure in 1912, 15 years ago, that we received the proposal from a number of our workmen for the formation of an association of employees fo.r the purpose of acquiring share interest in the company. “Your directors welcomed the proposal and responded to the overtures made to them in such a manner that the Auckland Gas Workers' Provident Association came into existence. This association is entirely an employees' affair. Tho value of these shares represents the extent to which the members of the association have improved their position by saving, and I hope it has given to all a feeling of pleusure that they are our co-partners in business. “Starting with 112 members in 1912 the association is now at the beginning of its fourth five-yearly period, and their secretary informs us that its membership is now 463, so that you see ownership of the company’s shares by tho company’s employees is becoming a thing of magnitude and the end is not yet in sight.”

Mr. .T. Blackman, president of the association, expressed his thanks to the directors.