Page 357 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

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The Six Weeks^ Strike at Leicester.
that the " more correct designation of the C.W.S. would be the
Consumers' Wholesale Society" and darkly and partially conceived
it as the historical ideal and principle of co-operation that it
should " benefit working people not only in their capacity as owners
by the appropriation of profit, but (as the word co-operation
impKes) by the provision of the best conditions in regard to work
and wages for their employees." It may also be noted that the
maximum day-work figures paid to adults for the simpler kinds of
work, quoted, in condemnation of the C.W.S. , as paid by " good
class " private firms, fell below the minimum wage adopted by the
C.W.S. Quarterly Meetings of December, 1912.
We come now to an event which may be the better understood
by those who have read the previous history of the boot and shoe
works. On December 11th, 1906, as member of Parliament at that
time for Wolverhampton, Mr. T. F. Richards, who had become
general president of the Boot Operatives' Union, took the chair at
the opening of a C.W.S. exhibition in Wolverhampton. He spoke
in praise of the C.W.S. as employers:—

During his long time in Leicester he had come verj' frequently in touch with
the C.W.S., and he had always found them to be model employers. . . . He
had never known the C.W.S. refuse to grant their employees leave of absence
when required to assist in any trade dispute, and he had never known a single
C.W.S. employee in the boot trade suffer through his action. . . . If ever
there had been any trivial dispute, or his own operatives' union wanted
assistance, the C.W.S. representatives had readily met him, and matters always
had been arranged satisfactorily to all concerned.
The Leicester works were then under the same management
as in 1913; but a miHtant attitude on the part of the union was
indicated by a programme issued at the beginning of the latter
year. It asked for a 48-hour week, a national minimum wage
of 35s., and the aboHtion of female labour in four departments.
A demand arising from this programme was made upon the C.W.S.,
a demand with which we have no concern except as indicating the
temper in which some incidents of March, 1913, were received. In
that month three women workers were discharged—two at Enderby
and one at Leicester. On appeal the Leicester worker was reinstated
but meanwhile a number of girl members of the union had
tendered notices at Enderby, and a similar body had ceased work
at Leicester. Investigating the case on the spot on March 11th,
members of the C.W.S. Committee found that the w^orkers were then
out on Mr. Richards' advice, and that the girls would not be advised
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