Page 447 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

The Question of Superannuation.

C.W.S. employee has an equal liberty with all other co-operators.
Admittedly, this position has not existed without question.
It has
been said that C.W.S. employees should occupy no forward place
in any co-operative society or in the co-operative movement.
This
view would allow a part to the inan who is a private trader, or is
interested in some commercial venture, or is in need of employment
in some factory, or is more of a politician or a freemason or a
sectarian than a co-operator, and would refuse it to the one whose
bread depends upon the success of co-operation. However, it has
never prevailed. C.W.S. employees have held office in innumerable
co-operative societies, have spoken as delegates at C.W.S. Quarterly
Meetings, have been leaders in the Co-operative Union, and have
presided over Co-operative Congresses. In the early days C.W.S.
Committee-men came out of the boardroom to enter the service of
the Society; and, in later years, C.W.S. employees have stepped
out of the twenty thousand to a seat amongst the thirty-two. A
hireling becomes so not by receiving wages, but by having little care
in him except for the price of his hire. In so far as he is interested
in the Society that employs him, if only in its commercial advance-
ment, the C.W.S. employee becomes more than a hireling. And it
is the glory of its democracy that the Wholesale Society, through
the open door of its constituent stores, offers to every employee
an equal voice in the control of the store movement and all it
represents.

Within its Hmits, as an institution surrounded by competitors
on every side, and dealing with a human nature reacted upon by the
dominant ideas of competition in money-making, the C.W.S. thus
may claim to have improved the everyday position of the average
wage-earner of either sex within its employ. It is a claim supported
by the steady attachments of workers, the few migrations, and the
number of apphcations for employment. " During the twenty
years of the factory's working," said the Wheatsheaf in 1908,
concerning the Leeds Clothing Factory, " with the exception of one
who afterwards asked to return, no man has willingly quitted the
C.W.S. to seek another employer." " When our new shed is ready
for working," reported the manager of the same business in 1897,
" I can fill it without advertising." . . . But with relatively good
wages and conditions conceded, and a high percentage of permanent
attachments secured, there remains the question of declining years.
To meet this need the C.W.S. Committee first took action in 1887.
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