The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1917-04-06
(By Dante Barton.)

dom of workers and their control of
their own lives through collective
bargaining by trades unions are be-
ing attacked now by the so-called
"bonus system" among many en-
ployers. This insidious attack is be-
ing made right along with the other
bolder attacks on workers that is be-
ing made in the form of attempted
laws for compulsion and conscription
and to repeal the short working day.
AS the Executive Board of the
United Mine Workers of America re-
Gently said in effect, there might
be a form of giving additional pay
to workers wherein the principle of
collective bargaining through trades
unions was recognized and wherein
the additional pay was the result of
the joint action of the employees and
, the employers. But the bonus sys-
tenn as it is being worked now by
the great corporations is, in practi-
cally all cases, the exact opposite of
that. They fall within the warning
4 uttered from the altar of st. Pat
rick's Cathedral last Christmas Day
by the Reverend Father John H.
O'Rourke. eve should examine
closely these bonuses and increases
lest the great sin of defrauding the
worker of his wages go unrebuked.
A bonus to employees" he declared
subsequently to an interviewer of the
Committee on Industrial Relations,
"that is stained with the blood and
tears of women and children and un-
derpaid, overworked, and many times,
mangled men, is not even charity
Such a bonus at it's best is but a
small tithe of restitution. At it's
worst it is calculated, shrewd bust
ness investment, designed to keep
workers content with low wages; de-
signed to content them with depend
ence upon others instead of requir-
ing that which is theirs"
"Labor does not want charity, nor
pity, nor coddling," recently declared
Warren S. Stone, Grand Chief of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engi-
neers. "We want that which is due
us-a fair compensation for work
well DONE"
A bulletin (No. 2O8) just recently
issued by the Department of Labor
in Washington, discloses that the mo-
tive in most, if not all, of the bonus
and so-called profit sharing plans
investigated by the Department was
precisely what Father O'Rourke
warned against" calculated, shrewd
business investment"
The bulletin quoted one of the bo-
nus-payiny employers as follows: "It
(the bonus plan) works precisely like
an increase in wages, but is more
: valuable because the employee, in Or
der to receive his share has to wait
until the end of the distribution Pc
riOd, a fact that makes him hesitate
before quitting which would natural
ly involve the forfeiting of his share
in the profits"
What that employer meant was
that the plan was precisely unlike
and opposite to an increase in wages
which had been secured by the COL
lective action of the men themselves.
For he goes on to say that his plan
is more valuable to the employers
because it makes his worker his de-
pendent tool afraid even to quit his
job because of the little money that
may be coming to him as the result
of the employers miscalled "benevo-
lence"
And that is in line with all the
experience of that kind of overlord-
ship in the bonus systems. Other
employers have openly boasted that
when a worker is worked into a
benevolent" bonus plan or pension
plan directed and controlled by the
master, the workers whole family is
enlisted to keep him from feeling
free to demand more wages along
with ms fellow workers, and from
feeling free to quit his job for other
employment even though it is to his
direct benefit to do so. A banker for
one of the great corporations that
has fought all efforts at the union
ization of its men and that has a
bonus and pension system, told the
writer of this article that the cor
poration depended on "the old lady
at home" to see to it that the worker
>odid not leave his job or "make ugly
demands" and deprive her of the al
legged benefits of pension and bo.
muses..
No worker should overlook the
fact that the same powerful indus,