Is there a printing industry equivalent of John Lewis?
I started contemplating this while considering the fall-out between Unite and the BPIF over the national agreement. Unite is now recommending its members push for a 3.7% pay increase, in line with inflation. In your dreams, chaps. I guess the union, being the union, has to do this but it's pretty clear that few printing companies are going to be in a position to pay it. Or perhaps the conversation will go something along the lines of "Yes of course you can all have 3.7%, apart from the X people we will make redundant in order to pay for it, would you like to choose who they are?".
The split betwix the BPIF and Unite has occurred in the same timeframe that partners at the venerable institution that is John Lewis learned that their bonus this year would be 14%. Not to be sniffed at at any time, but especially impressive given the general state of the retail sector. There's an interesting (if long) article here about the partnership and its origins which is worth a read if you've a few spare minutes.
In the past I've come across a handful of print co-operatives, and I remember that way back when Burall (as was) transferred from family ownership into an ESOP (employee share ownership scheme), although this didn't stop it from being broken up. The most egalitarian set-up I'm currently aware of - reward-wise rather than ownership - is at Webmart, which has a pretty peppy, and transparent, employee bonus scheme.
On the issue of pay awards, the picture is incredibly mixed across the industry, some companies are actually doing very nicely thank-you, others are really struggling. So there can be no one size fits all solution. It really boils down to a company management issue in terms of keeping everyone in the business informed, and getting buy-in and understanding about those tough decisions.
I'm reminded of a recent example I heard about, whereby the UK subsidiary of a worldwide group managed to break even last year, despite expectations that it would make a loss. It was a painful trading period for everyone, jobs were lost and it involved a great deal of the sort of swimming through brown stuff that many of us have become familiar with. At the year-end the worker bees (but not the directors) were all awarded a small cash bonus as a mark of appreciation.
This is the sort of gesture that will surely pay dividends in terms of staff loyalty and commitment far in excess of the actual monetary value, because taking the time out to acknowledge exceptional effort has never been more important.
As to my original question about a printing industry equivalent of John Lewis, I don't think there is. But could there be?
