[me283]

Originally Posted by Chris T

So the altruistic (and extraordinarily successful) businessmen who built workers' villages around their factories (e.g. Port Sunlight, Wirral, or New Lanark, Lanarkshire) were acting purely out of economic self interest, with no regard whatsoever for the thought that their personal success conferred on them some greater responsibility to ensure the prosperity of the society they lived in?

Sorry, but your tawdry and somewhat selfish assessment of the nature of business and its responsibility in society is the very reason why in the past, the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Unfortunately, while Lord Leverhulme and Robert Owen were busy creating workers' paradise, too many other Victorian factory and mill owners took your view and, therefore, bear some responsibility for the very existence of the Labour movement, which culminated in the parlous state this country was in by the late 1970s. It took almost two decades in opposition to drag the Labour party back into the centre of politics and frankly, I think we should be relieved that the Party is content now to dabble at the fringes, making minor changes to holiday entitlements, and is not busily reinstating the whole raft of excessive Trade Union power that is now thankfully a thing of the past.

If you conduct your business in a vacuum, then fine, do so according to your own narrow economic self interest. But if you conduct your business within the structures of a civilised society, and therefore profit, if only indirectly, from the stability that that society brings, then you are morally compelled to recognise that by contributing to the further wellbeing and stability of that society. If you can't do that voluntarily by granting your staff a measly eight extra days of paid leave in a year, then I support the efforts of any Government that would seek to force you. And if it puts you out of business, then too bad. Next time, try starting a company with employee welfare at the heart of the business plan and not as a bolt-on.

I take it you're not an employer either? Ah, words of wisdom from yet another theorist. When you understand the economics of paying people for time they are not working, maybe you will change your opinion. Typically, companies presently pay around 20 days per annum, PLUS Bank Holidays. Some do not. Forcing them to do so would increase that financial commitment by nearly 50%.

Incidentally, some businesses build "communities" not just to be altruistic, but because it benefits the BUSINESS in many ways.