Tag Archives: john lewis

How the Lib Dems can reach out to lower paid voters ignored by the Labour leadership

By Chris Key | Mon 12th December 2016 - 4:35 pm

This year’s revelations about Amazon and Sports Direct’s business practices have shown that even though we are in the year 2016 some companies still behave as if we were still in the Victorian age. As the Labour party drifts into an ocean of hard left anti-business irrelevance we in the Liberal Democrats have an opportunity to speak up for a better way forward.

In the area of low pay, many companies especially in the retail sector have taken advantage of the introduction of the living wage to chip away at other benefits. Take the example of Cafe Nero which took away the free panini from staff in response to the Living Wage.

Paying staff properly so that they do not have to take second jobs is good business sense. Making work pay reduces staff turnover and consequently recruitment costs as Costco found out in the US a few years ago.

We as a party should be calling for an expansion of the teams involved in enforcing regulations on pay and calling out companies who act in this way.

Opinion: Is a “John Lewis economy” a liberal economy?

By Chris Nicholson | Sun 22nd January 2012 - 10:50 am

Nick Clegg hit the headlines last Monday in a speech at a CentreForum/City of London event calling for a “John Lewis economy” . John Lewis is employee owned where employees get a bonus each year depending on the performance of the group. Last year this led to every employee getting an 18% bonus on their salary. But they do not hold individual shares in the company and so do not have the associated direct potential of building up substantial asset ownership .

I, along with most liberals judging by the reaction on Lib Dem Voice, warmly welcomed the substance …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged economy, employee ownership and nick clegg | 8 Comments

Employee ownership: Some thoughts from a former John Lewis partner

By Nick T | Thu 19th January 2012 - 7:27 pm

Nick Clegg’s speech on Monday was a welcome contribution to the debate about the changes we want to make to our economy following the financial crisis. That the economic boom of the decade leading up to the 2008 bust was unsustainable is a proposition that hardly needs putting, yet the broader debate about how to avoid such a situation in the future (if indeed we think it worth avoiding) is a topic that is largely undiscussed. My own view is that we need a serious discussion about how we measure economic health, because if the last few years showed …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged employee ownership and nick clegg | 6 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 12 November 2009

By Alex Foster | Thu 12th November 2009 - 7:34 am

Good morning. Today in 1990, Tim Berners Lee published a formal proposal for the world wide web. Today nearly twenty years later, here we all are. And isn’t it frightening that 1990 is nearly twenty years ago?!

2 Big Stories

Labour’s plan for ‘John Lewis’ public services

The Guardian is reporting that the Labour party are proposing mutualising public bodies – and the Guardian thinks the concept of mutualisation will be so alien to its readers that the only way of explaining it is by analogy to John Lewis.

Hospitals and schools would be transformed into John Lewis-style partnerships under radical plans that could form a central plank of Labour’s general election manifesto.

Public sector bodies, which would also include leisure centres, housing organisations and social care providers, would be allowed to take control of their own affairs if staff and users voted in favour.

Quite an amazing change of fortune from the party that has spent the last dozen years increasing Whitehall control over – well, pretty much everything.