In the late nineteenth century, at the same as large corporations began to emerge as central features of industrial capitalism, parallel developments were taking place in state bureaucracies across western economies. These state bureaucracies and industrial corporations shared a common concern with long term strategies that involved, among other matters, the recruitment and retention of experienced staff. Non-wage benefits, including sick pay and pensions, were crucial elements of that strategy and, along with wages, were also useful means of encouraging employee loyalty and ensuring workplace discipline.  Understanding the nature of these non-wage benefits and the practical impact of their implementation helps deepen an awareness of how management strategies regarding the labor force and worker’s concerns intersect.

Disputes over the right to sick pay and pensions – often at the heart of industrial relations today – are nothing new. In late nineteenth-century London these issues lay at the heart of worker unrest in the Metropolitan Police. In this article we explore the significance of these issues, how they animated management strategies regarding the workforce, and the impact that changes to non-wage benefits made to the retention of experienced policemen as they approached retirement age.

For the Metropolitan Police in nineteenth-century London, high labour turnover and sickness absence were identified as crucial problems that hindered the efficient policing of the city’s streets. Attempts to address such problems, through stricter recruitment policies and closer monitoring of sickness, were paralleled by the provision of sick pay and a contributory pension. These, however, were costly to provide and the regulations governing access to such benefits, especially pensions, were a significant source of contention between the rank and file workforce and the police authorities. Disputes relating to pensions broke out in the 1870s but were not resolved at the time. Matters came to a head in 1890 following which new reforms were introduced that reduced the age at which a policeman could retire with a full pension. The promise of being able to receive a pension at an earlier age without the need to be signed off as permanently sick or incapacitated, had the paradoxical effect of reducing the amount of sickness-related early retirement as workers eked out their length of service in order to receive a full pension.

Closer attention to non-wage benefits in the management of labor, whether that be in large industrial corporations or types of state bureaucracies, is a useful lens through which to view industrial relations. For anyone who has recently been on a picket line over the very same issues – including many academics in Britain – this lesson still rings true!