ABSTRACT
Human resource management was an important management preoccupation at the time as companies had to recruit to grow their operations or dismiss workers to close sites. They also had to carefully fix wages as it was the company's main contribution to the quality of its employee's working life. While some of these advantages were made obligatory over time, the company also used them to retain workers. The quantitative management of workers should have been subject to a work plan but work planning was constrained by the labour market as any plans to increase production depended on the possibility of recruiting new workers. By presenting two very different strikes, one for the dismissal of workers and another against piece work, Henri Fayol concluded that strikes are called for various reasons and not only for wage increases. Non-wage benefits were common in French companies in the nineteenth century and they were spontaneously established by employers to improve worker loyalty.
