ABSTRACT
workpeople almost inevitably share in the prosperity of the undertaking in which they are employed. If it is doing well, their earnings are likely to be higher, their employment more stable, and their working conditions and amenities better than if it is doing badly. In this sense, they share in its profits. Usually, however, profit-sharing is understood to be a distribution to workpeople, in addition to their wages, of a part of the amount which otherwise would have gone wholly to the owners of the capital. In a rudimentary form profits are shared if, at the end of a good year, an employer in a generous mood decides to pay to his workpeople from profits a cash bonus in addition to their regular wages, but without committing himself to such payments in the future. He might instead have increased wages, but it would be more difficult to reduce them than withhold a bonus if prosperity declined.
