Truck system

Truck system

A truck system is an arrangement in which employees are paid in commodities or some currency substitute (referred to as scrip), rather than with standard money. This limits employees' ability to choose how to spend their earnings—generally to the benefit of the employer. As an example, scrip might be usable only for the purchase of goods at a company-owned store, where prices are set artificially high. The practice has been widely criticised as exploitative and similar in effect to slavery, and has been outlawed in many parts of the world.

While this system had long existed in many parts of the world, it became widespread in the 18th and 19th centuries, as industrialisation left many poor, unskilled workers without other means to support themselves and their families. In a prosecution brought against a Manchester cotton manufacturer in 1827 one worker gave evidence that he had received wages of only two shillings in nine months; the rest "he was obliged to take [in goods] from the manufacturer's daughter, who was also the cashier".[1]

The practice is ostensibly one of a free and legal exchange, whereby an employer offers something of value (typically goods, food or housing) in exchange for labor, with the result being the same as if the laborer had been paid money and then spent the money on those necessities. The word truck came into the English language within this context, from the French troquer, meaning to "exchange" or "barter". A truck system differs from this kind of open barter or payment in kind system by creating or taking advantage of a closed economic system in which workers have little or no opportunity to choose other work arrangements, and can easily become so indebted to their employers that they are unable to leave the system legally. The popular song "Sixteen Tons" dramatizes this scenario, with the narrator telling Saint Peter (who would welcome him to Heaven upon his death) "I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store".

Origin of the saying "I'll have no truck with that" to mean "I will have nothing to do with that system".

References

Notes
  1. ^ Aspin 1995, p. 108
Bibliography
  • Aspin, Chris (1995), The First industrial Society: Lancashire 1750–1850, Carnegie Publishing, ISBN 1-85936-016-5 

See also

References


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