As one goes through the store he finds many evidences of the things that
go to upbuild that spirit. It may be only a printed sign cautioning
courtesy and cheerfulness, not merely between the store workers and its
patrons, but between the members of the Macy family, themselves. "A
smile with every package and a 'thank you' as good-bye," rings one. And
remember that other, again more cautious: "In speaking say 'we' and
'our,' not 'I' and 'mine.'" It may be the warm hand of friendship from
the member of the reception committee to the new girl that comes to work
under the Herald Square roof, or it may be any of the long-planned,
coolly devised methods of social justice to the store employee. These
last are never to be overlooked.
For instance, three months after the day that a new employee first
arrives to work at Macy's, membership in the Macy Mutual Aid
Association becomes automatic. In no small way it becomes a real part of
his job. It is the object of the M. M. A. A. to provide and maintain a
fund for the assistance of its members during sickness and of their
families or dependents in case of death. Dues in this association are
graded according to the worker's salary, consist of one per cent. of the
salary up to thirty dollars; while the sick benefits are two-thirds of
the salary, limited by a benefit of twenty dollars. The death benefits
are five times the weekly salary, with a minimum of sixty dollars and a
maximum of one hundred and fifty dollars.
It is obvious that these dues do not of themselves pay the benefits. The
house "chips in." Yet not through sympathy, but through one of the
tenets of good business as we moderns have now begun to know it.
"It would be poor business for me, indeed," said a silk manufacturer of
Connecticut to me not long ago, "to let my people become sick. I want no
germ diseases in my mills. Neither do I want the mills to cease their
continuous operation. That, too, is poor business. And so the sickness
that may cost my worker ten dollars may easily cost me twenty-five--in
the stoppage of my plant, alone."
The control of the Macy Mutual Aid Association is, moreover, vested
solely in the hands of the store employees. An itemized statement of its
receipts and its disbursements as well as its proceedings is posted each
month on the store bulletin boards and printed in _Sparks_, so that
every member of the organization may know its exact affairs. It
decidedly does not work in the dark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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