The growth of fringe benefit provision

Social scientists interested in labour costs, the labour market, the distribution of income, class structure, social policy, the sociology of work and organisations have all had some view of fringe benefits. This is the first attempt to offer a sociological study of the causes of the growth and distribution of benefits, and their role in the labour market, the employing organisation and the class structure. It offers (a) a systematic - and so far as the available data permit - comprehensive, survey of the fringe benefits provided to employees at all levels of the enterprise in the private sector since 1945 (b) a sociological interpretation of these provisions and of such changes as are overtaking, them, (c) consideration of what wider significance, if any, the inquiry has for an advanced industrial society like our own.In Chapter 1 approaches by social scientists to fringe benefit provision are considered and a definition of benefits developed. Chapter 2 develops a theoretical framework stressing the importance of both structure and action. Chapter 3 links the ideas of Chapter 2 with the empirical material in the main body of the thesis.Chapter 4 describes the growth of benefits in Britain since the war, while Chapters 5, 6 and 7 consider their distribution by occupation, size of company and industry.In Chapter 8 the ideologies and practices of employers regarding benefit provision are examined. Chapter 9 considers ideologies and practices of trade unions and the TUG while Chapter 10 investigates how Government action has affected benefit provision, Chapter 11 analyses the responses of employees to benefits.The main conclusions are:(i) benefit provision has grown differentially since the war mainly because of different benefit policies adopted by employers towards manual workers, routine white collar workers and managers. In this employers have been influenced by a number of factors including Government, and less so trade unions, size of company and industry.(ii) on the basis of inadequate data it is hypothesised that benefits rarely increase the integration of the manual worker, are not very important to the routine white collar worker, but are often financially valuable to the senior manager.(iii) It is hypothesised that benefits have had little effect on freedom of choice, done little to increase social order and integration in the firm, but have undermined redistributional measures taken by Governments, and influenced the principles on which social policy is based.