The company is the John Lewis Partnership.

The company has 27 large full-line department stores, the 223 branches of Waitrose supermarkets, an online store and some direct services.

Its products and methods are unashamedly middle class.

John Lewis's 70,000 staff share £151m bonus

The 600 staff gathered at the flagship branch on Oxford Street cheered loudly when the envelope was opened with most staff saying they were pleasantly surprised, considering how poor trading was during the early months of 2009.

Andy Street, the managing director of the group, standing in the cosmetics department among the throng of staff, said: "The reaction of everyone here speaks for itself. If you had asked everyone a year ago what they thought this year's bonus would have been you would have got a very lean set of answers."

The organization of the John Lewis Partnership is what interests me:

Wikipedia -

Every employee is a partner in the John Lewis Partnership, and has a possibility to influence the business through branch forums, which discuss local issues at every store, and the divisional John Lewis and Waitrose Councils.  Above all these is the Partnership Council, to which the partners elect at least 80% of the 82 representatives, while the chairman appoints the remaining. The councils have the power to discuss `any matter whatsoever', and are responsible for the non-commercial aspects of the business - the development of the social activities within the partnership and its charitable actions.

The Partnership Council also elects five of the directors on the partnership board (which is responsible for the commercial activities), while the chairman appoints another five. The two remaining board members are the chairman and the deputy chairman. These routes ensure that every non-management partner has an open channel for expressing his/her views to management and the chairman.

As well as this, the John Lewis Partnership publishes a weekly in-house magazine, called The Gazette. It is the oldest in-house magazine currently still being published in the UK. Each John Lewis branch also has its own weekly magazine, called The Chronicle.

The John Lewis Partnership has a very extensive programme of social activities for its partners, including two large country estates with parklands, playing fields and tennis courts; a golf club; a sailing club with five cruising yachts and two country hotels offering holiday accommodation for the partners. Partners are also enrolled in a very favourable pension scheme, receive a death in service insurance, and are given very generous holidays. In addition to this, upon completing 25 years of service for the company, partners are given a paid 6 month break.

Finally, every partner receives an Annual Bonus, which is a share of the profit. It is calculated as a percentage of the salary, with the same percentage for everyone, from top management down to the shop floor and the storage rooms. The bonus is dependent on the profitability of the partnership each year, varying between 9% and 20% of the partners' annual salaries since 2000.The Annual Partnership Bonus for 2007 was the top end 20%, this is before the recession started. The Annual Partnership Bonus for 2008 was 15% of a partner's gross earnings for the 2007/2008 financial year. The Annual Partnership Bonus for 2009 was 13% of a partner's gross earnings for the 2008/2009 financial year.

And the last quote is the most interesting...

In 1999, in response to a fall in profits, there were calls from some Partners for the business to be demutualised and floated on the stock market. If this had gone through, each Partner would have been guaranteed a windfall of up to £100,000 each, in order to compensate them for their share of the business. In the end, no one on the Partnership Council agreed with the idea and only one member spoke in favour of a referendum on the issue.

The Partnership seems in good health for a nearly 90 year old. What has stopped the concept from spreading? Or does it require a benefactor to bequeath a going concern to employees?