Cadbury's History

John Cadbury,the Cadbury's owner, came from a family that was regarded as a wealthy Quaker family, and as a Quaker in the 19th century, he was not legally allowed to pursue a traditional career. Because of that, John was left with the option of going into business. In 1824, John opened a small one-man grocery shop in Birmingham and in 1931 started the manufacturing of chocolate and cocoa drinks, partly because as a Quaker he had a temperance belief that alcohol was a major cause of poverty and other social ills, cocoa and chocolate drinks were seen as better alternatives (Mullins, 2007). The Cadbury chocolate manufacturing company was committed to good practice and high ethical standards of behavior, with a powerful dedication to the welfare and education to the workforce (Mullins, 2007).

As the original Cadbury factory started to be too small for the business, by 1879, when Richard and George, John's two sons, were in command of the business, a new site was acquired as a “part of a overall plan to extend the social welfare associated with the business” (Mullins, 2007, p. 117). As most of the existing staff lived close to the old premises, workers faced a long journey to Bournville. There was very little chance of workers finding accommodation near the works, so the firm supplied a number of bedrooms and sitting rooms in the cottages they had built adjacent to the works. By 1900, George Cadbury set up Bournville Trust with about 330 acres of land with spacious houses for workers, to fight against the poor housing conditions with very bad sanitary facilities. However, the community was not limited to Cadbury workers, and was designed to be mixed in both class and occupation (Adediji and Owoyemi, 2012).

The brothers were determined to be good employers and began to pay female workers by their piecework, even though the type of work carried out by men an women was very different. While women tended to be in the labour-intensive process, men were concentrated in the capital-intensive aspects of production (Mullins, 2007). However, there were specific regulations regarding the employment of women, who had to leave their jobs when they married. Mullins (2007) states that “marriage bars were normal practice for many employers until after the second war” and sex segregation was seen as morally important by the Cudbury's company.

The Cadburys were pioneers in employee welfare and labor relations. They were amongst the first company to introduce a “half