Truck system

A truck system is an arrangement in which employees are paid in commodities or some currency substitute (such as vouchers or token coins, called in some dialects scrip or ) rather than with standard currency. This limits employees' ability to choose how to spend their earnings—generally to the benefit of the employer. As an example, company 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 criticized as exploitative because there is no competition to lower prices. Legislation to curtail it, part of the larger field of labour law and employment standards, exists in many countries (for example, the British Truck Acts).

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 , 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.

While this system had long existed in many parts of the world, it was widespread during the 18th and early-19th centuries in Britain. Despite a long history of legislation intended to curb truck systems (Truck Acts), they remained common into the 20th century. 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".

In Britain the truck system was sometimes referred to as the Tommy system. The 1901 edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable notes the Tommy shop as:

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