Economic and Industrial Democracy

Buber's theory of community, in which the kibbutz plays a key role, is compared with the social philosophy of the kibbutz, as expressed in the writings of its members. The two concepts are found to coincide with respect to the desirability of dyadic I-Thou relationships and mutual responsibility; but Buber presents an ideal and distorted picture of the kibbutz. He ignores its members' views on the varieties of communal experience, the values of work, pioneering and their results, rejects the idea of non-religious communal experience, and ignores the elements of democracy, equality and self-realization. It is argued that, on Buber's own showing, the real kibbutz is a better model for a philosophy of community than his version.

This paper is an attempt to identify and analyse the relevant context of workers' management, the type of environment by which any scheme of democratization of decision-making in industrial organizations stands or falls. This context consists of political and economic democracy. Meeting workers' interests is one of the main goals of industrial democracy, but the concept of interest is also what makes industrial democracy closely related to the democratic political system which uses articulation of collective interests as a strategy for social regulation. I will also analyse social ownership as, in theory, the most democratic scheme of ownership distribution, and the problem of its dual role as a program for social transformation.

The mines of Asturia were controlled by a council composed of a director representing the State, certain technicians, a deputy director and secretary chosen by the Asturias mines councillor, and three workers. The director could not act without the workers' agreement, and this administration can be therefore regarded as a unique mixture of nationalization and workers' control. H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War'

In light of the recent proliferation of several types of cooperatives in the US and Western Europe, this paper argues that the worker-owners, or cooperators, in these organizations occupy an emergent class position which is structurally different from that of conventional workers or of the petty bourgeoisie, their two nearest class equivalents. We argue that this new class position has implications for the job satisfaction, expectations, alienation and stress associated with work. We bring together empirical findings from our own studies and from other researchers' studies of cooperatives in order to develop some original hypotheses and to provide suggestive evidence concerning the effects of worker-ownership and control on the individual worker-owners. In the end, we argue that although workplace democracy may bring more meaning and sense of community to work, certain structural features of cooperatives also give rise to high levels of personal stress.

The power of organized labor in the United States, measured by union representation in the labor force, political influence in Congress, and by public support for trade unions, has been in decline for two decades. During the 1980s a historic shift in political, economic and social power in favor of large corporations has altered the configuration of American society. As a result, a number of Business Administration faculties and industrial relations specialists believe that a new American industrial relations system may be emerging that will eliminate unions altogether or at least make organized labor irrelevant as an influence on the American social order. This article traces the causes and effects of the erosion of union power in the United States and suggests that no decisive gains by American workers in the direction of economic and industrial democracy can be expected in the absence of a strong labor movement. A new cooperative era of industrial relations is not at hand.

Union wage-bargaining power in Denmark is analysed for the 1970s using earnings drift between centrally bargained and firm-level earnings as the basis for a measure of bargaining power. This measure is given a justification in terms of bargaining theory. During the 1970s various forms of worker participation, which are described and analysed in the paper, were introduced in Denmark. The paper attempts to relate changes in bargaining power to these developments.

The Yugoslav economic system suffers under at least three avoidable systemic and political deficiencies. First, the plants' authority of income distribution leads to an inflationary development of incomes. Secondly, the lacking differentiation between wages and profits leads to unreasonable and demotivating differences between remunerations for same work. A system of profit participation different to basic wages would be necessary. Thirdly, the institutional basis for a reasonable macro economic policy is too weak, or rather, the influence of regional and republic authorities as well as of monopolistic plants is much too strong.