The TUC has come out in favour of workers participation, or what it calls "industrial democracy,' in a document published last month called 'Industrial Democracy, Interim Report by the TUC General Council." What forced this sudden adoption of a new policy is Britain's entry into the BEC. The new company laws being drafted in Brussels will formalise and extend to every British company employing more than 500 workers the system of workers participation already widely established on the continent. The central aspect of this system is a company supervisory board on which workers are represented and which has limited powers of veto over management decisions.
NEW BUREAUCRATS Alternatively, confidential information could be made available without damaging the company's prospects, if the worker representatives swore themselves to secrecy. But in that case, such representatives would not be subject to democratic control by the workers. This is therefore a formula for deals - sanctified by the TUC as 'collective bargaining or 'consultation' - being made behind the workers backs.
The TUC Report is in fact very vague about accoun tability. Although it is in favour of representatives on supervisory boards being elected through the unions (mainly to stave off the works councils favoured by the Tories), the representatives need not be company employees. This is a formula for creating a new layer of trade union bureaucrats who spend their time sitting on one board after another (experts). Their alleged powers over the manage ment' will be used to dampen rank and file initiatives.
INFORMATION At this year's TUC, the AUEW is calling for complete rejection of worker directors on supervisory boards, the T&G is 'opposing' the Common Market, and ACTT rejects both, de manding 'total opposition to the consolidation of the EEC. Anticipating this awkward situation, the TUC have put forward the Brussels proposals as their own, but have selected and endorsed the most apparently radical elements of the European system in an effort to sow division and divide possible opponents on the left.
Schemes for workers participation in the management of enterprises are designed to make the workers representatives carry the can for the anti-working class policies of capitalism. In times of intense class struggle, such 'integrationist" schemes are popular with the ruling class. But they also involve the conceding of certain important principles to the workers. To make such schemes credible, the ruling class has to accept the right of the workers to have access to large amounts of hitherto confidential company information and recognise their right to bargain over the central strategic decisions of the company.
Pauline Ryan The TUC has entusiastically caught hold of these principles. The main theme of the Report is the need to extend collective bargaining to "matters which are at present outside collective agreements,' and it demands the disclosure of much company information so as to make this possible. The TUC has recognised the fact that closures, mergers and takeovers represent a more serious threat than ever before to the job security of workers in Britain today, and puts forward the correct idea that workers should gain access to information about forward planning rather than having to always prepare the fight at the very last moment. The TUC distinguishes three broad types of •company information: manpower and earnings; financial information (profits, directors' fees, production costs etc.); and the all-important redeployment of labour etc. The first sort of information should be given as an 'absolute right", says the TUC. This, however, simply formalises the existing situation.
The second type of information can generally be acquired at present from piecing together material from Company House, annual accounts and company hand-outs. But this is now to be ma de the subject of an 'information agreement,' under which each individual worker will receive a glossy brochure about the firm along with his plant overalls.
STRATEGIC PLANS On the far more important question of the strategic plans of companies, the TUC make the following remark: 'While it is not impossible to en visage a role for the law in compelling employers to provide financial and forward planning information information... it is clear that enforced disclosure is hardly likely to be followed by meaningful discussions on related decisions.' The reason for stopping short of this fence gives the whole game away: "There is of course the problem of the confidentiality of certain types of information. There are two problems: first, the need to maintain the privacy of trade secrets; and, second, the need not to disclose vital financial data to competitors.
In other words, the TUC wants the unions to have information on forward planning decisions, but not sufficient information to damage the company's competitive manoeuvrability in relation to other companies. These two principles are irreconcilable.
This will mean one of several things in practice. Since the TUC has renounced the principle of forcible disclosures, companies will, by and large, only enter into 'information agreements" on the central issues in order to 'prove' to the workers the hopelessness of fighting against redundancy. Often, this will be a ruse to get the workers to sign a productivity deal. The TUC Report in fact reaffirms TUC support for productivity deals. •What information is made available, and om une watc noerar nanrwaras. we aso uma tae whole range of white groupings, from the community that considered the bringing up. of a black orphan its "Christian duty' to the lynch mob, whose oppression of the black community is a little more overt. It is perhaps in his terrifying descriptions of lynchings that Hughes excels in this collection - the complete aroltariness ortynening coming over win paruculai vividness. Unfortunately the format, the short story, does not enable Hughes to set lynching in to the they profit!
what bargaining does take place over strategic decisions will then be used to tie workers closer to the management of 'their' company, by creating the pretence that 'by working more closely together' workers and bosses can make the company a 'bigger success.' In the section on productivity deals, the Report says: "The employers' objective in productivity bargaining is to secure greater profitability.. What is sought t ... is union and worker identification with that objective. Providing the unions and workers involved do not lose sight of the broader trade union objectives (sic) this may be accepted.
In other words, the TUC is saying: "Line yourselves up with your bosses; principles are only for Sundays.' Since the principal objective of worker representatives on management boards is to advance the interests of the workers within the framework of company interests, no amount of radical proposals for a souped-up supervisory board will make a difference to the collaborationist nature of the scheme. The TUC try to obscure this essential point by tarting up the existing European schemes for supervisory boards. Instead of one-third worker representatives, it should be 50-50; it should be extended to firms with 200 employees, instead of 500 employees; etc.
But the main point around which the TUC wants to establish its radicalism is that the European systems '... do not entail any restriction of the powers of the owners of the enterprise represented in character,, Pinquean Smallcreep, has slotted a slot into a pulley for the last sixteen years and now he sets out on a trip through the factory to find out why. Anyone characters and incidents related.
We could take for instance the factory inspector... a atue old stooped man wno wore dark glasses and carried a white stick ... I saw that the old man was fumbling about with one hand trying to find the ear•piece of his hearing aid... Or the humble man wh can still, arising from the right of ownership. overrule the decisions of the other organs of the enterprises. To alter the ultimate powers of ownership of industrial shareholding is of course not possible without altering the pattern of ownership itself through political means. But a straightforward institutional extension of the powers of the Supervisory Board to be able to overrule the AGM of shareholders on the same decisions as it can override the board of management would place a stringent limit on the collective ownership rights of shareholders at their AGM.
Since, however, power over strategic decisions is only possible on the basis of information -which is only given by information agreements -this extension of power of the supervisory board is an empty victory. Furthermore, AGM's of shareholders do not take strategic decisions. To discuss such things in an open meeting of shareholders would impair company security and damage its competitive future. The power to overrule AGMs is therefore of little importance.
Neither does the TUC get very far concerning the voting procedures of supervisory boards Here there is straightforward confusion. On the one hand, the board as a whole is to have veto powers over major company decisions (page 43), yet elsewhere it says, major decisions should be 'subject to the consent or veto of worker-representatives' (page 37). A spokesman for Congress House agreed that this was "rather ambiguous."
KEY ELEMENTS To have effective controls, the working class needs three things: complete abolition of business secrecy, untimited and unrestricted veto rights, and to have these veto powers vested in mass meetings of workers. The TUC recognises the elements of workers control, but tries to tie them together within the framework of capitalist competition and without disrupting capitalist law. The result can only be workers participating in their own exploitation and compromising their own interests. At the same time, the TUC Report has raised the key issues in the debate and will introduce the question of workers' control to broader layers of workers.
Because of their apparent radicalism, many sections of the labour movement will embrace the TUC proposals in good faith. This places a particular burden of responsibility on the revolutionary left. No longer must the question of workers control be posed by the left in a purely verbal fashion. Workers control tactics must be discussed and wherever possible applied, practically and concretely, in relation to the particular problems facing the working . class movement.
Red Weekly has already discussed in detail the type of thing which needs to be done to control rising prices, for example. This would involve the creation of price commissions in each tactory and at major distribution points, with powers to investigate every aspect of the company and interview all staff, and having powers to veto any price rises. Local price committees would invigilate such a freeze and ensure against sabotage by the capitalists. But such a development would be impossible without a major clash with capitalist law, for it would represent a major invasion of private property rights. Such actions would in turn only derive legitimacy from revolutionary right and would require any government which had a policy of controlling prices to base itself on workers" organisations, rather than on Parliament.
It is unfortunate that the book holds out no hope for the future and shows no way out of the capitalist system. It is indeed ironical that the way out that Peter Brown took, that of making hand-made pottery on his own, is not only impossible for the majority of people, but relies on that majority of the population continuing to work in the very conditions that he satirises so effectively. In spite of this failure, however, this remains a book which should be read.