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THE TUC's REPORT ON INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
Britain s industrial structure badly needs shaking out. The TUC's proposals for changes in Company Law and the Statutes of Nationalised industries to allow for worker participation in previously unilateral management decision-making are certainly a step in the right direction, The TUC has recognised that while
'collective bargaining of course provides a de facto control and involvement in management decisions it has no legal foundation in company law. Moreover the scope of collective bargaining normally excludes major managerial decisions such as future investment programmes.' (Report on Industrial Democracy 1974)
In the TUC's view industrial democracy means
'... the achievement by work people collectively of a greater control over their work situation. To be relevant, schemes of industrial democracy must be seen to be effective by workers at their own place of work. Yet some of the most basic aspects of the work situation, and the security of that employment, stem from decisions taken at extremely remote levels. This applies particularly to decisions on closures, redundancies, mergers and major redeployment. It is for this reason that any policy for the extension of industrial democracy must operate, at all levels from the shop floor to the board room, and indeed, affect the process of national economic planning itself.'
While trade union strength at the shop floor and the scope of collective bargaining should certainly be extended the TUC recognises that there is ultimately no substitute for worker-representation on the policy making boards of companies Britain will continue to decline until the working class takes on responsibility for industrial production. But there can be no question of responsibility without a corresponding share in control.
Essentially, although the TUC has chosen to attack the very basis of the employers power - their right to manage - it underestimates the revolutionary implications of its proposal for 50% worker representation on the board. In the first place should the workers at any stage determine an alternative set of policies and press for them enthusiastically, the employers can ultimately have no choice but to permit their implementation. While workers retain the power and the will to withdraw their labour and are prepared to use that weapon to back up their board room representatives, parity can at any point be converted to control. All that is required is that workers and their representatives should develop the requisite economic skills to devise efficient and realistic policies which promote the interests of both the workers and society at large. Given involvement in decision-making and increasing familiarity with the wide range of information which the TUC suggests should be made freely available to employees, the workers cannot fail to develop these skills.
The potential effects of the TUC's proposals on the traditional role of trade unions as negotiating agents are also tremendous. In collective bargaining workers can only modify or reject managements proposals; they cannot suggest, and then insist on the implementation of, alternatives. Yet the TUC underplays the significance of this when it says, in its evidence to Donovan, and again in its report on industrial democracy, that:
'... a distinction needs therefore to be draw, between the negotiating function of the employer and the overall task of management. Once this distinction is established, it can be seen that it does not detract from the independence of trade unions for trade union representatives to participate in the affairs of management concerned with production until the step is reached when any of the subjects become negotiable questions as between trade unions and employers.'
In fact the development of worker representation can in practice only lead to an extension of the role of trade unions and a lessening of the importance of collective bargaining as the main expression of working class power. It leads inevitably to a decisive shift in emphasis: from negotiation to dictation, from de facto to de jure, from negative to positive control.
There is no reason why any of the matters with which workers representatives will concern themselves should ever become subjects for negotiation. The employers representatives can argue their case and that's that. The workers representatives can argue their case and back it up with strike action. All those weapons in the workers arsenal which are at present only used in support of collective bargaining can, given vigour and determination, be used to establish workers' control throughout British industry.
If that doesn't shake our doddering managers out of their cosy lethargy then nothing will.