Workers in the boardrooms

Abstract

Mr. Wilson wants to involve the individual, as a free citizen, in the managerial and industrial decisions that affect him. Yet many trade unionists believe that works councils are a farce, that employee share-holding is a sop, and that worker-directors are nothing but a confidence trick. Who is right? Mr. Wilson has been making workers’ pariticipation an important theme in his “Edinburgh series” of speeches. At Blackpool he set out a number of specific measures—joint decision making on factory planning and production techniques; compulsory works councils; a two-tier top management structure, with workers on supervisory boards; better trade union services, and others. It is a remarkable array. But will it convert his own ranks—and, no less, the entrenched conservatism of boardrooms?