Abstract
Ludger Pries provides an integrated analytical framework for comparing different forms of contemporary worker participation at the plant level. Even though the twentieth century witnessed a significant growth of social rights, he argues that we are still facing great challenges regarding the implementation and extension of participative democracy at the workplace, especially since the end of the Cold War. Pries demonstrates how globalizing economies have contributed to the need to reconceptualize labor relations and for new institutions beyond the national levels. He also shows how different modes of worker participation have developed across the world, for example, on the basis of a more direct involvement through teamwork or on indirect involvement through councils. This chapter introduces a number of crucial issues, including arenas of collective bargaining, dominant actor groups, labor regulation, sources of power, shared ideology, cognitive maps, and different types of conflict resolutions. In comparing the paradigmatic examples of China and Germany, Pries refers to the structural tensions amongst the key actors in labor relations. Moreover, he compares in some detail a number of European Union (EU) member states. In his conclusion, he summarizes the opportunities as well as challenges of workers’ participation. In terms of opportunities, worker participation could help, for instance, to channel inter- and intragroup conflicts in the working area, stabilize the development of companies, and increase motivation and commitment of workers. On the other side, worker participation often challenges unions and other external collective actors by raising an intra-labor conflict on the question of who controls what. Participation at plant level also could stabilize unbalanced distribution of resources (e.g., between insiders and outsiders). Pries proposes that new dynamics and social mechanisms might help to counterbalance such challenges. For instance, new social movements or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) could function as external monitors.
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Notes
- 1.
Schmoller 1892, 241, cited according to Fürstenberg 1973, 605; translation L.P. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII had proclaimed the encyclical Rerum Novarum, underlining that all property was committed to promote general welfare and to advance common good. The principles of workers’ participation by their own associations and the need to promote social justice in economy and by property were strong elements that made the so-called Catholic Social Doctrine a strong normative basis for the idea of justice and participation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rerum_Novarum; Marx 2008). In a similar way, the Chinese philosophical tradition of Confucianism still is a strong normative framing of the idea of work ethics in general and especially the principle of ‘harmony at work’ that underlies the general idea of workers’ participation (Gardner 2016; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism). The term ‘worker’ is used in this chapter including all salaried employees and workers of a given company.
- 2.
- 3.
‘A distinction certainly holds at the theoretical level. It assumes that participation arises and operates through the idea of cooperation between the parties to achieve what tend to be shared goals. Bargaining, on the other hand, is assumed, at least in principle, to involve a conflict (or structural antithesis) of interests. This distinction, however, appears to be contradicted by the recent development of collective bargaining in many countries and by actual experiences of participation, which make the material boundaries between their respective areas of autonomy uncertain’ (Arrigo and Casale 2010, 21); for an example of supposed contradiction of teamwork and union representativeness at plant level, see, e.g. Ortiz 2002.
- 4.
‘Studies show that absence of motivation on the part of management, where no need for improvement measures is perceived, is the most common obstacle to workplace innovation. Other obstacles are lack of correct information, poor ability to promote change and the potential business risks associated with change. Workers’ fear of change is also becoming an obstacle, in particular where the workplace lacks a culture of participation’ (Kurki and Manoliu 2011, p. 7).
- 5.
For general overviews, see the congresses of the International Industrial Relations Association (IIRA) that changed its name into International Labour and Employment Relations Association (ILERA) in 2010, e.g. http://www.ilo.org/public/english/iira/congresses/index.htm; see also Kaufman 2004 and Szell 1992.
- 6.
The term ‘works council’ will be put in capitals when it refers to the specific German or Austrian system.
- 7.
See the extensive documentation of legal texts at http://www.worker-participation.eu/About-WP/Legal-texts and the scientific research on workers’ participation in the EU at http://www.worker-participation.eu/.
- 8.
See the corresponding articles at http://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations/Countries/
- 9.
For the distinction of regulative, normative, and cognitive basis of legitimacy and power, see Scott 2001.
- 10.
- 11.
In this chapter, the work China and Chinese always refers to the People’s Republic of China; for details, see also Pauls and Pries 2012 from where some parts of the following text are taken.
- 12.
For the labor law, see, for example, https://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/docs/WEBTEXT/37357/64926/E94CHN01.htm; all specific laws are accessible via corresponding Wikipedia entries.
- 13.
{21} There is, however, no such thing as private ownership established by nature, but property becomes private either through long occupancy (as in the case of those who long ago settled in unoccupied territory) or through conquest (is in the case of those who took it in war) or by due process of law, bargain, or purchase, or by allotment. On this principle the lands of Arpinum are said to belong to the Arpinates, the Tusculan lands to the Tusculans; and similar is the assignment of private property. Therefore, inasmuch as in each case some of those things which by nature had been common property became the property of individuals, each one should retain possession of that which has fallen to his lot; and if anyone appropriates to himself anything beyond that, he will be violating the laws of human society.
{22} ‘But since, as Plato has admirably expressed it, we are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims a share of our being, and our friends a share; and since, as the Stoics hold, everything that the earth produces is created for man’s use; and as men, too, are born for the sake of men, that they may be able mutually to help one another; in this direction we ought to follow Nature as our guide, to contribute to the general good by an interchange of acts of kindness, by giving and receiving, and thus by our skill, our industry, and our talents to cement human society more closely together, man to man’ (Cicero 44 BC); see also http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sozialpflichtigkeit_des_Eigentums).
- 14.
See, for example, Hohn 1988; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism
- 15.
For the hypothesis of union bureaucracies as interest and actor group operating quite independent from member interests, see, for example, Wilke and Müller 1991 for the German case; for the hypothesis of mutually win-win situations, see Trinczek in this volume and, for example, Bispinck 2005; in a general theoretical way Camfield 2012; Mandel 1975, 1992.
- 16.
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Pries, L. (2019). Workers’ Participation at Plant Level in a Comparative Perspective. In: Berger, S., Pries, L., Wannöffel, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Workers’ Participation at Plant Level. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48192-4_3
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