WORKERS' PARTICIPATION

Workerparticipation ­reply toMartin NicolIn the last edition of the LABOUR BULLETIN, MARTINNICOL reviewed Esop's Fables, a recent pUblication fromthe Labour and Economic Research Committee (LERC).JUDY MALLER, writer of Esop's Fables, rep"'li"'es"'. _

At the outset, it should be stated that LO workers because of its style and lan-I have no disagreement with Martin guage, and because it docs not explainNieol's main argumenl, namely that why workers should participate. How-strengthening the Living Wage Cam- ever, Esop's Fables was not writtenpaign is the most important immediate with the sole aim of providing con-objective of the union movement. The crete advice to trade unions. Thekey issue is not cstablishing participa- intention was LO provide informationtive management, but rather develo- to all involved in the industrial rela-ping collective bargaining. However, tions field. This information wasmanagement has placed participative based on a survey of companies whichmanagement on the agenda. This have introduced a range of partieipa·means unions must deal with it, within tion schemes. The survey showedthe context of collective bargaining. conclusively that worker participation

Martin Nicol's criticism of Esop's in the surveyed companies is not wide-Fables can be summarised in two spread, nor meaningful in terms ofmain points. Firstly, he claims that providing workers with real decision-Esop's Fables is not written as a guide making powers. The report also

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Conrusing the issue

Nicol appears to confuse participa­tion and share ownership throughouthis article. He draws exclusively onthe Anglo American share offer to il­lustrate his rcjx:tion of share schemes.

But there aremany differentexamples of shareschemes. TheAnglo scheme ishighly specificand cannot begeneralised toexemplify allESOPs, because itinvolves the ~girt~

ofa very limitednumber of sharesto workers. It ismore common for

Agreement that Living Wage companies to ot:ferCarrpaign is most urgent priority worke~ the option

Gtaphk: COSo4 TV of buYing shareson more favour­

able tenns. The National Union ofMineworkers has not ruled out thepossibility ofowning a gold minelhrough a leveraged buyout by unionmembers according to BusiMSS Day.Thus NUM's objection to ESOPs isapparently not one of principle. butrather a question of the percentage ofshares available to workers.

Nicol links employee share owner­ship with workers being ~consulted

about certain company decisions"(p.2). In fact, Esop's Fables makes itquite clear that the ownership of asmall percentage of shares by workersdoes not entitle them to any decision­making powers. On the contrary,employee share ownership may createthe illusion of participation, but in re­ality amounts to insignificantownership with no control. Hence thetitle of the report Esop's Fables. Thisis demonstrated by the following

highlights manage­ments' deliberateattempts to bypassunions and createalternative relation­ships with workersvia participationschemes.

Nex all pubHca­tions are wriuen ina way that is ac­cessible to alllevels of the la­bour movement. oras an explicitguide for union ac­tion. nor shouldthey be. Esop'sFables is certainlynot the last word on the subject andthere will be subsequent publicationsto provide guidance to trade unionists.

Secondly. Nicol attempts to un­cover the theoretical assumptions onwhich Esop's Fables is based: this hecalls the "new road to socialism viaparticipative management" (p.91). Hegoes on to provide unions with veryconcrete advice, namely that theyshould refuse to own shares. althoughhe says nothing about how unionsshould respond to managementstrategies of participation. But re­spond they must!

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quote in the introduction to the report:".. .if share ownership meant the

collective ownership ofone or twopercent ofequity by employees, .. .itwould not involve any effcctive par­ticipation by employees in companyaffairs." (Esop's Fables p.2)

In addition. Nicol's understandingof worker participation is limited toexamples such as "worker-managers,worker-supervisors and worker-direc­tors" (PA). He has not taken intoaccount the vast range of ways inwhich workers in capitalist economieshave carved out opportunities for exer­cising greater control and decision­making in their workplaces. Full-timeshop stewards, autonomous work

Gilbey's participative managementlogo - what do such schemesreally mean for workers?

Graphic: LERe

groups, consultation forums on invest­ment dccisions, and co-determination .councils are only a few such examples.

If worker participation was limitcdto a few token worker-elected direc­tors/managers, then it should berejected, as Nicol docs, as a "'con' togel workers to work harder and resist

WORKERS' PARTICIPATION

calls to slTike action". But the issue isa lot more complex than thaL

Different strategies

Our grasp of stratcgies of workerparticipation should be based on a the-­oretical understanding of the relationsbetween capital and labour in theworkplace and beyond. Nicol, likemany other labour-affiliated intellec­tuals, contrasts worker participationwith strong shopfloor unionism andsees them as mutually exclusive. Thisresults in a "strategy of refusal" whenparticipation is placed on the negotiat­ing table.

Cressey and MacInnes, in their ar­ticle "Vo/ing for Ford" (1980) classifythis position as the "incorporationist"approach. Those who, like Nicol,adopt an "incorporationist" approachsee worker participation as a strategyemployed by capital to incorporatelabour into asystem of workplace de­cision-making where the outcome isalready loaded against the worker be­cause capilai is dominant in capitalistrelations of production. Thus, workerparticipation docs not give any effec­tive decision making powers toworkers.

This position may be contrastedwitrt what Nicol describes as my posi­tion, namely the "new-rood-to-social ism-via-participative-managc­ment" approach. Such an approachsee capilai's power in the workplacebeing progressively eroded by more ,and more worker participation untileventually labour finds itsdf in thedominant position. Thus this approach

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Both of these positions have seri­ous Jimilations. The incorporationistapproach denies the JX)ssibility of anymeaningful changes laking place atthe workplace "in the absence of a rev­olution in the relations of productionat the social level" (Cressey and Ma­cinnes, p. 6). It draws the conclusionthat there can be no meaningfulchange in the workplace while societyis dominated by capit.a.l. Only whenthere is a social revolution which over­throws capilalism, can workers expectmeaningful changes at work. This ap­proach is based on the assumption iliatcapilal's dominance in the workplaceis "essentially non-contradictoryralher than a process marked bystruggle and crisis" (ibid).

The "new road to socialism" ap­proach, as described by Nicol, has theopposite problem, namely that it ig­nores the social relations of prod­uction, which ensure the ongoing do­minance of capital, albeit in varyingforms, This argument simply equatessocialism with job control (ibid). It be­lieves mat workers can becomedominant simply through extendinglIIeir pa'rticipation in decision-makingat work, and ignores the continued_overall domination ofcapilal bom inthe workplace and in society,

Contradictions in production

. Ramer than sec capilal as all­powerful, my own theoretical positionis, in fact, mat the capitalist labour

Apri/1989

process is internally contradictory, AsCressey and MacInnes argue, thelabour process under capitalism has adual nalure; not only does capital em­ploy labour 10 create exchange values(commodities), but labour also "em­ploys" eapital by utilising themachinery and equipment and therebycreating usc values (ibid), althoughclearly capital retains ownership ofthe end product. In "giving over" tolabour the use of the means of produc­tion, capital must ensure aco-operative relationship betweenlIIem to maximise the social productiv­ity of labour. This means practicallythat it is not necessarily in capital's in­terests to control labour throughcoercion and the domination of lcch­nology, Instead, capital may create anexible working environment to en­courage workers 10 use their ownbrainpower and creativity. This mightin tum raise levels of social productiv­ity by increasing production.

A site of struggle

This strategy provides labour withan equivalent contradiction. On meone hand, labour resists its subordina­tion to capital. On the Olher hand,labour also has an interest in maintain­ing the viability of the unit of capital(the company) which is the employer.It is only by selling their labour power10 that employer that they can work. IflIIe company goes bankrupt, theworkers will have no jobs. Labour'sinterests arc however not 10 make aunit viable simply in the interests ofprofitability, but to increase wages or

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WORKERS' PARTlCIPA110N

the production relationssurrounding if' (Ibid). Inothcr words, it is not justthc employer who deter­mincs the way work isorganised or the condi­tions of work. Byengaging in struggles - in­cluding the struggle forincreased participation ­workers too can shape theorganisation and condi­tions of work.

Any adequate unionstrategy must go beyondeither simple refusal orblanket support for allfonns of participation.We need to take advant­age of capital'scontradictory needs in theworkplace so as to benefitworkers. Participationmay open up space for or­ganised struggles tochange the way work isdone. It may also providea vision of how workcould be organised differ­enLly in a transfonnedsociety. Attempts to as­sert some control ovcr the

Participation - a site of struggle process of "joint creation"_______________CP"ho"IO~."·A="ea",pix may also change the very

structures of participationimprove working conditions. and widen their impact at the work-

The contradictory nature of the la- place. Not only could workers benefitbour process under capitalism materially from this approach in tennstherefore makes it a "joint creation. . . of greater earnings, an improved work-determined by the outeome of various ing environment and greater jobstruggles betwccn labour and capital control; it could also facilitate the cs·about the fonn of both tcchnology and tablishment of new structures of

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worker participation, which whencoupled with fundamental socialchange beyond the workplace, couldtransform the social relations or pr0­

duction. Il should be emphasised thatthis transformation is a process whichinvolves acquiring skills and buildingadequate structures. It is import.'lntthat this process begins as soon aspossible.

Productivity canbenefit workers

Both ·participation· and ·produc­tivity· are more ambiguous conceptsthan Nicol allows for. He says that:·'Productivity' is a word used by man­agers which means PROFIT whilesounding like something useful forworkers: (PA)

This is a simplification which canbe very inaccurnte, not to mention mis­leading. We return again to thedistinction between use-value and ex­change-value. Burawoy (1985) showsthat in lcrms of exchange-value, gainsfor capital are losses for labour - andvice versa. This underlies the conflictinherent in the labour process undercapilalism.

But ita terms of use value, this zero­sum equation no looger applies.Productivity increases can benefit wor­kers. An increase in productivity canmean that more goods are produced atthe same cost, so prices go down. Bu­rawey maintains that workers do notunderstand their world at the level of

•exchange values, but rather in termsof the actual commodities they canbuy with their wages (ibid). In this

Apri/1989

way, higher productivity levels canbenefit both capital (more profits) andlaOOur (their money can buy moregoods).

This pots into context the one legit­imate criticism that Nicol has ofEsop's Fables, namely that the advant­ages of participation to workers arenot made clear. In defending thisomission, it may be said that it is diffi­cult to outline the benefits in a generalway precisely because some panicipa­lion schemes (including the greatmajority of South African cases) donot generate genuine benefits for wor­kers and are designed to minimiseconfrontation through a process ofco-option.

Depends on union response

However, there arc some participa­tion schemes that do provide workerswith greater job control, greater earn­ings derived from higher productivity,and more satisfying jobs. But the ex­tent and nature of these benefitsdepends on the process of 'joint cre­ation' - how labour responds andmoulds these schemes to advancetheir own interests, and expands themto challenge the nature or work and itsporpose. The crucial point is notwhether participation schemes de­ceive worken, but rather how workenrespond_

It is important to note that, despiteNicol's claim that Esop's Fables runsagainst the trend of refusal adopted bythe union movement, COSATIlpolicy on disinvestment favours col­lective ownership where company

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shares are held in trust for the benefitof the community. In addition someaffiliate unions have responded withinsight and creativity 10 participationinitiatives introduced by managementCOSAru unions have correctly re­jected the extremely limited ESOPson offer. but this docs not mean lhatthey have rejected the project of wor­kers participation as a whole.

NUMSA, for example, has enteredinto agreements or relations of c0­

operation with a number ofemployerswhere this is to the advantage of itsmembers. For example, Samcor wor·kers accepted a 24% shareholding intheir company accompanied bypossible representation on the board.

In the case of Volkswagen, worlcerparticipation has possibly gone furtherthan in any other company, with fullLime shop stewards beginning to par­ticipate in joint decision-making onSlrategic issues.

Citing these examples does notmean advocating any particular modelof participation for South African wor­kers. It does mean that greater jobControl and a greater say in the organi­sation of production and companyfinance docs have relevance. althoughit falls far short of what many advo­Cates of workers' control would want.

The fact that many union members

WORKERS' PARTICIPATION

have accepted Anglo American sharesdemonstrates the inadequacy of theMstrntegy of refusal M

• TIle fac:tlhatSamcor workers demanded individualremission ofdividend payments dcm­OfISU3tes the complexity of theproblem. Nooctheless, it docs requireunions to -take greater risks than theyare currently willing 10 do- in boUt theshort and long tenn interests of theirmembers.

The aim of this contribution is 10

point 10 the eX!ent to which the partici­pative strntegy of capilai can havecontrndiclOry implications. It presentsa challenge to the labour movement togo beyond the ·suategy of refusal-. 'Ct

References

M. Bunwoy, 1985: Tu Poljl~1c{ProdUCfit!ft,

v~.

P. CR:ucy and J. Madnnet, 1980: "V<>I;"I!or

Fotrr in CDpiuJ/ flIldClilU, No II.l. Maller, 1988: Esop', Ftlblu, LERC.

M. NiQOl, 1989: "'Prorn«inl p-Jtic:ip-lion inESOPJ" in SAUJ, VoIIJ No 8, Feb 1989

Apology

A misleading subheading ap­p~red in Nicol's review orMaller's book (lAbour Bullelin,Vol 13.8, Feb 1989, p 98). Itstated that the book supportsESOPs. The book does not sup·port ESOPs, nor did Nicol'sreview claim thai it does. Weapologise to both wrilers ror anyinconvenience caused by thiserror.

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