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guid:WORKPLACE too::!is~~~ DEMOCRACY participation & self-management experiments in the United States &Europe
HARPER COLOPHON BOOKS Harper & Row, Publishers New York, Cambridge, Hagerstown, Philadelphia, San Francisco Daniel Zwerdling."------L-on_do_n,M_ex_ico_c_ity,_sa_oPa_u_lo,_Syd_ne_y_ _ ___.
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This work was originally published under the title Democracy At Work. Copyright© 1978, 1980 by Daniel Zwerdling. Introduction copyright© 1980 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53d Street, New York, N. Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto. WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY.
First HARPER COLOPHON edition published 1980. ISBN:
0-06-090733-9
80 81 82 83 84 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CON- FOREWORD TENTS PREFACE
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Vll •
XI
1 INTRODUCTION People talk about "workplace democracy," but what do they really mean? There are humanization of work projects, and labor-management committees, and worker-owned companies. There are worker self-managed enterprises too. What are the differences?
9 McCAYSVILLE INDUSTRIES Former seamstresses at a Levi bluejeans plant struggled to form their own factory. Democratic decision-making didn't work, but they've created a human workplace which cares about people.
19 GENERAL FOODS Executives designed a dog food plant so worker teams could have carefully defined freedoms and powers. Employees liked it-but now trouble is brewing.
31 RUSHTON MINING COMPANY When the United Mine Workers and management launched semiautonomous teams underground, miners said they found work more satisfying. But the union and management made mistakes, and now the project is in limbo.
41 HARMAN INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIES The United Auto Workers and management built a model experiment of worker participation on the shopfloor. Production workers, not union or management officials, are reshaping their own work environment.
53 VERMONT ASBESTOS GROUP A conglomerate aband0ned a mine, and 178 workers scraped up the money to buy it. Now the worker-owners are grappling with the difference between ownership and control.
65 THREE MORE Three short case studies confirm that workers and communities can buy closing factories, and make a profit. But at South Bend Lathe, Inc., Saratoga Knitting Mill and the Mohawk Valley Community Corporation, repeating old patterns of management is creating worker discontent.
81 COLLECTIVES Groceries, graphics firms, garages and
print shops: worker selfmanaged collectives are bringing back the neighborhood store, as a model of economic and political change in the community.
95 PLYWOOD CO-OPS Sixteen multimillion-dollar plywood factories, owned and controlled by the rank and file, prove industrial co-ops can prosper.
105 COOPERATIVA
CENTRAL
Farmworkers with little or no education own this $2 million ranch, elect the management and make major decisions in a committee of the whole. It's working, and rapidly growing, too.
117 INTERNATIONAL
GROUP PLANS
This modern insurance company has developed the most important experiment in worker self-management in North America. The system is modeled less on a business than on the U.S. Constitution.
135 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY In the AU Economics Department, the chairperson doesn't reign supreme-the department is run democratically by a council of faculty and students. Participants say education is more