Workers' self-management
Worker Self-Management is a form of workplace decision-making in which the employees themselves agree on choices (for issues like customer care, general production methods, scheduling, division of labour etc.) instead of the traditional authoritative supervisor telling workers what to do, how to do it and where to do it.
Also known as
autogestion, workers' self-management is often the decision-making model used in co-operative economic arrangements such as
worker cooperatives,
workers' councils, and in
participatory economics, and similar arrangements where the workplace operates without a boss.
Critics argue that consulting all employees for every tiny issue is time consuming, inefficient and thus ineffective. However, as seen real world examples only large-scale decisions are made by all employees during a council meeting.
Autogestion was first theorized by
Joseph Proudhon during the first part of the 19th century. It then became a primary component of
trade unions organizations, in particular concerning
revolutionary syndicalism. French trade-union
CFDT (
"Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail") included worker self-management in its
1970 program, before abandoning it afterward. The ideas of workers' self-management are still famously advanced by the
IWW.
Josip Broz Tito's
Yugoslavia claimed during the
Cold War to choose a
socialist autogestion way, which led to his break with
Moscow.
In
France, between
1970 and
1973,
Lip, a clockwork factory based in
Besançon, was self-managed after an attempt by share-holders to close it down.
CFDT trade-unionist Charles Piaget led the strike allowing workers to claim back the
means of production. The
Unified Socialist Party (PSU), which included former
Radical Pierre Mendès-France, was in favour of
autogestion or self-management.
In
October 2005 the first
Encuentro Latinoamericano de Empresas Recuperadas ("Latin American Encounter of Recovered Companies") took place in
Caracas, Venezuela, with representatives of 263 such companies from different countries living similar economical and social situations. The meeting had, as its main outcome, the
Compromiso de Caracas (Caracas' Commitment); a vindicating text of the movement.
Argentina
Throughout the 1990s in
Argentina's southern province of
Neuquén, drastic economic and political events occurred where the citizens ultimately rose up. Although the first shift occurred in a single factory, bosses were progressively fired throughout the province so that by 2005 the workers controlled everything. Documenting the most recent economic and political situation in Neuquen, Yeidy Rosa has written
an article detailing the complextities of worker self management and how it came to be in Argentina.
In the wake of the
2001 economic crisis, about 200 Argentine companies were "recovered" by their workers and turned into co-operatives. Prominent examples include the
Brukman factory, the
Hotel Bauen and
FaSinPat (formerly known as Zanon). As of 2005, about 15,000 Argentine workers run recovered factories.
*
Anarcho-syndicalism*
Ceylon Transport Board*
Co-operatives*
Direct democracy*
Recovered factories*
Unified Socialist Party (France)*
Workplace democracy* 1870
Paris Commune*
Self-management and Requirements for Social Property: Lessons from Yugoslavia by Diane Flaherty*
Worker self-management in historical perspective by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer*
Yugoslavia: Trouble in the Halfway House by Melvin D. Barger* The
Mondragón Corporation, probably the world's largest self-managed enterprise
*
Industrial Workers of the World
