Workers Control & Chomsky Speaks At Occupy Boston 10/23/11

Workers Control & Chomsky Speaks At Occupy Boston 10/23/11
October 24th, 2011 
This is mostly about workers control and various theories around it. I contend that without workplace democracy there is no real hope of bringing capitalism under control and transforming to real socialism. There is a youtube link to a talk given by Chomsky in Boston on the 23rd of October. I tend to take the position of the IWW and believe that a syndical system would work best modified by the current world economy. I have included information about the German model of including workers in management, and information about the Mondragan Co-op, as well as Kibbutzim in Israel. Enjoy reading and consider workers control as part of your demands. 

Chomsky

http://youtu.be/pbxLA2uTWuw

The one point Chomsky makes that he repeats in the course of his rambling talk is about the sit down strikes in the 1930's. He mentioned it as something that is being considered at the Occupy Boston. This is an important issue because people will not be able to establish control of the economy without workers taking control of the workplace as the ideal or at least gaining a voice in the direction of companies as is done in German companies.
Chomsky is asked about a general strike. He says that there is a long way to go from Occupying a few parks to calling a general strike, he notes that most people don't know what the Occupy movement is all about and that there needs to be an extensive information campaign to spread the facts, assuming the group has the staying power. 

Chomsky also talked about electing leaders with a recall process so that you don't end up with a new elite. I don't know if that was a critique of the consensus process or simply a comment on how to avoid leadership becoming the new bosses. 

From the blog site "At Home He is A Tourista"

Strategy and struggle: anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century by Brighton Solidarity Federation (2009)

Classical syndicalists, including many anarcho-syndicalists sought to unite the working class into revolutionary unions. Like the `One Big Unionism' of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the goal was to build industrial unions until such a point as they could declare a revolutionary general strike as the prelude to social revolution. However, unlike the IWW on the one hand, and Marxists and social democrats on the other, anarcho-syndicalists rejected the separation of economic (trade union) and political (party) struggles.

They stressed that workers themselves should unite to fight for their interests whether at the point of production or elsewhere, not leave such struggles to the specialists of political parties or union officials or still less neglect political goals such as the overthrow of capital and the state in favor of purely economic organization around wages and working hours.3 Furthermore they stressed that workers should retain control of their organizations through direct democratic means such as sovereign mass meetings and mandated, recallable delegates.

The goal of these unions – as suggested in the Rudolph Rocker quote above – was to expropriate the means of production and manage them democratically without bosses. As such, the dominant tendency saw building the union as `building the new society in the shell of the old.' The same directly democratic structures created to fight the bosses would form the basic structure of a new society once the bosses were successfully expropriated.

http://athomehesaturista.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/strategy-and-struggle-anarcho-syndicalism-in-the-21st-century-by-brighton-solidarity-federation-2009/

This is an abstract from a book examining the Worker Councils in Germany and comparing them with attempts in Great Britain. This is from a British journal of labor relations, and has the goal of increasing productivity in the workplace, not improving the lot of the workers. 

"Worker Participation and Firm Performance: Evidence from Germany and Britain
John Addison1, Stanley Siebert2, Joachim Wagner3, Xiangdong Wei4

The Freeman–Lazear works council/worker involvement model is assessed over two distinct industrial relations regimes. In non-union British establishments our measures of employee involvement are associated with improved economic performance, whereas for unionized plants negative results are detected. The suggestion is that local distributive bargaining can cause the wrong level of worker involvement to be chosen. Also consistent with the model is our finding that mandatory works councils do not impair, and may even improve, the performance of larger German establishments. Yet smaller plants with works councils under-perform, illustrating the problem of tailoring mandates to fit heterogeneous populations."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8543.00150/abstract

From Worker-Participation.eu

European Works Councils

Directive 94/45/EC, governing the establishment of European Works Councils (EWC) in multinational companies, has become much more than just another piece of EU legislation. To date in more than 820 companies an EWC has been established. After 10 years of attempts to amend the EWC directive (94/45/EC), on 6 May 2009 the European Parliament and the Council of the EU adopted a recast directive 2009/38/EC. The new directive is the outcome of an intense legislative process that took place throughout 2008. 

By applying its requirements to the most powerful and influential enterprises active in Europe and worldwide an indicator is obtained of how many of these companies inform and consult their employees. The EWC Directive, which is applicable to transnational undertakings and groups of undertakings employing in total more than 1000 employees in the EEA, and at least 150 of them in two member states, has evolved to become an important gauge of compliance with the European standards and practices shaping the European Social Model. 

The purpose of an EWC is to bring together employee representatives from the different European countries in which multinationals have operations. During EWC meetings, these representatives are informed and consulted by central management on transnational issues of concern to the company's employees. Insofar as multinational companies develop strategies and production structures across borders, the meetings represent an important opportunity for local employee representatives to establish direct communication with central management and to cooperate with their colleagues representing employees from other countries.

http://www.worker-participation.eu/European-Works-Councils

From Wikipedia article "Co-determination"

Co-determination is a practice whereby the employees have a role in management of a company. The word is a literal translation from the German word Mitbestimmung. Co-determination rights are different in different legal environments. In some countries, like the USA, the workers have virtually no role in management of companies, and in some, like Germany, their role is more important. The first serious co-determination laws began in Germany. At first there was only worker participation in management in the coal and steel industries. But in 1974, a general law was passed mandating that worker representatives hold seats on the boards of all companies employing over 500 people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination

This is an interesting essay on Workers Control and the Planned Economy written at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is from a Trotskyist perspective. 

From Planned Economy and Workers Control

"The essence of the idea of planned economy is contained in the collective struggle of the working class to exercise its control over the capitalists."

http://home.mira.net/~andy/works/econ_pap.htm

From the IWW Chicago an Anarcho-syndicalist approach. 

I.W.W Worker Self Managed Union

Democracy * Worker Self Management * Economic freedom

The Chicago I.W.W. would like to introduce an exciting opportunity and alternative shop model for cooperatives and the self employed. The I.W.W is an international union in which all decisions are made by the membership. We organize across all industries (job types) and also include unemployed, homeless, students and retirees. Our long term goal is worker self management, meaning workers running their jobs democratically instead of by owners and bosses.

http://chicagoiww.wordpress.com/chicago-i-w-w-worker-self-managed-campaign/

From School of Cooperative Individualism site

The Mondragon Co-operative Federation: A Model for our Time?
Mike Long
[Reprinted from Freedom, Winter 1996] 

The Mondragon Co-operative Federation (MCF) is a community of economically highly successful worker-owned, worker-controlled production and consumption co-operatives centred around Mondragon, a town in the Basque region of northern Spain, and now spreading throughout the Basque provinces and beyond. The MCF is an experiment in participatory economic democracy rooted in a powerful grassroots movement for Basque cultural revival and autonomy, but inclusive of non-Basques. 

The MCF began quietly on a tiny scale with one co-op and 12 workers nearly 40 years ago under the fascist Franco dictatorship. The original members were educated but poor and had to borrow money from sympathetic community members to get started. By 1994, the MCF had become the fifteenth biggest business group in Spain, comprising some 170 co-ops and over 25,000 worker members and their families, with vast assets, large financial reserves, and annual sales of around three billion US dollars.

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/long_mondragon.html

There is a lot of interest in the Mondragon model. It is cooperative and a successful enterprise. It has managed to be competative in a capitalist economy unlike say the kibutzim in Israel which have struggled in the more capitalist environment of modern Israel. 

From Kibbutzim Site

The Kibbutz Movement - Facts and figures 

At present there are 256 Kibbutzim in Israel (including 16 "religious kibbutzim"). Most of them are located in peripheral areas, from the most northern tip of the State to as far as the Deep South (Arava). Some-total of registered Kibbutz population amounts to app. 106,000 people, of whom a total of over 20,000 are children under the age of 18. One ought to notice that after almost two decades of an economic and social crisis in most sections of the Kibbutz Movement, resulting - among others- in a sharp decline of Kibbutz population, the last few years are indicating a fresh and a new trend. Many Kibbutzim report of growing numbers of youngsters – singles and families – seeking to join Kibbutzim, either as permanent members, or as non-member inhabitants. The main obstacle to a more speedy response to this potentially promising trend is lack of housing for absorption.

http://www.kibbutz.org.il/eng/