The Politics of Workers' Participation: The Peruvian Approach in Comparative Perspective presents a comparative analysis of the development of workers' participation in a variety of politico-economic systems in Peru to other countries in the world. The text focuses on the details of workers' participation in politics and enterprise; empirical evidence substantiating that workers' participation is an issue of fundamental political conflict; and the social forces that promote and oppose workers' participation as part of a transition to a new social order. Political scientists, economists, sociologists, and students will find the book invaluable.

Drawing on his background as an economist and a specialist on the Yugoslav system of workers' self-management, Janez Prasnikar analyzes an extraordinary amount of dispersed information on the experience with workers' participation in thirteen developing countries.

An authoritative and accessible account by insiders of the tumultuous changes in the contemporary labour relations of China.

Industrial sociologists for many years have been limited almost entirely to studies of Western factories. For the Communist world they have been compelled to advance hypotheses based upon the assumption that political ideology determines the character of management-labor relations. Now for the first time, Mr. Kolaja's pioneering examination of worker participation in the management of a textile factory in Lodz, Poland, provides specific evidence for testing these theories. For eight weeks in the summer of 1957, while the liberal atmosphere of the "Polish October Revolution" of 1956 still prevailed, Mr. Kolaja observed the behavior of two work groups in the weaving department of the Lodz factory, supplementing these data by interviews and questionnaires. The workers he found for the most part eager to talk-particularly to complain-perhaps finding in this American citizen who spoke Polish with a Czechoslovak accent an outlet for repressed feelings. In general, Mr. Kolaja found, the weavers were almost untouched by the Communist ideology. The Lodz workers, like their counterparts in the West, worked for the pay envelope, blamed poor output upon technological and managerial deficiencies beyond their control, and sought to relieve the monotony of mass production by activities outside the factory. They responded little to efforts to involve them in the problems of the plant, and they considered the management people to be in a different, and opposed, class. Unwilling to abandon the doctrine that management-labor conflict does not exist in a Communist society, the Polish government had tried over the years to motivate the workers' participation in operational decisions. The latest of these attempts, coming shortly after the October political change, was the workers' council. This body, superimposed upon the existing management, labor union, and party structures in the Lodz factory, served both to stimulate some interest among a few workers and to complicate the task of the plant director, a forceful man, who had to promote the participation of workers whom he knew were unmoved by the principle of collective ownership. This he did, Mr. Kolaja observed, by reporting decisions to the workers' council as accomplished facts and asking its delegates to communicate them to their fellow laborers. The workers faced no such dilemma. They tended to accept the workers' council as yet another management organization, particularly after it had agreed to delay sharing the plant's profit. Yet one of them-denoted here as I -5 and surely the "hero" of the book-took his election to the workers' council more seriously and several times at its meetings embarrassed subordinate managers with his forthright statements. He was unable to fluster the plant director, however, who relied upon I-5's regard for his responsibilities to place him in the position of having to justify the profit sharing decision to his fellow weavers. The direction seemed clear by the time of Mr. Kolaja's departure: I-5 had been invited to join the party (no workers in the two groups studied were members), and he was about to be "coopted" by management.

Employers are increasingly recruiting their workers into politics to change elections and public policy-sometimes in coercive ways. Using a diverse array of evidence, including national surveys of workers and employers, as well as in-depth interviews with top corporate managers, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez's Politics at Work explains why mobilization of workers has become an appealing corporate political strategy in recent decades. The book also assesses the effect of employer mobilization on the political process more broadly, including its consequences for electoral contests, policy debates, and political representation. Hertel-Fernandez shows that while employer political recruitment has some benefits for American democracy-for instance, getting more workers to the polls-it also has troubling implications for our democratic system. Workers face considerable pressure to respond to their managers' political requests because of the economic power employers possess over workers. In spite of these worrisome patterns, Hertel-Fernandez found that corporate managers view the mobilization of their own workers as an important strategy for influencing politics. As he shows, companies consider mobilization of their workers to be even more effective at changing public policy than making campaign contributions or buying electoral ads. Hertel-Fernandez closes with an array of solutions that could protect workers from employer political coercion and could also win the support of majorities of Americans. By carefully examining a growing yet underappreciated political practice, Politics at Work contributes to our understanding of the changing workplace, as well as the increasing power of corporations in American politics. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the connections between inequality, public policy, and American democracy.

Comprising the study, documentation, and comparison of plant-level workers’ participation around the world, this volume meets the challenge of offering a global perspective on workers’ participation, representation, and models of social partnership. Value chains, economic life, inter-cultural exchange and knowledge, as well as the mobility of persons and ideas increasingly cross the borders of nation-states. In the knowledge age, the active participation of workers in organizations is crucially important for sustainable and long-term growth and innovation. This handbook offers lessons from historical, global accounts of workers’ participation at plant level, even as it looks forward to predict forthcoming trends in participation.

Shows that current elitist theories are based on an inadequate understanding of the early writings of democratic theory and that much sociological evidence has been ignored.

This edited volume explores the old and new “collective dimensions” of employment relations. It examines specific challenges stemming from new forms of work of the digital and sharing economy, such as measurement, monitoring, assessment, and remuneration of work, the protection of work-life balance, the impact of new technologies on health and safety, the adaptation of occupational skills to new work processes, and the responses to the digital restructuring of undertakings. It addresses a series of questions such as how the representational action of unions and works councils can adapt to the challenges posed by new production systems and whether the legislative framework needs to be reformed to ensure that digital workers enjoy the right to collective representation. This important collection offers readers a renewed theoretical perspective and justification of the role that the dialogue between workers (representatives) and companies could play in an increasingly complex world of work.