Have a look at "Insider
Efficiency and the Fallacy of Labor Market Flexibility"
by Peter B. Doeringer
http://www.kli.re.kr/iira2004/pro/papers/Doeringer_speciallecture.pdf
It deals with the question in both union and non-union contexts
comparing the US with Japan. I have also been dealing with this in the
Slovenian context and the shift from self-management to unionised
capitalist management. Indeed, there is now quite a bit of research
going on on 'flexibilization' and worker participation in decision
making, almost all, however, within the globalized capitalist market.
Paul Phillips
Louis Proyect wrote:
Walt Byars wrote:
However, it seems that alot of these analyses
have suggested that this
shows the greater efficiency, atl eastp otentially, of worker
controlled
firms. Couldn't it be countered that such firms face the same problem?
Not
so much with technique being selected to change the relative
bargaining
power of classes, but of individuals within the firm? Even if everyone
votes or participates in decision making and presumably wouldn't agree
to
choice of technique which increased someone else's power at their
expense,
couldn't it be claimed that some members might form a coalition?
The Mondragon cooperatives were packaged as an international model for
industrial restructuring at a time of worldwide economic crisis.
Understanding this economic context is a necessary step in determining
the
implications of the model for working classes. The global discourse
about
work began to shift dramatically in the mid-1970s. Fordism, with its
commitment to localism, stable work, and family wage (a reality for a
segment of the working class but only a promise for the rest) was the
dominant organizing principle of industrial capitalism in the
post-World
War II period (Aglietta 1978; Gordon, Edwards and Reich 1982; Harvey
1989).
Flexibility is now the axiom of industrial organization (Harvey 1989).
Permanent and unionized jobs are being replaced with contract and
part-time
positions, and workplaces are being redesigned with "de-bureaucratized"
managerial strategies (Grenier 1988), such as the team concept, quality
circles, and employee ownership. A correlate of these strategies is the
claim that unions and labor-management conflict are less effective in
representing workers' interests than is cooperation. Cooperation is a
new
ideology for the current phase of flexible accumulation, and Mondragon
is
the most developed example of this non-unionized, cooperative
workplace. It
may also be the most flexible. (cf. Greenwood 1992).
In situating the Mondragon cooperatives within the global economy, the
first lesson of Mondragon becomes clear. Worker-owners are not shielded
from the forces of the world market: Just-in-time production was
introduced
in Fagor Gagartza; consultants conducted efficiency studies in Fagor
Clima,
Copreci, and Garagatza, and managers in these plants increased the pace
of
production; temporary workers were hired on six-month to one-year
contracts
to do jobs that might otherwise be performed by members; and
cooperative
members were transferred between plants, allowing regular adjustments
of
the work economy. In the cooperatives, managers had more leeway to hire
temporary workers and transfer workers than did owners of local private
firms. My comparison of Fagor Clima (a cooperative) and Mayc. S.A. (a
local
private firm), in chapters 5 and 6, reveals that workers in both firms
confront the same strains of industrial production: shift work, the
assembly line, routinization of tasks, and ever-increasing
productivity.
Workplace democracy or worker ownership does not ameliorate these daily
pressures.
(From "The Myth of Mondragon: Cooperatives, Politics and Working-Class
Life in a Basque Town" by Sharryn
Kasmir; State University of New York Press.)
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