The campaign for workers’ control in the engineering industry was part of a wider movement which developed in the second decade of this century. The purpose of this study is to examine the development of the idea of workers’ control in the engineering industry to examine in particular the conditions in the industry which led to the assertion of the idea, the several practical proposals which were put forward by the engineers, and the relation of these schemes and proposals to the general doctrines of workers’ control advocated by different socialist schools of thought at that time.
This was negative, external or ‘non-contagious’ control allowing the unions to intervene in, or even to veto, some decisions of management, but not to take any positive part in the process of management. By 194, the unions in some industries, particularly in engineering, were strong enough to secure either formal or informal recognition by employers of their right to interfere with certain managerial decisions directly affecting the interests of their members. The second category is that of so-called ‘craft control’.
In these proposals the idea was not to abolish the capitalist industrial system, but to consolidate it by attempting to create a feeling of joint responsibility and community of interests between the two sides of industry. There was a number of such experiments, particularly in the engineering industry, in the later part of the war. First, those put forward by some enlightened employers and also some non-industrial organizations, to give the workers some (usually a very small) share in the management of privately owned and controlled firms. All these proposals, however, shared a common opposition to the existing system of private ownership and control in industry.Ĭertain proposals and schemes of workers’ participation in the control of industry therefore fall outside the scope of this study. On occasion, as win be shown later, some of these latter terms were employed in order to indicate that not complete or ‘sole’ control of industry was demanded but only a share, a voice or a say in the management. Other terms have also been used, such as ‘democratic’, ‘workshop, works’, or joint control. THE term ‘workers’ control’ as used in these pages means the replacement of the capitalist industrial system by a new industrial order in which the industries of the country will be controlled (partly or completely) by associations of the workers employed in those industries. Written: as part of a PhD thesis at Nuffield College, Oxford, 1955-57 įirst Published: by Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1959 The Shop Stewards Movement and Workers Control 1910-1922 by Branko Pribicevic 1959īranko Pribićević 1959 The Shop Stewards’ Movement and
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