Workers' Self-Management

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Workers' Self-Management (also known as self-management, labor management, autogestión, workers' control, industrial democracy and democratic management) refers to the democratic and horizontal management of a workplace. In some variants, all the worker-members manage the enterprise directly through assemblies; in other forms, workers exercise management functions indirectly through the election of specialist managers. It is a key component of libertarian socialist philosophy, particularly syndicalism.

Frequently Asked Questions

This was taken from here.

What is workers self-management?

Workers self-management is a way of running a workplace without bosses or a fixed managerial hierarchy. Instead, the workplace is run democratically by its workers. By democracy, we do not mean that workers elect a manager to make decisions for them. We mean that the workers themselves decide how they will do things as a group. No one in a self-managed enterprise has control over any of the other workers - decision making power is shared equally between all workers.

How does it work?

Each self-managed workplace is managed by a face-to-face meeting of everyone who works there – a workers’ assembly. The workers of each enterprise collectively make all "management" decisions on a basis of one-worker-one-vote or consensus. The workers of each department form their own smaller assemblies, in which they make the decisions that affect only their department, and so on to the smallest work groups.

Isn't that very time consuming?

Not really. Managers will often complain about how time consuming their jobs are, but they spend most of their time doing administrative work. Relatively little time is spent making big management decisions. However, in great factories and plants there are too many workers to gather in one meeting every day. The workplace-wide assemblies might occur once a week, or once a month instead. They are the focus of major "policy" decisions - i.e. those which the workers DECIDE are most important.

So how will work be coordinated on a daily basis?

The workers will meet in their department assemblies and work groups to make the thousands of day to day decisions that crop up. Each department sends a delegate to a "shop committee" to coordinate their activities. Delegates are not professional managers: They are ordinary workers who have been sent by their department assemblies with special instructions (mandates); they return to these assemblies to report on the discussion and its result, and after further deliberation the same or other delegates may go up with new instructions. Once the shop committee meeting is over, they return to their everyday jobs. Any compromises reached at delegate meetings are subject to ratification by the department assemblies, and delegates can be recalled and replaced at any time. Therefore the shop committee does not tell the workers what the official policy is - the workers tell them. They are not a management board, but means of communication between the different departments. Indeed, the shop committee is not even a permanent body, since different delegates will probably be chosen for each meeting, so that everyone in the workplace gets to serve this role.

Will there be managers?

No. Workers’ self-management abolishes the permanent division between managers and workers. Instead, the people who do the actual productive work – making products, designing them, maintaining machinery, collecting information and so on - will collectively manage their own work. Workers self-management means that workers literally manage themselves, and therefore there are no professional managers or managerial hierarchy – just normal workers cooperating as equals. Note that rejecting a fixed managerial hierarchy does not necessarily reject leadership. If packing luggage onto an aeroplane needs a team leader, then so be it. But there is no reason why it should be the same person today as it is tomorrow. Similarly, a book may require a chief editor, but there is no reason why that person should be in charge of all the books published. Another member of his working group might edit the next book they take on. And where a team requires a leader for a specific task, she should be elected and removable by that team, and should work within the democratic decisions made by the whole team.

But even if cleaners have full voting rights in plant decisions, how will they ever exert the same influence as those who develop budgets or design products?

You are right. Despite equal rights, cleaners' work may not challenge their intellectual capacities or provide them with information about technological options or with skill at making decisions. One approach is to rotate jobs regularly, so that engineers do some cleaning work and so on. The most unpleasant jobs could be rotated between the whole workforce, so that no one is made to spend their whole working life doing degrading tasks. However, hierarchies of power will not be wholly undone by temporary shuffling, if the quality and empowerment of peoples’ day to day jobs differ largely. Instead of dividing workers into brain workers and manual workers, it has been suggested that each worker have a “balanced job complex”*. Each worker has a set of jobs composed of comparably fulfilling responsibilities. This does not mean everyone must do everything. But it does mean that the half dozen tasks that I regularly do must be roughly as empowering as the different half dozen tasks that you do regularly. Everyone must have a comparable balance of conceptual and rote tasks. So Instead of secretaries answering phones and taking dictation, some workers answer phones and do calculations while others take dictation and design products.

We are not suggesting that everyone has completely equal abilities, although better education and less poverty would do a great deal to equalize things. We won’t all do intellectual or manual jobs equally well, but we will all do them well enough to bring our own unique experiences and insights to bear on decision making. After all, good ideas aren’t the monopoly of any individual or group. For sex or sports we don't say that only the "best" should participate - the same should be true for using one's head.

But what about relationships between workplaces?

Well, this depends on how people wish to do things. Self managed workplaces could compete in a market as capitalist workplaces do now. Others argue that workplaces should join “confederations” – free and equal associations of workplaces which replacing competition with co-operation. These would be run through conferences of delegates elected by each workplace, who come together to make decisions that effect the economy as a whole. These would be controlled from below, because delegates would be mandated and subject to instant recall by the workers who elected them. All decisions made at conferences would be subject to ratification by a vote of the workers’ assemblies in every workplace. So in fact, decisions affecting the whole economy would be made by everyone, with delegates being ambassadors rather than decision makers. In these confederations, workplaces would agree a fair price for each product, probably based on the number of hours they take to produce. Or otherwise, workplaces might make a mutual agreement to give their products away for free.

Data

• Research of self-managed enterprises in the US, Latin America and Europe found self-management had staff working 'better and smarter' with production organized more efficiently. They were also able to organize more efficiently on a larger scale and in more capital-intensive industries than conventional firms.
• One meta-study of research on self-managed enterprises found that they 'equal or exceed the productivity of conventional enterprises when employee involvement is combined with ownership.'
• During the Sydney Opera House Work-In, productivity improved by 27% during construction work as workers' self-management was experimented with, due to 'a reduction in absenteeism, abolition of demarcation among work roles, and, in general, more efficient organization of production by the workers themselves.'

Famous Examples by Country

(Note: this refers to examples of workers taking over a capitalist workplace and instituting workers' self-management. Not examples of worker cooperatives which have been set up within capitalism.)

Algeria

During the Algerian Revolution peasants and workers took control of factories, farms and offices that were abandoned, with the help of UGTA militants. Around 1,000 enterprises were placed under workers' control in 1962, with that number quickly climbing to 23,000+ in the following years. The FLN passed laws in the newly independent Algeria which partially institutionalized workers' control, creating a bureaucracy around workers' councils that centralized them. This caused massive corruption among new managers as well productivity and enthusiasm in the project to fall, leading to numerous strikes by workers in protest. Following a military coup in 1965, workers' control efforts were sabotaged by the government which began to centralize the economy in the hands of the state, denying workers control.

Following the Black Spring in 2001, limited degrees of workers' control have been practiced in the area of Kabylie, notably Barbacha.

Argentina

During the Argentinazo in 2001 and in the following years, around 200 workplaces were taken over by their workers.

Australia

Aboriginal Australia arguably practiced degrees of self-management before contact with Europeans for thousands of years around farming, construction of villages, irrigation, dams and fish traps. In Northern Queensland from 1908 to 1920, the IWW and the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union organized a degree of self-management among meat industry workers. From 1971 to 1990, Australia saw a massive wave of workers' control corresponding with strikes all over the country. Including:

• 1971: Harco Work-In
• 1972: Clutha Development Mine Work-In
• 1972: Sydney Opera House Work-In
• 1972: Whyalla Glove Factory Work-In
• 1974: Wyong Plaza Work-In
• 1975: Nymboida Mine Work-In
• 1975: Coal Cliff Work-In
• 1978: Sanyo Television Factory Work-In
• 1979: Union Carbide Work-In
• 1980: Department of Social Security Work-In
• 1990: Melbourne Tramworkers' Strike

Bosnia and Herzegovina

In 2015, workers took over the Dita detergent factory in Tulsa that was on the verge of bankruptcy, running it as a co-operative.

Brazil

Around bankrupted 70 enterprises have been taken over by about 12,000 workers since 1990 as part of the recovered factories movement, mainly in the industries of metallurgy, textiles, shoemaking, glasswork, ceramics and mining. This has been concentrated in the South and Southeast of Brazil.

Chile

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, many Chilean workers experimented with self-management within agricultural, manufacturing and transportation industries. Following a wave of strikes for land reform, higher wages and an expanded welfare state. Throughout the presidency of Salvador Allende, 35 enterprises experimented with self-management.

Czechoslovakia

Workers' control occurred during the Prague Spring, by January 1969 there were councils in about 120 enterprises, representing more than 800,000 people, or about one-sixth of the country’s workers. They were banned in May 1970 and subsequently declined.

France

The Paris Commune saw the first applications of workers' self-management to an industrial economy, with 43 enterprises being given to their workers in 1871.

Indonesia

During the Indonesian National Revolution, railway, plantation and factory workers across Java implemented workers' control from 1945 to 1946, until it was crushed by the new Indonesian Nationalist Government. In 2007, over a thousand workers in Jakarta inspired by workers' control in Argentina and Venezuela took over a textile factory in response to wage cuts, repression of a recently organized union and efforts to fire and intimidate union organizers.

Italy

During the Bienno Rosso, over two million workers and peasants (4% of the entire countries population) were occupying farmland and factories, demand it be given to the workers. Lack of support from trade unions, attacks by far-right militias and repression from the state meant the potential revolution failed.

Mexico

Since 2011, Cherán has built 3 new self-managing enterprises, a greenhouse, a sawmill and a concrete factory.

Poland

Workers' control had been practiced in Poland during the Revolution of 1905 as workers protested a lack of political freedoms and poor working conditions. Workers' control also occurred in around 100 industries in the aftermath of World War I with around 500,000 participants. Notably in the short-lived Republic of Tarnobrzeg. As World War II was ending, workers took over abandoned and damaged factories and began running them between 1944 and 1947. In the aftermath of the 1956 Poznan Protests, workers' control was partially applied in 3,300 workplaces, but the top-down nature made people lose faith in them.

Spain

During the Spanish Revolution in 1936 and 1937, All industry in Marinaleda has been under workers' self-management since 1990s. Because of this, the town has seen full employment and the lowest house prices in Spain.

Sri Lanka

Under self-management, workers were able to efficiently run the largest bus service in the world with 7,000 buses from 1958 to 1978. The ending of self-management in the industry has led to an increase in accidents, late buses and overcrowding.

Syria

Workers' control has been practiced in several cities and towns during the Syrian Civil War since 2012 as they maintain agriculture, run hospitals and maintain basic social services in the lack of a state. Workers' control is also practiced in Rojava, with around a third of all industry being placed under workers' control as of 2015.

United States

In 1919, the Seattle Uprising saw workers' control in milk deliveries, cafeterias, firefighting and laundry.

From 1968 to 1972, General Electric experimented with self-management at their plant at Lynn River Works in Masachusetts as part of their Pilot Program. The results led to immediate increases in output and machine utilisation, and a reduction on manufacturing losses. The program was terminated after it threatened the traditional authority of management and led to too much self-reliance, self-respect and self-discipline among workers.

Venezuela

Following the Bolivarian Revolution, there have been two waves of expropriations linked to workers' self-management. The first occurred between 2003 and 2005, the second from 2009 to 2010, both occurred with limited support from the state and unions. With Hugo Chavez claiming 1,100 workplaces had been put under self-management. However, heavy state involvement, a lack of autonomous worker organizing and corruption led to a strong feeling of apathy and growth of a bureaucracy. But in spite of this development, several successful cooperatives have developed from this process, drawing inspiration from figures like Anton Pannekoek and historical episodes of workers' control in Argentina and Yugoslavia.

See Also

• Anarcho-Syndicalism