National Economic Goals Research Articles

Some Hidden Costs of Industrial Peace

Peaceful union-management relations may frus trate rather than forward the goals of society. Antisocial har mony ranges from outright collusion between union leaders and employers to tacit acceptance of a wage-price spiral that benefits a privileged group at the expense of the many. Un desirable or questionable forms of labor-management harmony include joint acceptance of discriminatory employment prac tices, preserving markets from outside competition, and com bined special-interest lobbying. The movement towards in creasingly refined definitions of national economic goals re quires new institutional arrangements to assure that these goals play some role in union and management decision-making.

The Workers' Councils in Poland

Following the example of the Soviet Union, a number of the so-called Iron Curtain countries which emerged in eastern Europe after World War II quickly nationalized their major industries and established systems for central economic planning. In at least two of these countries, Yugoslavia and Poland, the failure to meet national economic goals and to satisfy workers' aspirations for industrial democracy as well as a higher standard of living became identified with the high degree of bureaucratic centralism characteristic of such systems. In both countries, an alternative was sought in the establishment of Workers' Councils as a step toward decentralization of economic administration and a measure to increase the scope and importance of worker participation in management. In Poland, however, the potential of the Workers' Councils for economic reform was never fully tested, and they now have little more than formal existence. In this article, Adolf Sturmthal traces the background of this development, describes the organization and functions of the Councils, and analyzes the political factors which led to their decline. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)