Shop Committees Research Articles

The employee representation plan movement in the United States 1913–1935: The attempted legitimation of novel organizational forms

How managers collaborate across firm boundaries to legitimate novel institutional arrangements in the eyes of the public is a topic that has attracted the interest of a wide range of researchers. This article, which is informed by this literature, explores the rise and fall of the employee representation movement in the United States. The period 1913–1935 saw intense interest on the part of American managers in the creation of non-union employee representation plans (ERPs) such as works councils and shop committees. The article uses archival and other primary sources to argue that the employee representation movement of the pre-1935 era was an attempt to legitimate big business in the eyes of a wide range of stakeholders, not just workers.

Taking Control: The Work-In Phenomenon in the Australian Metal Trades, 1969–78

During the union upsurge of the early 1970s, the “work-in” became a term to describe actions during which workers continued work in defiance of retrenchment. This article analyses the contours of the work-in phenomenon during this period as it occurred in the Australian metal trades. It is observed that the work-in was not only occasionally successful as a tactic for reversing retrenchments, but, in many cases, was expressive of an impulse among workers to challenge or subvert capitalist relations of production. The work-in phenomenon at times circulated with ideas of self-management and even worker ownership, in a tendency referred to by left-wing unionists as “workers’ control.” Shop committees were the basis of the work-in tactic, and a contest developed between the power of unionists and capitalist authority at the enterprise level, of which the work-in was indicative. The study draws on rank-and-file sources, including the Victorian metal worker journal, Link, and records of the Communist Party of Australia. These sources are used to give an overview of developments hitherto neglected in radical historiographies of the period. Work-ins and worker ownership have become resurgent features of industrial action since the global recession of 2008, giving presentist value to an analysis of the 1970s.

Organization and function of Shindo-kai at Kamaishi Ironworks during the interwar period : a case study of shop committees

Organization and function of Shindo-kai at Kamaishi Ironworks during the interwar period : a case study of shop committees

Why No Shop Committees in America: A Narrative History

This article explores the origins of the prohibition against shop committees in modern labor law. It identifies World War I as the crystallizing moment and argues that shop committees might have become a permanent feature of American industrial relations at that time but for a series of contingent events arising in particular from the great steel strike of 1919. Historians have missed this linkage, the article concludes, because in the intervening 1920s, employee representation became disassociated from industrial democracy, with the notable exception of the railroads, where blatantly antiunion use of employee representation prompted the judicial condemnation of employer domination of labor organizations that provided the doctrinal foundation for Section 8a(2) of the National Labor Relations Act.

'A Case of Mild Anarchy?': Job Committees in the Broken Hill Mines, c1930 to c1954

Job Committees, like shop committees in other industries, emerged in Broken Hill during the height of the Great Depression, thrived in the decade 1935-45, and all but vanished during the Cold War. The committees were a focal point for struggle and contestation between the various competing interest groups and ideologies vying for ascendancy in the local miners' union, the Workers Industrial Union of Australia. This study of job committees seeks to show that the dynamics of trade union behaviour are forged by a series of complex and contradictory human relationships. The processes associated with the success and eventual isolation of the job committees should not be seen as a failed attempt by the rank and file to democratise a bureaucratic leadership. Rather, they should be seen as an ongoing dialogue between various interest groups within the union whose orientations, expectations and priorities changed with the altered context of wage and employment levels, ideology, occupation, and location within the union hierarchy. In this sense job committees and their activist participants performed an intermediary role between leadership and membership.

Technology, Work, Gender and Citizenship at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops Precinct: An Historical Interpretation of Landscape, Identity and Mobilisation

Although this report relates to a project that has been funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), it builds on 16 years of intermittent interest in the Eveleigh railway workshops. My first contact with this site occurred in 1983 because of its association with ihe NSW General Strike of 1917, which was the subject of my Honours thesis. Later, during my PhD research, I focused more attention on Eveleigh because it offered a good case for investigating how scientific management was diffused in NSW prior to 1921. Why have I now decided to make these workshops the centrepiece of a major project? In part, my choice responds to the growing interest in space and place. But probably the greatest influence comes from my involvement with the conservation of Eveleigh's material heritage and the desire to draw broader attention to its cultural significance, particularly as an icon of labour history. The Eveleigh workshops were built between 1880 and 1886 and operated until 1989. During this time, the site provided employment for tens of thousands of workers, while its operations touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people mainly because it provided what Stan Jones, the Secretary of the Eveleigh Sub-Branch of the Australian Railways Union, referred to as the 'heart of the NSW Transport System'.1 Eveleigh was not, however, simply central to the State's railway infrastructure. It also had a profound impact on the labour movement. Its employees participated in the Eight Hour campaigns, provided the foot soldiers and leaders for the Labor Party and raised substantial funds for its election campaigns. According to Stan Jones, it was at Eveleigh that the Railway Shop Committee Movement had its genesis in 1926.2 Where are these workshops and what makes them significant? Located approximately four kilometres south of the Sydney General Post Office and approximately 51 hectares in size, the Eveleigh precinct is bounded by the inner city suburbs of Darlington, Redfern, Alexandria, Erskinville and Newtown, running from Redfern Station in the northeast to Erskinville and MacDonaldtown Stations

The Power of Social Collectivities: A Follow up Study

The analysis and measurement of social power, particularly that of social collectivities, continues to present difficulties to theorists and researchers alike.l In a recent attempt to resolve some of these problems,Jacobsen and Cohen2 have suggested an integration offour major theoretical approaches to the study of power, and derived from that a 'predictor measure' for assessing power relationships between social collectivities. The utility of the integrated approach was then demonstrated by the high correlations they had found between the predictor measure and the parties' stated readiness to use their potential power. But there is still a great differenceconceptually as well as empiricallybetween an expressed willingness to act and actual behaviour. This note reports a follow-up of the same organizations, that traced power events as they occurred over a fouryear period following the original study, and compared them with what had been predicted. The results are thus to be seen as an attempt to empirically validate the integrated approach suggested in the earlier article. The predictor measure for each party had been defined as the ratio of its relative resources to its relative position vis-a-vis the contended issues. Questionnaire responses from the managements and shop committee of 16 organizations in Israel constituted the data base for computing this measure. The original hypothesis was that the extent to which the predictor measure exceeds unity for a given party indicates that party's propensity to use its relative advantage in resources in order to improve its relatively low position by enacting its potential power. Conversely, the extent to which the predictor measure is below unity indicates that party's propensity to exploit its relative advantage in position unobtrusively, that is to say, not to initiate a confrontation. The raw scores in Table I, taken from the original study, would lead us to expect that the committees generally will be more willing to enact their power potential than the managements, but also that, among the managements, those with higher predictor scores will be

The Power of Social Collectivities: Towards an Integrative Conceptualization and Operationalization

By integrating some of the more persuasive elements of the major current approaches, this article develops a conceptualization of social power and a formula for predicting the enactment of power between social collectivities. The predictor measure is defined as the ratio of either party's relative resources (including specifically those pertaining to social collectivities) to its relative position uis-auis contended issues. Data from shop committees and managements of sixteen organizations in Israel support the main contention that the extent of balance or imbalance in the resources/position ratio can predict the intended enactment of potential power better than either resources or position separately.

Workers' Participation in Management: Integration versus Cooptation or Segregation

The Israeli case of the Histadrut's workers' participation scheme is assessed by the workplace elites of the plants that have introduced the program. The core element in the program is the establishment of Joint Management, composed of workers' representatives (WR) and management delegates (MD) in some dozens of industrial, craft, and construction plants of the Histadrut. Homogeneity and uniqueness versus heterogeneity and assimilation in the assessment patterns of two participant elites (WR and MD) and one nonparticipant elite shop committee (UR) were used as analytical dimensions of three possible modes of inter-elite relations concerning the participation scheme: segregation, cooptation or integration.

The Origins of Australian Workshop Organisation, 1918 to 1950

There is a long tradition of shop committee organisation in Australian industry. This paper traces the origins of workshop organisation to debates upon industrial unionism that followed the First World War and then examines subsequent developments up to 1950. While three different types of shop committee are distinguished, the article is primarily concerned with those ternied 'rank-and-file shop committees' and with the combine committees that have linked some of them. Shop committees of this kind have engaged in both industrial and political activities. In this paper it is argued that the establishment of permanent shop committees depended upon their ability to regulate industrial conditions outside the influence or interests of trade unions and the Labor Party, although the support of these parties has usually proved a condition for shop committee success. The onset of cold-war factionalism within the Australian labour movement led to the partial withdrawal of official support for shop committees. with adverse consequences upon the extent and authority of the shop committee movement. The revival of Australian workshop organisation in the 1960s depended more upon trade union patronage than the autonomous rank-and-file initiatives which had characterised the earlier movements between 1926 and 1947.

Shop Committees in the New South Wales Railways

As early as 1934 the shop committees in the New South Wales railways were beginning to acquire the characteristics of a cohesive industrial force. An important factor in their development up to this time was the disastrous effect for Labor of the general strike in 1917 in the railways. The shop com mittees did not seek to replace the existing structures of trade unionism but to coexist with them. At the same time the authority and influertce of the movement depended in part on maintaining a measure of independence from the union hierarchy. This led to an uneasy relationship between the shop committees and some trade unions which climaxed with the expulsion of the Central Council of Railway Shop Committees from "observer" status represen tation at meetings of the Sydney Trades and Labour Council.

He Will Live for A Long Time

In E. Kazakevich's novel A House on the Square [Dom na ploshchadi], a worker at the Soviet command in Germany, longing for his native land, says that even a meeting of a union shop committee would now seem to him a beautiful and exciting event.

Book Review: Labor-Management Relations: Shop Stewards and Shop Committees: A Study in Trade Unionism and Industrial Relations in Australia

Book Review: Labor-Management Relations: Shop Stewards and Shop Committees: A Study in Trade Unionism and Industrial Relations in Australia

Shop Stewards and Shop Committees: A Study in Trade Unionism and Industrial Relations in Australia.

Shop Stewards and Shop Committees: A Study in Trade Unionism and Industrial Relations in Australia.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Industrial Relatiom: What is Wrong with the System? by Allan Flanders FaberThe Art of Judgement: A Study of Policy Making by Sir Geoffrey VickersEconomic Performance Under Public Ownership: British Fuel and Power by William G. ShepherdProfessional Employees, A Study of Scientists and Engineers by Kenneth PrandyShop Stewards and Shop Committees: A Study of Trade Unionism and Industrial Relations in Australia by Orwell de R. FoenanderLabour and Politics in Peru: The System of Political Bargaining by James L. PayneRedundancy and the Railwaymen by Dorothy WedderburnPersonnel Interviewing: Theory and Practice by Felix M. LopezManpower Policy and Employment Trends. Edited by B. C. Roberts and J. H. Smith. G. Bell

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:LIMITED WAR AND AMERICAN DEFENSE POLICY. By Seymour J.ASIA IN THE MAKING OF EUROPE. Volume I (Books One and Two): The Century of Discovery. By Donald F.REVOLUTIONARY EUROPE 1783–1816. By George Rudé.VOSPOMINANIIA 0 FEVRAL'SKOI REVOLIUTSII (MEMOIRS OF THE FEBRUARY REVOLUTION), Volumes I C 11. By I. G. Tsereteli.MAGNA CARTA. By J. C. Holt.THE BRITISH POLITICAL ELITE. By W. L. Guttsman.THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDONESIA 1961‐03. By Donald Hindley.ROAD BELONG CARGO: A Study of the Cargo Movement in the Southern Madang District New Guinea. By Peter Lawrence.AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCE. By T. B. MillarTHE NORTHERN MYTH: A study of the physical and economic limits to pastoral development in Tropical Australia. By B. R. Davidson.SIMPLY HUMAN BEINGS. By E. G. Docker.QUIET DECISION: A Study of George Foster Pearce. By Peter Heydon.THE RALLYING POINT: My Story ot the New Guard. By Eric Campbell.SHOP STEWARDS AND SHOP COMMITTEES: A Study in Trades Unionism and Industrial Relations in Australia. By Orwell de R. Foenander.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this articleMARKETING The Practice of Marketing. By Douglas W. Smallbone The Environment of Marketing Behaviour — Selections from the Literature. By Robert J. Holloway and Robert S. Hancock Modern Marketing Strategy. By Edward C. Bursk and John F. Chapman A Managerial Introduction to Marketing. By Thomas A. Standt and Donald A. Taylor Basic Marketing — Concepts, Environment and Decisions. By E. W. Cundiff and R. R. Still Fundamentals of Marketing. By William J. StantonMANAGEMENT TRAINING Case Studies in Management. Edited by M. Ivens and F. Broadway Cases in Managerial Decisions. By Samuel J. Mantel Jr. Business Exercises: some developments. Edited by Andrew Life and Derek Pugh Exercises in Business Decisions. By J. N. Fairhead, D. S. Pugh and W. J. Williams The Syndicate System in Management Training. By P. A. Tobin Writers on Organization. By D. S. Pugh, D. J. Hickson and C. R. Hinings Effective Executive Practices. By Neely D. GardnerSOVIET MANAGEMENT Soviet Management. By Barry M. RichmanAIRLINE MANAGEMENT Airline Management. (Business Management in Transport — 3). By W. S. BarryBUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Business Administration and Management. By C. S. DeverellWAGE ADMINISTRATION Administration of Wages and Salaries. By Elizabeth Lanham Time‐Span Handbook. By Elliott JaquesBUSINESS SYSTEMS Real Time Business Systems. By Robert V. Head Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program. By Richard MattessichMANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION Management Controls — New Directions in Basic Research. By Charles P. Bonini, Robert K. Jaedicke, Harvey M. Wagner The Social Science of Organizations. By Harold J. Leavitt Managerial Behaviour. By Leonard SaylesINDUSTRIAL RELATIONS British Trade Unions Today. By Clive Jenkins and J. E. Mortimer Workers Councils — A Study of Workplace Organisation on both sides of the Iron Curtain. By Adolf Sturmthal Workers' Councils: The Yugoslav Experience. By Jiri Kolaja Shop Stewards and Shop Committees — A Study of Trade Unionism and Industrial Relations in Australia. By Orwell de R. Foenander Industrial Relations: What is wrong with the system? By Allan Flanders Creative Collective Bargaining. By James J. Healy (Ed.) Contributions by James A. Henderson, Edward R. Hintz, Jr., Jerry V. Jarrett, Robert G. Marbut and William J. White The Economics of Capital Utilisation. By R. Marris Management Rights and Union Interests. By Margaret K. Chandler Democratic Values and the Rights of Management. By Eli Ginzberg and Ivar E. Berg

Status of the Shop Committee as a Collective Bargaining Representative

Status of the Shop Committee as a Collective Bargaining Representative

The Shop Committee in the United States.

The Shop Committee in the United States.

The Shop Committee: A Handbook for Employer and Employee. William Leavitt Stoddard

<i>The Shop Committee: A Handbook for Employer and Employee</i>. William Leavitt Stoddard