Workers Control Versus Trade Unions

Workers control of production is directly opposite of trades unionism. Trades or craft unionism attempts to secure work by limiting access to their trade or craft. Hence on a large industrial site you can not have multitasking or flexible work conditions as it would be a violation of a trades area of work.

Toyotaism created the modern form of multitasking which challenges even non-trades/craft industrial unions which still modeled themselves on the specialist does one job notion.

Toyotaism and self management models of team work orginated in the workers councils movements that arose during the Russian revolution and in Italy and Germany and later appeared in spontaneous workers revolts around the world through out the twentieth century.

Peter Drucker was one of those who recuperated this radical socialist idea for use as a modern management method. But the contradiction still occurs. When workers seize control of production, as I said here, they produce for the good of society not just shareholders. They also challenge the trades union model of production, by adapting flexible, work choices, rotational skills, and multitasking because it makes sense and it makes work easier.

This is what Zanon workers (made famous by the NFB film the Take) reported at a special meeting on Workers Control at the World Social Forum last week;

Under workers’ control, the workers’ assembly is now the maximum authority in the factory, and the workers themselves elect the ones who coordinate the work, decide upon all the in-goings and out-goings, makes decisions on employment, and so on. They also have a certain rotation in the factory so that everyone learns new abilities and knows how all the machines work, how the process of production functions, etc. Thus the productivity of the plant is being raised.

The situation they faced was that none of the three main trade union confederations in Argentina gave them any kind of support. But a key to the situation, as they explained, was the unity of the workers, not just in their own factory, but as a class. Therefore, they had gone to the other nearby factories to appeal for help and support and received a massive response.

Workers Self Management is also community self management, it means that the factory becomes a community insitution, with support from other workers and members of the communtiy where the workers live and work.

While these workers called for the nationalization of their plant, it is because we as a community have no other way of owning it under the current conditions of capitalism.

Something that even the free market libertarians understand is the limitation of capitalism as it exists today.

Tags
anarchism
socialism
unions
labour
Zanon
World Social Forum
workers councils
Libertarian
syndicalism