Worker Participation in Israel: Experience and Lessons

Abstract

This article examines the record of experience with a succession of worker participation programs in Israel over the past 50 years. Collective bargaining has been the universal form of industrial democracy, but it has been accompanied and supplemented at various times by joint productivity councils, plant councils, and joint management boards. The latter have been limited so far to enterprises owned by the General Federation of Labor in Israel, the Histadrut. Profit sharing as a form of participation is presently in the process of being instituted in that sector of the economy known as the Labor Economy. Self-management and self-government have always constituted the basic prin ciples of Kibbutz and Moshav movements as well as the cooperative enterprises. However, the introduction of industrial enterprises into the once purely agricultural Kib butz settlements has brought with it a substantial amount of hired labor, and consequently the integration of hired labor into the self-management structure has raised substan tial difficulties. Evaluation of Israeli experience must pay special attention to the problems of integrating representa tive participation with direct shop-floor participation.