Work Place Democracy and Quality of Work Life: Problems and Prospects

Abstract

The concept of increasing the participation of workers in decisions affecting their work lives is appearing more often on the labor-management agenda. The reasons for management interest include the need for (1) increasing productivity and quality; (2) increasing the quality of work life for the new worker, who is more educated, with a good work ethic but alienated and unmotivated under current management practice; and (3) meeting foreign competition. Problems may arise for firms involved in forms of participation such as quality circles and quality of work life programs, when management aims of a streamlined work force and control of worker innovations clash with the workers' expectations of work place democracy inherent in such programs. A dilemma is posed for unions when the new forms of participation undermine the union, or maintain or create so-called union-free environments. Many unions are now playing a more active role in these programs. More aggressive approaches to bargaining on work environment and other issues reflect movement by some unions to a more proactive philosophy of the union's role in participation-enhancing strategies.

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References

1. Carole Pateman , Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1970).

2. See P. S. Goodman , “Quality of Work Projects in the 1980s,” in Proceedings of the Thirty-third Annual Meeting of the Industrial Relations Research Association (Madison, WI: IRRA, 1981), pp. 489-491; he found that a large percentage of quality circle programs did not last beyond five years.

3. Quality circles and quality of work life groups are volunteer groups of usually 7-12 employees who identify and work on solutions to problems in the way their work is done. QWLs tend to have a more open agenda than QCs. A more advanced form of participation is involved in autonomous or semi-autonomous work groups that take responsibility for many aspects of the work station traditionally reserved for supervision, often including designing the work, pay, and hiring and teaching new employees.

4. People and Productivity: A Challenge to Corporate America (New York: New York Stock Exchange, 1982), pp. 26, 27, 50.

5. Basil J. Whiting , “QWL: All or Nothing at All...?” (Discussion draft, Michigan Quality of Work Life Council, Troy, MI, 1983).

6. Daniel Yankelovich and John Immerwahr , Putting the Work Ethic to Work (New York: Public Agenda Foundation, 1983), pp. 5, 6.

7. Larry Hirschhorn , “The Soul of a New Worker,” Working Papers, pp. 42-47 (Jan.-Feb. 1982); for his more elaborate analysis of the future world of work and its implications, see “The Post-Industrial Labor Process,” New Political Science, no. 7, pp. 11-31, (Fall 1981).

8. Tom De Vos , U.S. Multinationals and Worker Participation in Management: The American Experience in the European Community (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1981).

9. Charles Derber and William Schwartz , “Toward a Theory of Worker Participation,” Sociological Inquiry, 53(1):61-76 (Winter 1983).

10.

10. Steven Deutsch , “Extending Workplace Democracy: Struggles to Come in Job Safety and Health,” Labor Studies Journal, 6(1):124-132(1981).

11.

11. Speech delivered at Wayne State University, Nov. 1983.

12.

12. Speech delivered at the University of Michigan, 5 Dec. 1983.