Looking Forward. By Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel

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  7. Workplace Decision Making

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Third Planning Iteration

 

After Nancy and everyone else submit second proposals, lFBs again adjust indicative prices, update their own projections, send relevant summary reports to all units, and store all this information in the planning data bank. The new wrinkle is that in addition to industry IFB reports on industry proposals and averages, there are also industry IFB projections for likely final industry plans, as well as suggestions to member units regarding how they might best move toward these likely final outcomes. In instances where a unit diverges dramatically from industry averages, discussions may commence between that plant's board and lFBs to explore the reasons for the differences.

 

In going over new data and considering how to alter proposals for goods in over-demand or, less often, over-supply, in line with the hypothetical rules used as an example in chapters 5 and 6, and since labor reallocations to and from Northstart are already largely settled, Nancy can now only alter her proposals for particular items that Northstart would use or produce by less than 50 percent if she wants to move them in the direction that equilibrates supply and demand, and by less than 25 percent if her proposed change is disequilibrating. And this rule applies as well for developing proposals numbers four through six, discussed below.

 

Preparing her third proposal, however, also involves Nancy in many more discussions with work mates. While each Northstart worker still makes his or her own proposals for all of Northstart, unlike in earlier rounds they incorporate modifications arising from collective discussion. Thus, one day of meetings in work groups and departments is set aside for discussions of proposals. Like many other details in this discussion, the rules for changing proposals for each new iteration and for carrying out planning within workplaces seem reasonable to us (particularly in societies in which there is considerable friction moving resources from one use to another), but still, these are only possible choices included to describe one plausible implementation.

 

The Fourth,  Fifth, and Sixth Planning Iterations

 

Now, Nancy and her coworkers confront a new challenge: Their fourth proposals will be made not separately but together. The different ideas of Northstart workers must finally be combined into one consistent Northstart proposal. It isn't necessary for each individual's role in the proposal to be spelled out since assignments are irrelevant to the rest of the economy. But workers' councils proposals do need to be implementable. So, although the same limitations on adjustments apply as for the third proposal, now they apply to the single, new Northstart proposal.

 

The formulation of the fourth proposal requires various sessions held intermittently over a full week, though it is certainly not full-time work so that other work also continues. Mainly, a week allows sufficient time for thinking before plant members choose a new proposal.

 

First the smallest work groups meet and members compare their individual proposals hoping to accommodate them with one another. These meetings serve primarily as a warm-up for more important department and area meetings to come.

 

Here's how it might work. Nancy has a small group meeting on Monday of "fourth-proposal week." On Tuesday she meets with the editorial department to talk about numbers of titles and readership to try to reach agreement on these matters. On Wednesday, she has a similar meeting with the promotion department, the site of her non-editorial, non-production work. Throughout Northstart, others hold similar meetings, and the Northstart lFB summarizes and distributes each day's results. Monday's meeting is limited to an hour. But those on Tuesday and Wednesday run for an hour and a half in the early morning and then for another hour and a half near the end of the day. In its meeting, Nancy's editorial group begins by listing the number of new Northstart titles each member prefers to undertake, the readership they anticipate, and the mix of different kinds of titles they desire. Debate commences regarding the difference between initial averages of proposals and current consumer demands and projected industry averages. Since each editorial group meets separately, the Northstart IFB reports each group's results as well as an average for them all. The following day Nancy's promotion group starts with the overall average as a premise and suggests its own adaptations in light of promotion needs and potentials. Because all departments do this on Wednesday, there emerges a new average to be considered Thursday. Finally, a council meeting all day Friday functions somewhat like a senate, considering amendments to the average from the floor as a means of developing competing alternatives, and finally voting for one proposal as Northstart's proposal for the fourth iteration.

 

One important feature of this process would be an effort to accommodate competing perspectives in the form of compromises or experiments. This would allow minorities to present practical evidence of the virtues of their position. The fifth and sixth iterations would proceed like the fourth, but with each taking much less time and incorporating tighter limits on the allowed percentage changes in inputs and outputs. And, of course, for each new proposal there would be new information about the status of goods, average outputs, and indicative prices, all of which would provide pressures to move toward a feasible plan.

 

The Seventh Planning Iteration

 

After receiving the sixth proposals from production and consumption units, industry and national IFBs have a new task: they must consider available data and offer five feasible plans for society to choose among. Since we will discuss IFBs more when we focus on the intricacies of allocation in chapter 9, here we simply assume they do their task well and present society with five proposals. But we should mention that IFB worksheets and minutes of their meetings are available to anyone through computer access. This is to provide units with more information, should they want it, and also to guard against potential IFB manipulation.

 

Obviously, the choice of five plans-like many other details of the process we are describing--could be varied without changing the underlying logic of participatory planning There could be fewer individual iterations or more collective ones, or limitations on adjustments or submission of council-wide rather than individual proposals could begin earlier or later, and, in a real society such refinements would evolve in accord with particular economic, cultural, and social histories, since once citizens agree that participatory planning has potential, they will modify the system to suit themselves.

 

In any event, in our hypothetical scenario, after a period for discussion and thought, everyone would vote for one of the five proposed plans. The votes would be tallied in each council, submitted to higher level federations as sublevel totals and tallied again, and so on until final results were available-likely within a couple of hours. The two proposals that receive least votes in the first ballot are dropped. IFBs amend the remaining three proposals in light of the relative weight of votes. A second ballot eliminates the least popular of the three. and then the two remaining choices are slightly amended, a final choice is made, and the chosen option becomes the seventh aggregated projection of the iteration process. IFBs then use this projection to calculate expected indicative prices, total economic product, growth rate, average work and consumption, and outputs for individual goods, all of which are sent to the plan data bank.

 

Nancy and other members of Northstart (and all other economic units) now accept the projections for society's total product, average work load, average consumption allowance, and average work complex quality as benchmarks. All further revisions are confined to adjustments of responsibilities within federations and units in light of the overall plan.