Looking Forward. By Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel

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  7. Workplace Decision Making

 

 

Daily Decision Making at Jesse Owens Airport

 

The above discussions of Northstart and John Henry illustrate the main contours of one possible way of conducting participatory planning within workplaces. Of course, it is not the only way. Other plants might have other rules and methods. There is much room for variation depending on the priorities, interests, inclinations, and circumstances of any workers’ council. In any case, making overall planning decisions is not the only sort of policy process required for an economy to work. Every day there are countless choices to make in workers' efforts to meet the commitments they have made. How does all this happen? We can look at Jesse Owens Airport to get an idea of the dynamics.

 

The plan for Jesse Owens is premised on a projection of the number of customers expected to use the airport each week, which in turn affects staff size, hours of work, shift arrangements, and
needs for resources and intermediate goods such as gas for planes and food for patrons. Therefore, changes in the number of people flying, or where they fly, would be the most important reasons for adjustments at Jesse Owens. In any case, having a plan for the year doesn't mean that each day won't involve critical decisions about such things as numbers of people needed at work, numbers of hours of operation, or implementation of innovations. And of course, this must all be accomplished consistently with participatory values.

 

Jesse Owens Airport chose to divide into units much like those in contemporary airports-shops in terminals, building maintenance, airplane maintenance, flight control and scheduling, passenger meals and other services, and so on. Each unit has its own council whose internal structures may be simple or rather complicated including separate councils for subunits and work teams.

 

At Jesse Owens, larger councils meet monthly requiring only that representatives attend. Meetings focus primarily on policy problems and difficult personnel questions. When major changes are requested, councils employ the updating procedures discussed in chapter 6 and further in chapter 9.

 

Day-to-day and hour-to-hour decisions are handled by relevant authorities on the spot. For example, nothing about participatory planning precludes having a field captain of the baggage team at "Rosa Parks Terminal," or a dining coordinator in "Bobby Orr Lounge." Nor does anything prevent these "authorities" from making decisions about short-term scheduling or calls to bring in extra employees. What is precluded is only that such "executive functions" embody levels of authority disruptive of solidarity, variety, or collective self-management. Therefore, these positions would not be held permanently so it would not be the case that some people consistently make decisions for others to carry out.

 

Decisions about personnel assignments and hiring new workers from applicants or releasing workers to other enterprises where they would be more valuable would be made by personnel committees whose staffs would also have other assignments to balance the quality of their work complexes.

 

Disputes would certainly arise about such things as irresponsibility, lack of effort, bossiness, etc., so how might these be resolved? Under capitalism, at best such disputes are handled by grievance committees with union reps committed to defending employees no matter what the facts may be, and management trying to get rid of strong union members, intimidate employees, and sanction workers. In coordinator economies, workers have usually been less effectively represented by "official" unions, although sacking even those who do practically nothing is almost impossible. In participatory economies, on the other hand, disputes between workers carrying out administrative and executionary tasks will be settled in committees of other workers who all carry out both administrative and executionary tasks themselves as part of their balanced job complexes. Of course, different plants might have different procedures for hearing complaints, bringing grievances to councils in cases where principles are at stake, and so on. There are many ways to handle such matters, and choices would obviously be contoured to the particular dynamics of specific workplaces and work forces.

 

But consider just one issue that would naturally arise at all workplaces on a regular basis-the hiring and firing of employees. There are many reasons for hiring and firing, including an increase or decrease in demand for the product, incorrigible malfeasance by an individual, or replacing someone who has moved on to a new job. There would therefore be movement of people among workplaces in a participatory economy, just as there is in any nontotalitarian economy. How could this be handled?

 

Each workplace has a personnel committee. Some committee members would mediate interpersonal disputes and problems with employee's work habits, others would process requests to change assignments within the workplace, and still others would process requests for transfer and handle hiring new personnel. Moreover, the last function would be greatly facilitated by industry and regional Employment Facilitation Boards, IFBs Each workplace would communicate its expected needs for new employees and/or notice of employees wanting to leave to industry and regional IFBs which would in turn regularly provide information back to personnel committees in workplaces. All this information would also be available on the computer network.

 

Say that Jackie wanted to leave her job at Jesse Owens Airport in Boston to move South. She would report this to her personnel committee so they would know she was thinking of leaving, and contact the appropriate IFB to enquire about jobs available. Although she could go any time she liked, if she wanted to remain in airport work, then for the benefit of her work mates she might agree to leave in tandem with some other individual's transfer to Boston. Or, more flexibly, she might agree to leave whenever there was an opening she wanted to fill at a southern airport and there was a potential employee available to fill her role at Jesse Owens, whether a new worker just out of school, or a transfer from the South, or whatever.

 

Alternatively, if fewer employees are needed at Jesse Owens the personnel committee would work with IFBs to come up with a list of new places they could confidently apply and organize a process whereby people could decide if they wanted to volunteer to transfer. If necessary the personnel committee would also preside over involuntary transfers, although this would usually involve the whole workers' council's approval.

 

Involuntary transfers would sometimes be necessary in a participatory economy-as in all economies-but they would occur far less often than in other economic systems. First of all participatory economies would not have the type of boom and bust cycles that plague market economies. The need to shift employees would always be a need to move people from one industry or workplace to another due to shifting preferences for outputs rather than a need to lay-off workers in general. Any general decrease in total work required/desired would be shared by all workers in the economy as a welcomed reduction in work hours or work intensity-not confined to a few as dreaded unemployment. Second, balanced job complexes means that much of the pain we associate with transfers is absent in participatory economies. There is every reason to expect more people to be willing to transfer voluntarily since job quality will not suffer in moving. Third, we believe the IFBs would be much more efficient in matching institutions and people than in present economies. While Labor Market Boards in Sweden are head and shoulders above employment agencies and retraining programs in the U.S., the IFBs would have much better information available more quickly, and in particular with much longer advance notice of changes in technologies and long-term investment intentions. In any case, involuntary transfers would never be accompanied by a loss of consumption rights and the social stigma and loss of dignity so common today.

 

It is a different matter, however, if someone is fired because he or she is unwilling to work, is an alcoholic unable to carry out his or her duties, or is so antisocial that nobody wants him or her around disrupting work relations. It won't do to dodge the issue pretending these problems will never arise in participatory economics. There will be disharmony and disability of diverse types. And there will have to be provisions for dealing with cases that are curable, and others that are not. All we can say is that many of the causes of such behavior will no longer exist in participatory, equitable societies and that we would expect the ways chosen for dealing with the fewer remaining problems of this sort to be far more humane than in present economies.