Word: mitbestimmung
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...more and more workers and bosses, Mitbestimmung is the better way. Some illustrations of its progress...
...better educated, more distrustful of authority, more discriminating toward his working environment than his predecessors of a generation ago. His rise has resulted in absenteeism (425 million work days lost in France alone in 1972) and a growing reluctance on the part of young people to work in factories. Mitbestimmung, or some form of it, is seen as a way of reconciling the new worker and his boss...
There are some indications that Mitbestimmung can indeed work that way. During a decline in the West German coal industry that cost 400,000 miners their jobs between 1957 and 1973, management and workers consulted closely on mine closings and programs for re-employment, retraining and early retirement of employees. Result: the shrinkage was accomplished with no major labor disputes. Mitbestimmung, says Karl-Heinz Briam, labor representative on the board of Krupp's steel operation, "is something like marriage with no divorce possible...
...that very reason, Mitbestimmung is viewed with hostility by Communist-and socialist-dominated unions in France and Italy, who want no marriage between workers and capitalists. In Italy, where unions are among the most radical in Europe, an experiment by the giant automaker Fiat to involve workers in production plans and manpower organization appears to be in deep trouble after only six months. Says Socialist Piero Boni, a leader of Italy's largest trade-union confederation: "Today, this is not the right way for Italy. Here we have to go on strike." In Britain, unions want more than...
...France, BSN, a giant glass company, has a committee of 30 workers (representing 14,000) who meet once a month with management to discuss a broad range of subjects: more flexible working hours, altering certain retirement plans. At the Renault auto company, Mitbestimmung translates as "job enrichment": Renault workers select components and assemble them at their own pace, cutting one to two hours off the previous assembly time...