British Columbia’s largest trade
union, the International Wood-
workers of America, has rejected
the concept of co-determination
and worker-directors as practiced
in West Germany. A number of
resolutions favoring worker-

directors were submitted to the.

February wage and contract
conference, but a report on in-
dustrial democracy prepared by
the IWA research staff shot them
down.

I have read the report and I
believe the researchers who put it
together from various U.S. and
European sources are to be
congratulated, even though they
didn’t go far enough in their con-

clusions. However, if this report is
widely publicized in the labor press
and distributed in its original form,
it will go a long way towards
destroying the myths about co-
determination which are floating
around.

On page two of the first section
we find the following: “.. . . em-
ployees and their unions must
approach the question of workers’
participation in management with
a great deal of caution...
management desired to achieve
the substantial increases in
productivity which it believed
would be generated by the plan,
but it was unwilling to grant real
concessions in company decision-

George Legebokoff of the Canada-USSR Association presented Soviet
cosmonaut Vitaly Zholobov with a gift on behalf of members of the
Association who met with Zholobov last Saturday.

TORONTO — A new made-in-
Canada constitution recognizing
the right to self determination of
the French Canadian nation, has
the full support of the Quebec
Federation of Labor, its president
Louis Laberge told delegates to the
Metro Toronto Labor Council Feb.
17. Laberge was the council’s guest
speaker on the question of recent
developments in Quebec.

In an interview with the
Canadian Tribune Laberge said
that the QFL has held the position
of the necessity of such an
arrangement with the rest of
Canada for the past 15 years.

Laberge’s statement at the
council meeting came in response
to a question from one of the
delegates who asked if the Quebec
labor leader would consider ‘‘a
proposition that the labor
movement both in English Canada
and Quebec reject separatism,
carry on agitation for the scrap-
ping of the BNA Act, and consider
the rewriting of a Canadian con-
stitution in which English-speaking
and French Canada would work
together as partners in Con-
federation.”’

Laberge responded, ‘‘That’s it.
- No doubt about it. That’s all we
want.”

The Quebec labor leader opened
his remarks by reminding the
delegates ‘‘that something ~ex-
tremely important has happened in
Quebec.” Paraphrasing Canadian
UAW leader Dennis McDermott,
who warned the New Democratic
Party not to take labor’s support

for granted, Laberge said ‘‘nobody
ought to take Quebec for granted.”

Support of the PQ by the QFL in
the last provincial elections, he
said, was based on the desire to
“set rid of the most vicious anti-
labor government we’ve had in
Quebec, perhaps than we’ve ever
had in Canada.’ This combined
with the PQ’s promise of a
referendum on the question of
separatism, and elements of its
social platform, which the QFL felt
‘answered the aspirations of
(their) members,’’ led the
federation to throw its backing
behind the PQ.

Laberge made it clear that
support for the PQ was based on its
carrying out of the promises

contained: in its social platform.
“The PQ owes us nothing, and we
owe them nothing,’’ Laberge said.

LOUIS LABERGE

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 11, 1977—Page 12

Le ere ee

making to workers’ represen-
tatives.”’

The report distinguishes between
“the quality of worklife movement
which is concerned with
humanizing the workplace’ and
“the right of employees to elect
representatives to company
boards of directors’. It correctly
takes the position that job enrich-
ment, job rotation and workers’
voice in decisions affecting
production should be included in
the collective agreement. -

The co-determination for the
West German coal, steel and iron
industry, which was initiated by
the U.S. and British occupation
authorities in 1946, and codified by
law in 1951, we are told,
“represents the goal of the West
German trade union movement.”
The report goes on to inform the
IWA that the basic contradiction is
that it provides workers with equal
representation on boards of
directors — called boards of
supervisors — in name only. In
short, the system is stacked
against the workers and in favor of
the big corporations. The actual
dynamics of the system do not
permit the workers to exercise
control over the policies of the
firm.

This lack of real power for the
workers is reflected in the way
works councils and boards of
supervisors are elected and in the
method of choosing the labor
director, a post ostensibly reserved
for a labor representative. Works
councils are elected by all the
employees of an enterprise, but the
only connection the union has with
the council is that some of its
members belong to the union. In
many cases the majority of the
council is strongly anti-union and
havea greater loyalty to the firm.

When it comes to electing the
five labor representatives on the
board of supervisors, two. are
named by the union and two by the
works councils. If the company has
a number of plants, this is done
through a meeting of delegates.
One of the two from the councils
must be from the salaried per-
sonnel at the sub-executive level.
The fifth worker-delegate is an
independent and may not be an
employee or union official, but he
is chosen in consultation with the
union.

On the management side, there
are four general stockholder
representatives, plus one in-
dependent acceptable to the
stockholders. Representatives of
the two groups on the board name
the chairman. If there is
disagreement, the issue goes to
arbitration or the courts.

The board of supervisors ap-
points the management board,
including the labor director who
must be endorsed by the worker-
directors. In practice, the labor
director is usually a former union
official or a former chairman of a
works council who is not unac-
ceptable to management because
of his union or political activities.
No member of the board of
supervisors can serve on the board
of management, which has the
effect of further removing the
management from the direct
control of the workers,

Also, and to quote the report:
“The labor director is paid by
management and, like other
management officials, may not
reveal what happened at executive
committee meetings. This means
that the unions are no better off
with respect to knowing anything
about their chances in an en-
terprise than they were before.

“Because of constant contact
with management, their com-
pletely different financial status
and a human but particularly

German tendency to conform, the
labor directors have tended to
grow away from the group that put
them into office and instead to
identify with their new
colleagues.”’

The IWA report has no time for
those who would apply the West’
German system, or any varijation
of it, to Canada. ‘“‘ . . . The gains
won by unions through collective

LABOR
COMMENT

BY JACK PHILLIPS

bargaining are in many ways
superior to those achieved by their
German counterparts. Copying
that experiment could well result
in asystem of token representation
which will not produce any
significant benefits for Canadian
workers.”’

Despite the sharp criticism of the
West German scheme and a
number of similar ones in Western
Europe and the U.S., the regional
leadership of the IWA -still ap-

' pears to be toying with the idea of

class partnership through a top-
level arrangement with the
forestry giants. Without their
support, the following substitute
resolution would not have passed:
“That we demand the setting up of
a joint management-union com-
mitteeto be mutually agreed upon,
for the purpose of drafting
recommendations for sharing
decision-making.”’

The Communist Party of Canada
dealt withthe question of industrial
democracy very thoroughly at its
October convention. It called for
the restoration of free collective
bargaining, the enlargement of its
scope to include economic and
social policy, technological
change, investment policy, safety,
health, the moving of plants,
manpower training and manpower
planning. Under capitalism, only
this kind of industrial democracy
has any real significance for the
working class and its trade unions.

It must also be noted that
collective bargaining by itself,
important as it is, cannot solve the

basic problems confronting the
working class, like the lack o
markets for wood products and the
curse of inflation.

The battle to enlarge the scope &
collective batgaining must go side
by side with the fight for
democratic planning at the
government level and democrati¢
nationalizationof the key sectors of
the economy. This means working
to unite all the left, labor and
democratic forces into a powerfi
alliance and on that basis electing
a government committed to al -
anti-monopoly program ange
fundamental, radical reforms thal
would alter the power structure:
Such a program would open thé
door to a deep-going
reorganization of society on 4 |
socialist basis.

If there is any weakness in the
IWA paper, it lies in the fact thatit
leaves the idea that straig
business unionism as we know it
North Americais the alternative @
the West German formula, instea!
of a program of extending thé
scope of collective bargaining al
involving the labor movement 1
independent political actiom
However, the report will play #
positive role in discrediting the
West German experiment, which
all to the good.

KITIMAT

Cont'd from pg. 1

the main political decision ha’
been reached at the ministeria
level in favor of the Kitimat plan. }
means that stronger protests thal!
ever will be required to block |
approval of this plan by thé
Canadian government. oF

The B.C. government, whosé}
voice would be decisive on thié
issue, has refused to take a stand
B.C. energy minister Jack Davis
said this week that the provincial
government has not yet made up
its mind and will not make it
position known until the publi¢
hearings. :

Joining the public outery agains!
the scheme, the B.C. Federation 0
Labor on March 4 issued 4
statement reaffirming its oP
position and expressed full suppor!
to the campaign against the pip®
line. The federation is seeking 4
meeting with B.C. environmett
minister Nielsen to urge B.C.
oppose the project.

‘For A Democratic Solution To
The Crisis Of Confederation’’
PORT ALBERNI — MARCH 11

8 P.M. IN THE LONGSHOREMEN’S HALL

COURTENAY — MARCH 12

‘8 P.M. IN GRANTHAM’S HALL

VANCOUVER — MARCH 13

2 P.M. IN TEMPLETON HIGH SCHOOL

Hear

WILLIAM
KASHTAN

Leader; Communist
Party of Canada