WT Library

Job Power, blue and white collar democracy

Author(s): Jenkins, David

Language(s): English

Year: 1974

Publisher: Penguin Books

URL: http://www.amazon.com/Job-Power-David-Jenkins/dp/0140038116%3FSubscriptionI…

ISBN: 140038116

Abstract: Those who romanticize workers' participation reforms should be alerted to this book, which, from an essentially management-oriented perspective, advocates 'industrial democracy' as a means of 'superior efficiency.' Jenkins has examined innovations in Israel, Sweden, Norway, Germany, and Yugoslavia, as well as the structure of large U.S. corporations like Procter & Gamble and General Foods, and, after interviewing numerous personnel directors, advises industrialists to drop their outmoded 'free-enterprise ideology' and give workers not ownership but true power and 'involvement.' This can be achieved through job rotations, work teams, 'job enrichment,' and workers' 'total awareness' of the factory. In a Norwegian steel furnace, for instance, such arrangements boosted productivity 20% in only seven months, in Israel foremen have been eliminated in kibbutz factories, in a World War II American company radar assembly time was cut from 138 hours to 32. Jenkins views Yugoslav workers' councils and the German Mitbestimmung ('co-determination') as overly dominated by management and therefore suppressive of true worker enthusiasm, however, he seems oblivious to the French worker's prevalent and open ridicule of Gaullist autogestion. American employees may recognize 'industrial democracy' as another term for work speedup, but Jenkins' conclusion that it can bring them 'freedom' and 'responsibility' will find many sympathizers.\\

Category: Non-Fiction

Location: Arnhem

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