Controlling Worker Control in France

...Rather, they threatened divisive and possibly unresolvable political conflicts that even a Leftist regime wants to avoid...

...Many of Rocard's admirers followed him...

...Encouraged by the company, the unions campaigned vigorously...

...A year later, though, Mitterrand's campaign platform," 11O Propositions," ignored the whole question of restructuring corporate power relations...

...Controlling Worker Control in France BY NORMAN BOWEN Paris The Socialist government of France has so far produced three years of nearly constant surprises: From his hard anti-Soviet line to his rigorously austere economic measures, President Francois Mitterrand's policies have consistently defied expectations...

...These not very drastic arrangements are designed to make the working class better-informed and more responsible, and to make it difficult for management to manipulate accounts...

...As then defined by the PS, self-management represented a clear break with the status quo...

...In 1974 he embraced the concept, and one of the movement's leaders, Michel Ro-card, currently Minister of Agriculture, resigned as head of the splinter United Socialist Party to support Mitterrand in that year's presidential campaign...

...While representatives of the government and experts appointed by it still make up a strong majority, in some cases the worker involvement is expected to produce meaningful change...

...In practice, many companies already have gripe sessions, or try to reach out to pliable workers to counteract what are viewed as objectionable influences...

...A case in point is the recent restructuring of the nationalized steel industry, whose workforce, especially in the Lorraine, feels largely ignored by the planners...

...Mitterrand and his colleagues have been more aggressive in applying the concept of autogestion to the nationalized industries...

...Employers are prohibited from trying to negotiate with one union against the will of another that has obtained a majority in a representation election...

...Self-management proposals did not adequately clarify the state's role in the highly decentralized society they would create...

...The party-dominated CGT interpreted autogestion as decision-making power for the unions...

...Even when employees took part in discussions about measures to eliminate deficits, the resulting decisions were later reversed...

...Self-management caught the imagination of the French New Left in the years immediately after 1968...

...In others the impact is doubtful...

...For instance, one provision of the "Fifteen Theses or\ Auto-gestion" adopted by the Socialists in 1975 rejected bourgeois administration, especially participatory schemes that placed ultimate choices in the hands of company directors or the bureaucracy...

...Such themes were still apparent in the Socialist Project, the book-length statement of intention that emerged from the party's 1980 congress...

...The Minister of Labor has the power to appoint a mediator on his own initiative as well...

...These talks are expected to address specific matters like the status of women, pay differentials by job category, and efforts to improve the fortunes of the lowest paid...

...By themid-1970s, theCommunists were giving lip service to the idea, but their hearts were committed to centralization and the state...

...And where the government has agreed to extensive negotiation, as with the attempt to reform private education, its reputation for plain dealing has been damaged by an inconsistent course in searching for a compromise acceptable to the interested parties...

...could hardly be done with proposals to dethrone them...

...After Mitterrand' s victory, independent working-class mobilization was discouraged because the President wanted to establish his credibility as a leader...

...Of the various Socialist tendencies, the Rocardians were the strongest proponents of worker control...

...Meanwhile, the Right-wing opposition unexpectedly regained some of its popularity without a clear program...

...The idealism flickers, but only faintly, among the co-ops formed a decade ago that have managed to survive...

...By contrast, Manufrance —once the country's leading sporting goods producer, today financially tied to the former Communist municipality of Saint-Etienne, and controlled by the CGT—is plagued by much larger deficits but has been refused new aid...

...For while it does not impose binding arbitration, the government is already a presence by maintaining strict wage and price guidelines...

...The Socialist Project had suggested that existing elected workers' committees, often dominated by unions, be allowed to veto major restructuring and employment decisions...

...Even the Confederation of Workers' Cooperatives foresees a minor role for them—quite a comedown from the days when an important part of the French Left saw autogestion as the cutting edge of a new society...

...When this did not happen, the movement's supporters concluded that the main obstacle was the Giscard government's hostility, particularly its control over credit...

...Whatever organized labor may do, it is clearly in decline in France...

...Mitterrand wanted to include the proponents of worker control within his transformed Socialist Party (PS...

...Thus lip—located in Socialist Besangon, controlled by the progovernment CFDT, and a lingering symbol—is still feeding at the public trough...

...Essentially, these experiments from the immediate past have joined a far-from-radical and century-old cooperative movement, whose participants have always faced the same day-to-day problems that bedevil every business in a market economy...

...Perhaps he was convinced by the failure of Rocard's attempt to displace him at the head of the Socialist ticket that the issue would not play well...

...Self-management has also lost its attractions for a government that from the start has placed great emphasis on authority...

...Ceres, the left-wing faction led by Education Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, has generally opposed political or economic devolution...

...A July 1983 law lets employees elect one third of each state-owned outfit's administrative council —a body more or less equivalent to a board of directors that picks the company president, subject to official review...

...If the creation of new co-ops doesn't figure in Mitterrand's industrial restructuring plan, he has nonetheless been more willing than his predecessor to help the existing organizations, especially through management and financial training programs...

...Last May Day's sparsely attended parades were an undisguisable embarrassment...

...Locals can now be organized in a business with fewer than 50 people, and the use of temporaries has been brought under stricter control...

...Membership is down...

...In any case, autoges-tion was now reduced to a watered-down call for employee rights...

...Economic difficulties have reinforced the inclination to perceive labor and labor unrest as potential threats...

...In the 1970s, hopes ran high that autogestion would be achieved on the lip model, from the bottom up...

...Mitterrand's supporters, who have significantly increased the clout of municipalities, were reluctant to do the same for the CGT or other unions— and only one, the French Labor Federation (CFDT), backed autogestion wholeheartedly anyway...

...The actual amount of relief varies widely...

...Personnel rules and disciplinary procedures must be spelled out clearly, and certain practices—for example, alcohol tests and the opening of mail—have been banned...

...References to the principle abounded in the Socialist Party's literature before 1981, when Mitterrand took office, but since then it has almost disappeared from sight...

...Purely economic considerations have reinforced his decision...

...The two sides are not obligated to reach a settlement, and either can request government mediation...

...Other parts of the 1982 laws tighten up safety regulations and protect freedom of expression at work...

...The moderate Labor Force (FO) was outspokenly hostile to schemes that would undermine its role in bargaining for better pay and benefits...

...One expectation whose time has apparently not come is auto-gestion, or worker self-management, inspired in the 1970s by the famous conflict at the lip watch making company, where employees took over after the owners had closed their plants and filed for bankruptcy...

...This radical vision included a thoroughgoing democratization of French society and would have given over a range of decision-making to consumer associations, users of public services and work units...

...Yet the effect of the new law remains uncertain...

...At the powerful publicly owned Saint Go-bain industrial group, management chose last May 10, the third anniversary of Mitterrand's victory, as the day for electing the administrative council's worker representatives...

...After Mitterrand moved into the Ely-see Palace four major pieces of workplace reform legislation were passed, reinforced by a series of ordinances...

...They are not the only people on the Left with doubts...

...autogestionnaires complain of coopta-tion...

...The whole approach will be sorely tested if unions resist negotiated layoffs—as the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) has done in occupying the Citroen plants...

...The rank and file seems to be ignorant of its new rights or indifferent to them...

...As the director of a Saint Gobain subsidiary put it, the elections tested the staff's willingness to "cooperate in the smooth functioning of the company...

...Trapped between earlier promises to consult the people and the desire to push ahead rapidly with a coherent program, Mitterrand has unfailingly chosen the latter...

...Although a series of labor laws passed in 1982 did enact a few incremental reforms, there has been no transfer of power, not even in the sense implied by the comanagement practices of Social Democratic nations...

...A few unions have launched information campaigns to spark interest in the Auroux Laws, but the reality is that they can hardly be presented as a great victory for the proletariat...

...The so-called Auroux Laws give employees more influence over the firms that hire them, but not much...

...In facilitating negotiation, the government hopes to reduce the risk of overt labor-management conflict...

...Some unions regard the latest official innovations as a threat to their position as labor negotiators, but a number feel that wage earners will ultimately be politicized just by having to think seriously about their jobs...

...The Auroux legislation deals with collective bargaining, too...

...So, not surprisingly, Mitterrand has opted for the traditional dirigisme...

...In demanding economic decentralization, democracy in the workplace and a general dismantling of hierarchies, the autogestionnaires were rejecting French capitalism and the statist alternatives supported by traditional Socialists and the Communists...

...But to the president of the glass products enterprise the whole undertaking was a device for defusing worker grievances...

...Such episodes have created a feeling that the President has lost touch with his base and relies almost exclusively on the advice of technocrats...

...The new setup also provides for regular meetings to discuss conditions in factories and offices...

...Shop stewards have won more time to attend to their official duties, guaranteed on-site offices and greater security...

...Self-management has never had anything like unanimous support within Mitterrand's motley following...

...In short, autogestion was an effective ideology for opposition but was found wanting when it came to governing...

...Several unions have gone further and are now preparing investment and employment proposals...

...Under the system actually adopted, the committees have only the right to be kept informed of company plans, to insist that studies be carried out to determine the effect of changes on levels of staffing, to be consulted about price increases, and to commission outside experts to examine corporate reports...

...But since Mitterrand's 1981 victory very few new worker co-ops have been founded, no doubt because those set up during the 1970s have been struggling to survive in France's depressed and rapidly evolving capitalist economy...

...Small wonder that despite a better than 80 per cent turnout, many workers doubted that their effort was worthwhile...

...The Right views such get-togethers as disguised "soviets...

...French companies are required to negotiate with the unions once a year over salaries, hours and the workplace environment...

...A more important reason for the eclipse was probably the Left's electoral strategy: It hoped to attract the young professionals and middle-management types who had become impatient with the regime of President Val-ery Giscard d'Estaing— something that Norman Bowen teaches at theAmerican College of Arts and Sciences in Paris...

...At times, this unpleasant fact has led to bitter internal dissent, for not all workers accept the "capitalist" management practices that often require disciplining or firing members of their group...

...At lip, watchmaking operations have been overwhelmed by imports, causing constant financial difficulty, and the company has turned increasingly to producing other things, such as medical and military equipment...

...A decade ago, this vague yet heady brew was a key theme in building the Left coalition that now runs the country...