Tagged with Economic democracy

Industrial democracy? It’s all about trade unions

4095726_sAccording to John Duffy and his co-authors of the Jimmy Reid Foundation report on industrial democracy entitled Working Together, a major plank of the future of industrial relations in Scotland should be based on the adoption of European “models” involving employee forums, works councils and employee seats on company boards. It is a proposition that appears to have resonated with the Scottish Government, who include support for increased employee involvement in their Scotland’s Future White Paper.

On the face of it, such suggestions may look attractive, especially as they contrast sharply with the Con-Dem attack on employment rights and the establishment of the Carr Review to consider another raft of anti-union legislation. Continue reading →

Labour needs to design a co-operative, democratic economy

Mondragón model of interlocking elementsThe very ideas of ‘guild socialism’ and ‘distributism’ have been rarely advocated since the early 20th century, yet the case for equality and common ownership is stronger than ever. Perhaps the marginalisation of guild socialists is a product of the global polarisation that has made us forget about the fundamental power of economic co-operation? We have always been presented a choice between Keynesianism and neoliberalism, state intervention or untamed markets. Put simply, both Keynesian policy and laissez-faire capitalism have failed to create working economies for ordinary people – we need a radical alternative. Continue reading →

Could the German economic model be Ed Miliband’s ‘big idea’?

German industryDavid Cameron was recently filmed lecturing a group of manufacturing workers with the inimical advice that ‘frankly we have to be more Germanic in our work practices’. That was pretty rich coming from an old Etonian who, like George Osborne, has never had a proper job in his life. But it set me thinking – and not least because the German economic model is everything that successive British Government, especially Conservative ones, has shied well away from.

Instead from Margaret Thatcher onward, the British political class have opted for the deregulated, free market model favoured by the United States. This is a model that has seen those employed in manufacturing industry drop from 50% thirty years ago to 15% today. It is a model that has favoured the financial sector, dot-com booms and a reliance on property prices to provide economic growth. It owed much, more recently, to Alan Greenspan and his weird nostrums about ‘endogenous growth’. Continue reading →

Equality comes with shift of power to the people

People are discontented, ­disaffected and hungry for change. The so-called consumer society robs us of our universal humanity and our environment of its natural balance.

Living standards are squeezed to offset the falling rate of profit. Women’s work in particular continues to be systematically undervalued, with the poorest of the poor hit hardest of all.

But it is not just material well-being which is under assault. There is a widespread feeling of powerlessness, not least in an economy which is increasingly concentrated in fewer hands. Continue reading →