German Labor Relations Comes to Tennessee?

[georgephillip]

"Works councils — elected bodies representing all workers in a plant, both blue and white collar — are acclaimed as one of the best, most innovative features of Germany's labor relations system. They have been shown to enhance efficiency, adaptability and cooperation. By supporting the use of work sharing (agreeing to reduce everyone's hours rather than laying some people off), for example, these councils helped Germany experience less unemployment during the Great Recession and a faster, more robust recovery since then.

"For years, labor law, labor economics and labor-management researchers like us have urged experimentation with works councils in the United States. Volkswagen and the United Auto Workers are proposing to do just that at Volkswagen's Tennessee plant. This could be a watershed in American labor relations, one that rejects the outmoded adversarial doctrines that have built up in U.S. labor law and practice. And it signals management and labor support for a new model of cooperation and partnership."

It's widely believed by those on the left German labor relations prevented to sort of massive off-shoring seen in the US over the past four decades.

German Unions have voting members sitting on the boards of directors of the corporations they work for.

It could happen here...

The Volkswagen way to better labor-management relations - Los Angeles Times

 

[georgephillip]

"Unfortunately, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and others are opposing this effort by arguing that such cooperation would violate U.S. labor law's 1935 ban on sham or 'company' dominated unions.

"A comparison of German and American labor law makes it clear they are dead wrong.

"German law conceives of employees not as adversaries of management but as valued participants in the enterprise. German unions bargain about wages and hours. But, if workers choose to have a works council, it becomes a representative body in running the firm.

"Management must share extensive and even confidential business information with the council, and matters of critical concern on the shop floor or in the office must be discussed with the council and agreed to by its members. Most large enterprises, such as Volkswagen, have works councils."

The Volkswagen way to better labor-management relations - Los Angeles Times

 

[longknife]

The UAW couldn't get in by a vote so they are trying their best to force another way of putting their foot in the door.

In a way, VW is simply trying to give workers a say in how the plant operates. What on earth is wrong with that?

Nothing! But, it leaves the union bosses without an income to continue their plush life styles.

 

[georgephillip]

Nothing! But, it leaves the union bosses without an income to continue their plush life styles.

It isn't only union bosses who will have their compensation capped by more democratic control of workplaces, it is also CEOs who won't be allowed to "earn" 354 times the average wages of rank and file workers.
CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratios Around the World

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

If you don't like the terms of your employment find another job.

 

[georgephillip]

If you don't like the terms of your employment find another job.

Where will you will still find yourself in a workplace without any democratic control over how your surplus labor is distributed; the freedom of enterprise denies the freedom of a job.

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

If you don't like the terms of your employment find another job.

Where will you will still find yourself in a workplace without any democratic control over how your surplus labor is distributed.

Who said you're supposed to?

 

[georgephillip]

Who said you're supposed to?

Richard Wolff among many others:
"Criticism would then focus on capitalist enterprise organization as a hierarchical, undemocratic system for producing the goods and services society depends upon.

"A tiny minority of persons (directors and major shareholders) makes all the key economic decisions in capitalist enterprises.

"The mass of workers who must live with those decisions and their effects are excluded from making them.

"Capitalist enterprise organization is thus the opposite and enemy of the democratic enterprise organization that socialism affirms.

"In socialism redefined along these lines, all the workers in an enterprise collectively and democratically make all the key economic decisions: what, how, and where to produce and what to do with the enterprise’s surplus or profits.

"Such a socialism would advocate social ownership, planning, and the democratization of enterprises, i.e. their transition from capitalist to workers' self-directed enterprises (WSDEs)."

Socialism and Workers Self-Directed Enterprises Professor Richard D. Wolff

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

Who said you're supposed to?

Richard Wolff among many others:
"Criticism would then focus on capitalist enterprise organization as a hierarchical, undemocratic system for producing the goods and services society depends upon.

"A tiny minority of persons (directors and major shareholders) makes all the key economic decisions in capitalist enterprises.

"The mass of workers who must live with those decisions and their effects are excluded from making them.

"Capitalist enterprise organization is thus the opposite and enemy of the democratic enterprise organization that socialism affirms.

"In socialism redefined along these lines, all the workers in an enterprise collectively and democratically make all the key economic decisions: what, how, and where to produce and what to do with the enterprise’s surplus or profits.

"Such a socialism would advocate social ownership, planning, and the democratization of enterprises, i.e. their transition from capitalist to workers' self-directed enterprises (WSDEs)."

Socialism and Workers Self-Directed Enterprises Professor Richard D. Wolff

What makes you think me or any sane individual gives a shit about the rantings of a Socialist? No fully Socialist nation has ever succeeded in the history of man kind.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

all the workers in an enterprise collectively and democratically make all the key economic decisions:

that is 100% too stupid and so 100% perfectly liberal since if it worked every corporation in the world would have instantly switched to it.

 

[georgephillip]

What makes you think me or any sane individual gives a shit about the rantings of a Socialist?

Let's ask one:
"Even as a student at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, influenced by the hours he spent in the library stacks reading famous philosophers, he (Bernie Sanders) became frustrated with his fellow student activists, who were more interested in race or imperialism than the class struggle. They couldn't see that everything they protested, he later said, was rooted in 'an economic system in which the rich controls, to a large degree, the political and economic life of the country."

The rich are not your friend, in spite of how much you would like to believe otherwise.

Bernie Sanders vs. the billionaires Why Vermont s socialist senator may run for president - Vox

 

[idb]

Who said you're supposed to?

Richard Wolff among many others:
"Criticism would then focus on capitalist enterprise organization as a hierarchical, undemocratic system for producing the goods and services society depends upon.

"A tiny minority of persons (directors and major shareholders) makes all the key economic decisions in capitalist enterprises.

"The mass of workers who must live with those decisions and their effects are excluded from making them.

"Capitalist enterprise organization is thus the opposite and enemy of the democratic enterprise organization that socialism affirms.

"In socialism redefined along these lines, all the workers in an enterprise collectively and democratically make all the key economic decisions: what, how, and where to produce and what to do with the enterprise’s surplus or profits.

"Such a socialism would advocate social ownership, planning, and the democratization of enterprises, i.e. their transition from capitalist to workers' self-directed enterprises (WSDEs)."

Socialism and Workers Self-Directed Enterprises Professor Richard D. Wolff

What makes you think me or any sane individual gives a shit about the rantings of a Socialist? No fully Socialist nation has ever succeeded in the history of man kind.

Has there ever been a 'fully Socialist nation'?

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

Has there ever been a 'fully Socialist nation'?

Umm yeah. North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and until not that long ago, China.

 

[MrDVS1]

"Unfortunately, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and others are opposing this effort by arguing that such cooperation would violate U.S. labor law's 1935 ban on sham or 'company' dominated unions.

"A comparison of German and American labor law makes it clear they are dead wrong.

"German law conceives of employees not as adversaries of management but as valued participants in the enterprise. German unions bargain about wages and hours. But, if workers choose to have a works council, it becomes a representative body in running the firm.

"Management must share extensive and even confidential business information with the council, and matters of critical concern on the shop floor or in the office must be discussed with the council and agreed to by its members. Most large enterprises, such as Volkswagen, have works councils."

The Volkswagen way to better labor-management relations - Los Angeles Times

I recall Germany having laws about paying living wages, Walmart bugged out of Germany rather than play by German rules.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

The rich are not your friend,

yes we must hate them. Bill Gates is an evil man for sure!!

See why we are positive that liberals are stupid!! Is any other conclusion possible!!

 

[georgephillip]

Has there ever been a 'fully Socialist nation'?

If so it wasn't Russia or the Soviet Union.
When Lenin dissolved the worker soviets and replaced their authority with that of the state, Russian workers met a new boss that was very similar to the old boss. Some blame Wall Street for that.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

, Russian workers met a new boss that was very similar to the old boss. Some blame Wall Street for that.

Yes the czar and Lenin were very similar in that they were both liberals who loved the all powerful central government they controlled with a deadly iron fist.

Now you can understand why our founders hated and feared liberal central govt.

 

[idb]

Has there ever been a 'fully Socialist nation'?

Umm yeah. North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and until not that long ago, China.

You're talking about dictatorships operating under the guise of Socialism.

 

[georgephillip]

I recall Germany having laws about paying living wages, Walmart bugged out of Germany rather than play by German rules.

"Wal-Mart (WMT) is the biggest retailer in the world, with sales of $135 billion in 26 countries outside the U.S. But it doesn’t have stores in some of the world’s biggest markets. Not in Germany, not in South Korea, not in Russia. And as of this week,not in India, either."

It's interesting to wonder how Walmart would work if it functioned like Mondragon...

Where Wal-Mart Isn t Four Countries the Retailer Can t Conquer - Businessweek

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Has there ever been a 'fully Socialist nation'?

Umm yeah. North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union, and until not that long ago, China.

You're talking about dictatorships operating under the guise of Socialism.

dear there is no way to get people to behave perfectly without a brutal liberal dictator.