MANAGEMENT COUNCILS. — Also called factory councils, these are the technical bodies through which workers’ participation in the direction, administration, and profits of productive enterprises in which they work should be implemented.
Participation in the enterprise’s technical-organizational responsibility, with the consequent participation in profits (v. PARTECIPAZIONISMO), is the end toward which efforts are directed; the m. c. are the means.
The m. c., so understood, give rise to a collective enterprise and therefore stand opposed to the individual enterprise, in which technical-organizational tasks are entrusted to the entrepreneur, who owns the enterprise, administers it, and acts freely in its administration, having to answer for his acts only to himself, as the sole beneficiary of the profits, from which the workers, governed by a wage system, are excluded.
The enterprise is a small world in which the factors of production can be coordinated in various ways. Ordinarily today, the factors of production are divided among different hands, so that one person organizes the undertaking (the entrepreneur), another offers his personal services (the worker), another provides the use of his savings (the capitalist), and, in agricultural enterprises, another controls the natural resource (the landowner).
Moreover, in the modern economic world, created by liberalism and capitalism, the enterprise—especially the medium-sized and large enterprise—is marked by a clear distinction between workers and entrepreneurs: between those who work in a relationship of dependence and those who direct it, either possessing its capital or bearing its economic and legal responsibility. A wage system almost always prevails between them. Since the end of the last world war, however, once the defensive phase of the workers’ movement had been exhausted through trade-union labor contracts and the various forms of social legislation, workers, beginning a new defensive phase of their movement, claimed the right to participate in the management of enterprises together with representatives of capital.
Experiments with factory councils took place in Germany and elsewhere, in addition to the Soviet experiment in Russia and in the Bolshevized countries, where, however, the political factor clearly prevailed over the economic phenomenon, giving rise to a rather negative experience.
Fascism regulated relations between capital and labor in Italy under the corporative system. The fall of the Fascist dictatorship and the restoration of democratic freedoms once again brought into question, in Italy as well, the problem of the full participation of labor in the life of enterprises, to be implemented through the m. c. Two “slogans” became fashionable: “participation in profits” and “m. c.”
Almost on a par with democracy in political life, workers’ control seeks to democratize economic life in the sphere of production, hitherto governed unilaterally by the owner of the enterprise or by his representatives.
From the private domination of the present rulers, one would pass to the collective domination of those governed, through internal factory organizations or the m. c.
The representatives of labor justify their demands with solid arguments.
I. To give the worker a sense of his real participation in the human community, which works and produces for all its members, it is not sufficient to improve his working and living conditions; it is necessary that he cease to regard himself as an isolated element and directly perceive the beneficial reflection, in his own regard, of the importance of his contribution.
The human personality of workers must have the place due to it in the direction of the enterprise, just as it does in the production process. The enterprise is a society of persons more than of capital. Capital must not predominate. On the other hand, by bringing all the factors of production together in the same hands, the conflict between production and labor is eliminated.
II. Production must be subjected to national control by the workers, who constitute the overwhelming majority of the people.
Industrialists, on the other hand, are clearly opposed to the m. c. for other reasons that undeniably carry weight.
1) The right to management, they say, belongs to the person who assumes responsibility for it and faces the risk, namely, capital.
2) The very structure of the enterprise requires a unified, autonomous government, free in its movements.
3) The working class, at least today, lacks managerial ability and, moreover, has a mentality and interests that conflict with the supreme interests of the enterprise, when it does not have entirely revolutionary intentions.
The delicate condition of the European economy, particularly during its period of reorganization, reinforces these arguments.
Before setting oneself up as arbiter in this conflict of arguments, it will be appropriate to consider the different ways in which the m. c. can enter into the technical organization of the enterprise and lead to participation in profits.
If the m. c. are given only consultative power, it is clear that one cannot speak of true and effective participation in management, since the entire and exclusive direction of the enterprise remains in the hands of the owner. For there to be even a minimum of participation, beyond the disputes regulated in the collective agreement, at least some of the powers hitherto attributed solely to capital must be shared with the labor category.
On the other hand, if the exclusive appropriation of the means of production were granted to the m. c. following any socialization of property, it would be inaccurate to speak of labor’s participation in the management of the enterprise. It would rather involve the exclusive assignment of directive power to the category of workers or to the community—a true economic dictatorship of the proletariat, which would soon become political and then be transformed into a dictatorship over the proletariat. The recent history of Russia offers instruction on this point. The factory councils first limited themselves to controlling capitalist production; then they became organs of the absolute government of enterprises; finally, they were gradually dominated by the central authorities responsible for the national economy and definitively reduced to the proportions of simple internal committees (cf.: Soc. ital. per azioni, La socializzazione delle imprese, Roma 1945, p. 42 ff.).
Labor’s participation in the direction of the enterprise would retain its meaning only when the two traditional elements—the free labor and the free private and social capital—entered into action in the production process as distinct categories, associating in order to govern the enterprise jointly, to which both contribute their personal or material resources in a division of directive powers. In this system, the m. c. would have the function, if one may put it so, of a small constitutional parliament, limiting the sovereign power of capital and of those who represent it, since the decision-making power of the workers would have to be taken into account.
The practical implementation of the m. c., so understood, in the new step forward that humanity intends to take toward more perfect social justice, will have to proceed on a moderate course, with one’s gaze fixed upon the spiritual ends one seeks to attain, without losing contact with the bare reality of things and with the norms that govern economic action.
Labor participation in the direction of the enterprise is viewed with complete favor by Christian social doctrine (cf. A. Vermeersch, Quaestiones de iustitia, Bruges 1904, p. 627).
Pio XI, considerando il salario come forma inadeguata di retribuzione del lavoro, nella Quadragesimo anno, si augura che « gli operai diventino cointeressati nella proprietà o nell'amministrazione, compartecipino in certa misura dei lucri percepiti » e ritiene necessario che « in avvenire i capitali guadagnati non si accumulino se non con equa proporzione presso i ricchi, e si distribuiscono con una certa ampiezza fra i lavoratori ». Identica è la preoccupazione di Pio XII, il quale si fa banditore di un ordine sociale che « renda possibile una sicura, se pur modesta, proprietà privata a tutti i ceti del popolo »; di un « nuovo ordine sociale » da costruire su basi democratiche anche nella vita economica.
Solo che, non essendo di competenza del potere spirituale il determinare le forme giuridico-organizzative dei metodi di partecipazione, la Chiesa non previene le soluzioni tecniche di simili problemi, ma si restringe a prepararle, promuoverle, esaminarle nella loro coerenza con i principi della giustizia e dell'equità, e raccomandarle nei limiti e nelle condizioni della loro applicabilità.
Anche la Costituzione italiana, dopo accesi dibattiti, causati dalla diversità delle idee e dei partiti, si è accontentata in materia di un'affermazione di principio, da attuare nelle varie riforme, che dovranno essere condizionate dal momento, in cui si realizzeranno.
L'art. 46 dice: « Ai fini della elevazione economica e sociale del lavoro ed in armonia con le esigenze della produzione, la Repubblica riconosce il diritto ai lavoratori a collaborare nei modi e nei limiti stabiliti dalle leggi, alla gestione delle aziende ».
Dove è evidente che si intende elevare il lavoro da strumento a collaboratore della produzione, ma
è evidente pure la visione realistica della progressività attraverso la quale trasformazioni del genere si debbono attuare.