15433

WiSe 22/23: Theories of Workplace Democracy

Pedro Teixeira

Comments

The idea of democratizing work and the workplace has been at the forefront of social and political struggles for the past 250 years, and it continues to be the focus of renewed debates. Throughout the 20th century, the most established models and instruments – e.g. trade unions, collective bargaining, co-determination at the enterprise level – reflected the practical influence of “industrial democracy”. Since the 1980s, however, the consolidation of liberalism and the gradual waning of trade-unionism in many countries led to a decline in the popularity of workplace democracy. Today, a wider range of concrete instruments, namely co-operatives, self-managed firms, works councils, wage-earner funds and employee stock options, is again being discussed as potential candidates for a stronger workplace democracy. This seminar has two general aims: first, to discuss the arguments in favour and against the idea of workplace democracy; second, to provide a systematic overview of several approaches proposing the democratization of the workplace while tracing their origins back to classical texts belonging to the Marxist, socialist, republican or anarcho-syndicalist traditions of thought. In particular, we will focus on models of industrial democracy and of economic democracy; theories of self-management and workers’ control (e.g. autogestion in France); models of indirect participation (e.g. Mitbestimmung in Germany); theories about the meaning and experience of work (e.g. emancipation, alienation); alternative conceptions of ownership, shareholder and stakeholder; and models of workers’ financial participation. Given the topic of this seminar we will adopt an interdisciplinary methodology, which will see us discuss texts from political philosophy, political economy and sociology, but also from other disciplines. close

16 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Thu, 14:00 - 16:00 16 Class schedule

Thu, 2022-10-20 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Dr. Pedro Teixeira