Stefan Berger & Ludger Pries 
The Palgrave Handbook of Workers’ Participation at Plant Level 

Comprising the study, documentation, and comparison of plant-level workers’ participation around the world, this volume meets the challenge of offering a global perspective on workers’ participation, representation, and models of social partnership. Value chains, economic life, inter-cultural exchange and knowledge, as well as the mobility of persons and ideas increasingly cross the borders of nation-states. In the knowledge age, the active participation of workers in organizations is crucially important for sustainable and long-term growth and innovation. This handbook offers lessons from historical, global accounts of workers’ participation at plant level, even as it looks forward to predict forthcoming trends in participation.

Table of Content

1. Introduction.- 2. Workers’ Participation – Comparative Historical Perspectives from the Nineteenth Century to the End of the Cold War.- 3. Workers’ Participation at the Plant Level in a Comparative Perspective.- 4. Workers’ Participation at Plant Level: Conflicts, Institutionalization Processes and Roles of Social Movements.- 5. Fabians, guild socialists and ‘democracies of producers’: participation and self-government in the social theories of the Webbs and their successors.- 6. Gustav Schmoller – A Socialist of the Chair.- 7. Works Councils as Crucial Social Institutions of Labor Regulation and Participation. Friedrich Fürstenberg’s Concept of Works Councils as ‘Boundary Spanning Institutions’ .- 8. Workers’ Participation – Concepts and Evidence.- 9. Worker’s Participation in Yugoslavia.- 10. Participation and Nationalization: the case of British coal from the 1940s to the 1980s.- 11. Mondragon: Cooperatives in Global Capitalism .- 12. Workers’ Participation and Transnational Social Movement Interventions at the Shop Floor. The Urgent Appeal System of the Clean Clothes Campaign.- 13. Workers’ Participation in Australian Workplaces: Past Legacies and Current Practices.- 14. Workers’ Participation at the Shop Floor Level and Trade Unions in Brazil: economic crisis and new strategies of political action.-15. Emergence of Shop Floor Industrial Relations in China.- 16. Workers’ participation in Czechia and Slovakia.- 17. Workers’ Participation at Plant Level – France.- 18. Workers’ participation at the plant level in Germany – combining industrial democracy and economic innovation?.- 19. Workers’ Participation at the Plant Level in India.- 20. Workers’ Participation in Indonesia.- 21. Workers’ Participation at Plant Level: The Case of Italy.- 22. The Rise and Fall of Labor-Management Consultations (Roshi Kyogisei) in Japan.- 23. Labor-Management Council in Korea: A Look at the Past, Contemporary Trends and Challenges for the Future.- 24. Employee Participation at the Plant Level in Mexico: Features and Possibilities.- 25. Workers’ Participation in Management at Plant Level in Nigeria.- 26. Russia.- 27. Workers’ Participation in Spain.- 28. Workers’ Participation at Plant Level: the South African Case.- 29. Workplace participation in Britain, past, present and future: Academic social science reflections on 40 years of Industrial Relations change and continuity.- 30. Workers’ and Union Participation at U.S. Workplaces.- 31. Conclusion: Workers’ Participation at the Plant Level – Lessons from History, International Comparison, Future Tendencies.

About the author

Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. He is also Executive Chair of the History of the Ruhr Foundation and Honorary Professor at Cardiff University, UK.




Ludger Pries is Professor of Sociology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.





Manfred Wannöffel is Director of the Office for Cooperation between Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the German Metalworkers’ Union (IG Metall).