Workers' Participation in Management in Scandinavian Industry

Establishment and Functions of Plant Committees. As in most countries of Europe the industrial workers in Scandinavia Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have since the Second World War a right to be represented on committees at the plant level. These committees have somewhat different names in these countries, viz. committee of cooperation (samarbejdsudvalg, Denmark), production committee (tuotantokomitea, produksjonsutvalg, Finland, Norway), enterprise council (f6retagsnamnd, Sweden) but their structures and functions differ only slightly from each other. Consequently, they are here treated together and called plant committees. The present plant committees were established either through agreements between the employers' national federations and the trade union federations (Norway 1945, Sweden 1946, Denmark 1947) or by a special law (Finland 1946) which decreed such plant committees compulsory in plants having more than 25 (Denmark, Sweden) or 50 (Finland, Norway) employees. Depending on the size of the plant there are 6 to 12 members in the committees, one half of these being elected by all workers or workers who are trade union members, as in Sweden the other half representing clerical staff and management. Whilst the functions of these plant committees have been defined in slightly different ways, their actual functions are practically the same in all these countries. They can be summed up as follows: 1) communication between management and workers; 2) cooperation between management and workers for higher productivity; 3) discussion on workers' safety and welfare; and 4) discussion on schooling and training of workers and apprentices. Wages and hours of work are, as a rule, excluded from the competence of these committees. All plant committees are consultative in nature. The minimum number of meetings is prescribed by agreements or law. There is a comprehensive and well-edited bibliography, published recently in

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