The Review of Radical Pohhcal Economics 13:2 (Summer 1981)

The Logic of Worker (Non)Participation

in Yugoslav Self-Management
Ellen T. Comisso

ABSTRACT: A great deal of research on Yugoslav self-management has docu-

mented and sought to explain a lack of worker participation and influence in
enterprise decision-making. This paper, based on an intensive case study of a
Yugoslav plant, examines the kinds of issues over which Yugoslav workers do be-
come very actively involved in decision-making processes. It finds that workers’
implicitly "ideological" values and principles are the key determinant of worker
participation. When those values are threatened by a proposed course of action,
workers participate vociferously to defend them; when they are not, workers tend
to "delegate" decision-making to others At the same time, precisely because of
the circumstances leading to heavy worker involvement in decision-making, the
decisions in which workers participate most actively are least likely to be those
over which they feel they have control, i.e., in conflicts typically with manage-
—

ment — workers’ preferences are not likely to be embodied in the final decision.
In contrast, on issues where there is no conflict and in which workers as a cohe-
sive group are not highly involved, the final decision is likely to reflect workers’
preferences as much as those of everyone else in the firm. Thus, in the case of blue
collar workers, participation in self-management is likely to be inversely cor-
related with having influence over decisions.

The gap between the theory and the practice of
Yugoslav self-management has perhaps nowhere been
more evident than in the difference between the
amount of expected and the degree of actual worker
participationin enterprise decision-making. Theory
underlying self-management calls for enterprise deci-
sions to be the result of the active participation of the
firm’s rank-and-file labor force in the decision-making
process. The normative, legal structure of the self-
managed firm is constructed and regularly recon-
structed with the avowed intention of increasing
worker input. The ideology of self-managed society
daily proclaims &dquo;Power to the Producers&dquo; from the
highest rooftops. Yet reality consistently reveals a dis-
appointingly low level of worker participation and
personal influence in industrial decision-making.’
Numerous explanations have been advanced to ex-
plain this contrast between aspiration and realization.
Some see it as due to a simple lack of interest2 on the
part of a labor force all too recently transformed from
peasant to proletariat and materially pressed by both
inflation and the new needs created by urban life.
Others3 trace the discrepancy to a monopolization of
power inside the firm of better educated and informed
executive and technical personnel. Still others4 lay the
blame outside the enterprise itself, arguing either that
&dquo;statist elements&dquo; do not permit the really important
decisions to be made at the level of the firm at all or,
alternatively, that market decentralization and compe-
tion are so destructive of working class solidarity that
they necessarily eliminate worker influence as a force
determining enterprise behavior.55
Strikingly different policy implications follow
from these various analyses. If one assumes the
&dquo;immaturity&dquo; of the Yugoslav proletariat to be the
root cause, increased education, higher standards of
living, and more ideological training appear to be the
logical remedies. If a power play on the part of
&dquo;technocratic&dquo; forces is the central malady, then fur-
ther restricting the freedom of executives through as-
sorted normative (i.e., legal) and political (i.e., party)
measures becomes a rational antidote. Likewise, if it is
the State bureaucracy and &dquo;non-productive&dquo; agencies
which are seen as limiting the enterprises’ - and hence
the &dquo;direct producers’ &dquo; - ability to autonomously
determine business strategy, then further reductions in
taxes and regulation plus additional decentralization
of the political superstructure are envisioned as the

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11
means to bridge the theory-practice gap. Or, on the
contrary, if the competitive market is found to be the
main culprit, expanded State intervention in the econ-
omy and reconstruction of planning bodies are re-
commended as a solution.
While undoubtedly all of these analyses contain
elements of truth, none of the remedies they suggest
seem to have been very successful in increasing blue
collar worker participation in self-management.
Survey research in Yugoslavia on participation and
perceived influence has been going on since the early
1960’s, and the results of recent research are practically
identical with those of earlier studies, despite a con-
tinuous series of reforms and readjustments - many
embodying the solutions proposed above - designed
to stimulate worker involvement. In fact, to some
observers, the overall amount of rank-and-file worker
participation in self-management appears to have even
decreased over time.66
How, then, can we explain this apparent anomaly?
Perhaps the answer can be found by approaching the
question from a different angle altogether: rather than
seeking to discover why workers fail to participate in
self-management, it might be more helpful to analyze
the situations in which they do participate. From this
perspective, the problem is not so much one of ex-
plaining low worker participation, but of differentiat-
ing the situations which evoke high worker participa-
tion from those which do not, and explaining why, de-
spite examples of active and vociferous involvement,
blue collar workers in Yugoslav self-managed firms
continue to perceive themselves as relatively uninflu-
ential in enterprise affairs.
The Terms of the Analysis
An initial definition of terms is in order. First of
all,
it is necessary to distinguish between participation
and involvement in self-mangaement. Participation in
self-management, as we shall use the term here, refers
to overt actions taken by individuals within the formal
self-mangement structure of the firm: voting in elec-
tions, being a representative, speaking at meetings,
submitting a proposal or request, etc. Involvement,
however, is a much more diffuse phenomenon, and
covers all those actions and reactions relating to enter-
prise decision-making that take place outside of formal
meetings, from casual suggestions made to a council
representative to general grumbling about a past or up-
coming decision or the lack of one.’Since most of the
self-management bodies in Yugoslav firms are consti-
tuted by elected representatives, the number of
workers who directly &dquo;participate&dquo; in decisions is
necessarily small, even in the best of cases; the number
of workers &dquo;involved&dquo; in a decision, however, may well
be much larger.
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12
A second distinction must be made with regard to
participation itself. Worker participation in self-
management can mean (a) that blue collar workers par-
ticipate as individuals who merely happen to be pro-
duction workers, i.e., the statements even elected dele-
gates make at meetings represent no one other than
themselves; and/or (b) that blue collar workers speak at
meetings on behalf of a larger, collective interest held
by an enterprise’s production workers as a whole, i.e.,
the statements elected delegates make at meetings ex-
press the interests and sentiments of a much larger and
cohesive group. Significantly, the mere fact that a
representative is elected does not, at least in a sociologi-
cal sense, automatically ensure that (b) will be the case.
Indeed, (b) will only occur if widespread involvement
(either prior to or as a result of a representative’s state-
ments) accompanies specific acts of participation.
At the same time, opinions or suggestions voiced
by elected representatives as individuals are not neces-
sarily &dquo;unrepresentative,&dquo; unless, of course, they ex-
plicitly run counter to a pre-existing collective senti-
ment held by the constituency a delegate presumably
represents. On the contrary, the criterion of
&dquo;representativeness&dquo; is as irrelevant to them as is the
group to which the delegate ostensibly belongs.
Finally, exerting influence or pressure must be dif-
ferentiated from both having influence or control or
perceiving that one has influence or control.8 While the
former refers to the various activities which go on in
the course of the decision-making process, the latter
concerns the results arrived at. While an individual or
group may exert influence through participation
and/or involvement in decision-making, the same indi-
vidual or group can be said to have influence only if the
final decision taken actually reflects the preferences
expressed. Thus, it is entirely possible to be highly in-
volved and participate a great deal in the decision-mak-
ing process without having control (and certainly,
without perceiving oneself as having control) over its
final outcome. Likewise, it is quite conceivable that
participation and involvement in a decision may be
minimal while a great deal of control is manifested
and/or perceived.
The Argument Stated
With these distinctions in mind, this paper will
seek to illustrate the following propositions regarding
the participation, involvement, and influence of blue
collar workers in Yugoslav self-management.
1) Blue collar involvement in self-management will
be greatest when:
a) Decisions entail choosing between alterna-
tive ideological value premises;
b) Ideological cleavage lines coincide with
occupational categories inside the enterprise; and
c) Decisions involving such judgements of
value must pass through bodies in which blue collar
workers are numerically predominant.
2) When blue collar involvement with an
of blue collar workers will tend to
high, participation
take the form of expressing a collective interest held by
blue collar workers as a unified group.
3) Owing to the nature of the issues in which blue
collar involvement is highest, the higher blue collar
involvement and participation in a decision are, the
greater the probability is that the outcome of the deci-
sion-making process will differ f rom the preference ex-
pressed by the blue collar workers. In other words,
involvement and participation on behalf of a collective
interest tend, in the case of blue collar workers, to
correlate inversely with having influence.
4) Blue collar involvement in self-managements
will be lowest when:
a) Decisions involve judgements of fact rather
than choices between values, i.e., the goal or decision-
making premise is given and merely the most effica-
cious must be selected;
means
b) Cleavage lines reflect differences in indivi-
dual opinions rather than group conflicts; and
c) The decisions are made in bodies where
only a few blue collar workers are present.
5) When worker involvement with an issue is low,
participation of blue collar workers will tend to take
the form of proposals and statements reflecting purely
individual opinions.
6) Because of the nature of the issues workers are
only peripherally involved with and in whose resolu-
tion they participate minimally, the lower the overt in-
volvement and participation of blue collar workers in a
decision are, the greater the probability is that the deci-
sion will reflect their preferences.
The essence of our argument, then, is that there
*&dquo;Ideology,&dquo; asI use the term here, refers to a set of
onentations and values which stem from an individual’s membership
in a definite social group and serve as a basis for his/her judgment of
events, definition of problems, and determination of actions An
ideology may be socialist, bourgeois, reactionary or whatever other
descriptive term observers wish to apply In all cases, however, it con-
sists of a set of relatively consistent &dquo;first premises&dquo; individuals utilize
to interpret their environment in ways which reinforce both (a) their
membership and loyalty to the group whose &dquo;objective&dquo; social posi-
tion the ideology reflects, and (b) the continued existence and welfare
of that group While ideology thus typically suppliers a theoretical
framework rationalizing group self-interest, actions flowing from its
premises which individual members of the group undertake may or
may not further the latter’s short-term, narrow, individual self-inter-
est. For example, although a businessman may find himself much
wealthier if he hires thugs to loot the stores of his competitors, he will
not do so insofar as he presumably embraces an ideology which starts
from the principle &dquo;property rights must be respected&dquo;
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may well be a certain logic behind both the presence
and the absence of worker participation in Yugoslav
self-management. The key to this logic lies in the role
of ideology:* because production workers’ goals and
issue is values differ from those of other occupational groups
in the firm, they perceive and evaluate issues different-
ly as well. The result is not that production workers are
invariably in conflict with other groups. Often, the ac-
tions workers want the firm to undertake (e.g., produce
a marketable product) are the same actions other
groups advocate, even if for entirely different reasons.
And, whenever policies workers want converge with
those other groups (in particular, management) sup-
port, they need not participate as a collective group to
see their preferences enacted.
Nevertheless, the same attitudes and values which
produce consensus, low participation, and influence
on some issues produce conflict on others. Moreover,
these disputes are not simply a reflection of differences
between individuals over how to solve an agreed-upon
problem, but are conflicts between groups over the
very definition of the problem. On such occasions,
ideology and common values serve as a mobilizing
force behind vociferous worker involvement and parti-
cipation in decision-making. Yet, insofar as the source
of the dispute is mutually exclusive ideological
orientations, it can only be resolved through a power
struggle: one side presents the other with a seemingly
&dquo;unalterable fact&dquo;. And, since the costs of creating
such a fait accompli are normally higher for workers
than for opposing groups, the ironic consequence is
that precisely the issues in which worker involvement
and participation are highest are the issues on which
they are likely to perceive themselves as having the
least influence.
Unfortunately, for reasons of time and space, this
paper will not deal explicitly with the value structure
and ideology of Yugoslav workers per se,9 but will be
limited to an exploration of the patterns of participa-
tion and involvement they produced in a Yugoslav
firm observed intensively from March to September,
a prison 1974. While the enterprise itself is hardly &dquo;typical&dquo; -
indeed, no single firm could be - the pattern of partici-
pation witnessed there is. The hope is that careful
analysis of a single case can reveal certain features
about the dynamics of labor-management interaction
in the self-managed firm which will have broader appli-
cability in explaining the presence and lack of worker
participation in Yugoslav self-management in general.
The Case of the Self-Managed Enterprise
machine-tool plant in Zagreb, manufac-
Zvir is a
turing heavy machinery and equipment for one of
Yugoslavia’s major extractive industries. In 1974, the
time of this study, Zvir was employing approximately
13
530 people, about 250 of which were blue collar
production workers. Of these, the vast majority were
skilled and highly skilled workers: machinists, tool and
die makers, welders, electricians. Most came from
Zagreb and its immediate environs; a good 40% were
under thirty years of age. Although statistical pro-
bability would suggest that a good proportion of Zvir’s
blue collar workers represented a first generation pro-
letariat (i.e., their parents had not worked in industry),
less than 20% still owned land which they actively cul-
tivated for family food production.10 Conversations
with some of these peasant workers revealed that even
they would have been quite happy to abandon this
small-scale agricultural activity altogether had wage
levels been high enough - or food prices low enough -
to permit satisfaction of family food consumption
through retail purchases alone. This attitude plus the
fact that the farms were very close to a large urban and
cultural center like Zagreb enables us to say that Zvir’s
blue collar production workers as a whole represent a
definite - if first generation - urban working class.
The urbanized character and the high skill levels of
the Zvir production workers suggest that Zvir was not,
in terms of its labor force, a &dquo;typical&dquo; Yugoslav enter-
prise but was rather above average in terms of its suit-
ability for self-management. Its relatively small size, its
location in an industrial center, and its involvement in
an industry with a tradition of worker militancy in
Yugoslavia and Europe generally, all would lead us to
predict a high degree of worker interest in self-
management. In addition, at the time of the study, the
firm had recently emerged from a series of &dquo;liquidity&dquo;
crises with its plant and equipment modernized, its to-
tal labor force enlarged, and its financial foundations
firmed up. Its wage levels, while reflecting the overall
unhappy state of wages in the Yugoslav metalworking
industry,&dquo; were nonetheless among the highest pre-
vailing among Zagreb machine-tool plants and the firm
regularly showed a healthy annual profit. In short, if
workers are going to participate in self-management at
all, Zvir seemed to present close to optimal conditions
for them to do so.
Nevertheless, worker participation and involve-
ment in Zvir’s decision-making processes was quite
infrequent, and measured quantitatively, Zvir’s parti-
cipation patterns do not seem to differ significantly
from the patterns revealed in numerous other Yugo-
slav enterprises. 12 Yet, within an overall picture of
managerial dominance and worker passivity, a number
of highly significant exceptions emerge.
Participation Patterns at Zvir
These exceptions occurred with a certain degree of
regularity, and tended to cluster around certain types
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14
of issues. These issues were first and foremost ques-
tions of distribution, be it of wages, profits, or collec-
tive funds. Several examples of widespread and active
worker participation and in fact, of open and bitter
conflict in decision-making occurred during just the
six-month period of this study; minutes of past worker
council meetings and accounts of older Zvir workers
hinted at others that had gone on in the past. The ob-
served examples include a major revolt at an assembly
held in March, 1974 over the issue of retroactive pay
for the 24 Saturdays Zvir had worked without com-
pensation in 1973, and a related dispute over whether
or not members of the work collective who had joined
the firm in 1974 had a right to share equally in the 1973
profits.
Both of the decisions made on these questions had
to pass through the assembly* in addition to the repre-
sentative self-management bodies. Both involved con-
flicts between the blue collar workers as a collective
group and some other enterprise group, typically the
management backed up by the leadership of the enter-
prise party and trade union organizations. Further-
more, both of these disputes arose out of what the blue
collar workers saw as a basic violation of elementary
principles of justice and fairness, and they quickly
took on the cast of major ideological battles over the
meaning of &dquo;distribution according to work&dquo;, theore-
tically a fundamental &dquo;right&dquo; of the &dquo;direct producer&dquo;
in Yugoslavia.
For example, at the March assembly held over the
retroactive pay issue, the workers argued vehemently
for a strict interpretation of the principle. As they saw
the situation, they had come to work on Saturday the
previous year and done the work for which they were
responsible; they had created the &dquo;value&dquo; but when it
came time to redistribute it
as personal income, it had
suddenly mysteriously disappeared. Reasoning from
this position, they repeatedly demanded &dquo;Why aren’t
we receiving pay for the work we did last year?&dquo; while
consistently refusing to accept any of the explanations
Zvir’s management offered. In fact, their refusal was
so complete that the first assembly called on the issue
broke up into small groups of workers and executives
arguing with each other, without having resolved any-
thing after more than two hours of heated debate. A
week later, at a second assembly, the workers, reluc-
tantly and still unconvinced, conceded their cause as a
lost one. In both assemblies, management countered
the workers’ position by upholding the principle of
distribution according to the &dquo;results&dquo; of work: 13
wages did not depend simply on the amount of labor
performed, but on the overall market performance of
the enterprise. As Zvir’s general director put it, &dquo;You
*The assembly composed of every member of the work collec-
was
tive, m contrast to the workers’ council and managing board, which
were both elected bodies
could have come to work seven days a week and
worked 20 hours a day, but if we don’t realize the value
on the market, we don’t have the funds with which to
pay you&dquo;. Backing him up was the fact that once a
fixed amount of enterprise income had been set aside to
be redistributed later in the year as profit-sharing
bonuses and once a wage increase was put into effect
for 1974,’4 the enterprise simply had no additional
funds it could use to pay retroactive wages. What
ended the debate, then, was not the workers’ recogni-
tion of the principle of distribution according to the re-
sults of work, but rather, their unwilling acceptance of
a fait accompli.
Not surprisingly, the same cry of &dquo;distribution
according work&dquo; reared its head again at the next
to
available opportunity, an assembly convened in May,
1974 to discuss the distribution of the 1973 profit.
Here, the main debate was over who had a right to re-
ceive a share in the profits, the principle of how large
shares were to be having been already agreed upon. 15
The workers, undoubtedly recalling the unpaid Satur-
days, contended that only those who had actively
worked in create the profits had a right to share in
them, i.e., that all those who had first begun work at
Zvir after January, 1974 should not receive a bonus. As
one skilled machinist expressed it, &dquo;We work, we live
for this factory. Now you’re going to tell me that a new
guy comes, he gets an apartment,* he gets better pay,
and he gets a bonus we created by coming to work
without pay on Saturday?&dquo;
Management and the firm’s socio-political leader-
ship, however, defended the rights of all those cur-
rently employed by the firm to share in the 1973 earn-
ings. If the management appeared ranged on the side of
egalitarianism and the unity of the collective in this in-
stance, the workers stuck to their notion of just distri-
bution as both the best long-term guarantee of equal-
ity and the surest way of protecting their interests.
Hardly coincidental to the workers’ readiness to do
battle on this issue was the fact that the most rapidly
expanding sector of Zvir’s labor force was composed
of technical and clerical personnel; most of the em-
ployees hired in 1974 were not production workers
themselves.
Like the back pay dispute, the conflict over profit
distribution ended with the workers resigning them-
selves to a fait accompli without having been con-
vinced by the ideological arguments made to support
it. In this instance, the canons of legality were invoked
in order to bypass deciding on the rightness or wrong-
*An allusion to Zvir’s purchase of apartments for two newly hired
engineers While such actions were frequent enough at Zvir (and other
Yugoslav firms) and accepted in principle by the work collective as
necessary to attract and keep specialists, they were also widely
resented, especially by workers who often had to wait years before re-
ceiving credit they could apply toward housing
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15
ness of the workers’ demands. As Croation law de-
clared that every member of a work organization who
had a right to a vacation also had a right to a bonus, and
since no one disputed the right of the new employees to
their annual vacation, the law was interpreted to mean
that they could not be legally denied a share in the 1973
earnings.
Even when presented as an already resolved mat-
ter, however, the profit distribution decision was never
really approved by the assembly. When the President
of the assembly called for a vote, asking &dquo;Is everyone
agreed that whoever has a right to a vacation also has a
right to a bonus?&dquo; only a few hands were raised. The
issue was finally sent to the Managing Board which,
once the workers had abandoned their cause as a lost
one, quickly decided that everyone should receive a
bonus.
Significantly, even had the workers won their
point in the debateprofit distribution, their own
over
individual shares would not have increased, for an
industry-wide agreement had set a maximum on the
amount any individual could receive as a bonus that
year; that amount was in fact what Zvir paid every
member of the work collective even after the post-1974
entrants to the labor force were taken into account.
Whether workers knew this at the time is not clear, but
increasing their share of the pie did not appear to be
their primary motive in any case. Not only did con-
versations among workers both before and after the
assembly center only on the question of fairness and
who &dquo;deserved&dquo; a share in the 1973 profits, but even
after the decision to permit new employees to partia-
cipate in profit sharing had been made, there was no-
thing preventing the assembly from deciding to pro-
rate bonuses on the basis of seniority. Such a proposal
was never brought up at the assembly or outside it; the
issue was always who had a right to a fixed sum of
money and who did not.
Nor were the cleavage lines on the earlier dispute
over Saturday back pay explicable solely in terms of
narrow self-interest/income maximization. Certainly,
the of the production workers would have
paychecks
been fatter had the retroactive pay been given. Yet
retroactive pay would have reflected all the differen-
tials contained in the normal salary scale. The addi-
tional income garnered by the supervisory personnel
who led the resistance, and by the clerical and technical
personnel who remained silent throughout the debate,
would have been a good deal higher than that received
by the average worker.
These distribution disputes, then, were not only
cast inideological terms, but occured precisely because
contradictory ideological values were at stake in deci-
sion-making. If, on the one hand, ideological values are
invoked when groups come into conflict, on the other,
groups come into conflict because their ideological
value systems bring them to it. Long term group inter-
ests may indeed be the critical factor shaping overall
group ideology, but in the short-term, the ideology it-
self acts as an independent factor in defining the group
and the action the group will take on behalf of this in-
terest. 16
Nor did workers become involved and participate
in these two decisions out of a lack of power to partici-
pate in other decisions or because they only &dquo;under-
stood&dquo; immediate issues revolving around pay. For ex-
ample, at the May assembly, a new set of internal reg-
ulations for one of the firm divisions had to be ap-
proved before the profit distribution question was
handled. There was nothing preventing the same kind
of widespread participation and involvement in this
issue that later appeared in the profit distribution de-
bate. Interest in enterprise statutes, however, was
minimal. As for &dquo;understanding,&dquo; since no one even
listened to the regulations as they were being read, the
question of whether or not the workers &dquo;understood&dquo;
them was hardly very relevant.
The point here is that both the opportunity to par-
ticipate in and the ability to understand decisions be-
ing made are not simply objective capacities present or
absent in the decision-making process. On the con-
trary, they are subjective functions of the amount of
interest a given issue evokes. Worker involvement and
participation in distribution issues tends to be high
not because of &dquo;petit bourgeois materialism&dquo; or
&dquo;simple-mindedness,&dquo; but because such issues consti-
tute the most likely terrain for the time-honored work-
ing class principle of &dquo;a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s
work&dquo; to be violated. It is not that certain issues are in-
herently &dquo;simpler&dquo; than others such that even &dquo;unedu-
cated&dquo; workers understand them, but that certain
issues are more prone to be simplified by the ideologi-
cal value conflicts they provoke.
Nor were worker protests due to &dquo;misinforma-
tion&dquo; about the firm’s financial or legal status, as some
Zvir executives claimed after the assemblies. Each of
the assemblies had been preceded by a great deal of in-
formal discussion among the workers and between
them and various enterprise directors. The effect of
this early discussion and debate was not only to guar-
antee that the workers were informed, but also to cause
them to close ranks in resistance to what they knew
would be an imminent challenge to their &dquo;rights&dquo;. In
both March and May, management had succeeded very
well in informing the workers of the firm’s legal and
financial obligations; it had failed miserably, how-
ever, in convincing them that these obligations were
serious enough to warrant sacrificing the deeply held
value of &dquo;distribution according to work&dquo;. For ex-
ample, in the Saturdays debate, the only reason why
the item was put on the assembly agenda at all was be-
cause plant discontent had risen to intolerable heights,
16
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constantly reinforced by workers telling each other
that they were getting treated unfairly. At the same
time, workers knew very well far in advance of the as-
sembly that the management would use the &dquo;no funds&dquo;
argument to fight the retroactive pay demand. Indeed,
they came to the assembly prepared with the &dquo;we
created the value&dquo; contention specifically to counter
the management position. The hostile silence which ac-
companied the assistant director’s lengthy explanation
of why Zvir would not pay back the Saturdays’ labor
was hardly a sign of close worker attention paid to in-
formation previously unavailable. Rather, it was a lull
in a storm that broke out with renewed intensity as
soon as he finished speaking. For ideological reasons,
the production workers had convinced themselves of
the justice of their case and refused, for the same
ideological reasons, to believe what they were being
told; so too, they hoped, through open confrontation,
to convince the Zvir management that their demands
were valid.
The Climate of Decision-Making
Both the Saturday back pay issue and the profit
distribution question passed through the assembly as
well as the elected self-management bodies. Interest-
ingly enough, while normally one thinks of participa-
tion increasing in inverse proportion to the size of the
body in which a decision is made, in the case of the
workers at Zvir, the relationship appears to be pre-
cisely the opposite. Partially, this is explicable by the
atmosphere which was created by the purely physical
setting of the different kinds of meetings, and partially
it is owing to the interactive effects of worker involve-
ment and participation once ideological value conflict
had evoked widespread workers’ interest in a decision.
Physically, the assembly was far larger than any of
the elected self-management bodies. Because of the
plant’s physical layout, its meetings were held right on
the plant floor, the production workers’ &dquo;turf&dquo;, so to
speak. Meetings of other self-management bodies, in
contrast, convened either in an executive’s office or in
the factory canteen. In addition, the numerical pro-
portions of the contending parties were strikingly dif-
ferent at meetings of elected councils and assembly
gatherings. Even where the actual elected membership
of a self-management body was predominantly blue
collar, meetings were normally attended by a large
number of supervisory personnel in addition to the
elected representatives. Thus, the plant division coun-
cil was formally composed of seven blue collar produc-
tion workers and four technicians. Once the various
department supervisors and division executives were
accounted for, however, actual attendance at the meet-
ings was four or five production workers, three or four
technicians, and seven or eight supervisors. Likewise,
the enterprise’s central workers’ council had 21 elected
members. Out of the 21, approximately 16 attended
meetings. Eight of these were blue collar production
workers. Yet normally, about thirty people actually
were present at any given meeting, the difference be-
ing made up by the major plant executives, and repre-
sentatives of the party, trade union and occasionally of
other self-management bodies. The final picture looked
something like 11 blue collar workers, and 19 clerical,
technical and supervisory employees. At the same
time, if voluntary attendance at self-management
bodies above and beyond the call of duty was normal
for supervisory personnel, absenteeism for fear of
falling behind on production quotas with a consequent
loss in wages was typical for the blue collar production
workers.
The conditions in which assembly meetings were
convened, however, were strikingly different. If the
same twenty or so executives who frequently attended
the meetings of the various elected self-management
councils also were present at the assembly, so too were
an additional 200 production workers who would
never show up at any other meetings. Since the as-
sembly convened on the plant floor, all work had to be
stopped while it met. Even when the assembly con-
vened after working hours, most of the workers
usually stayed for it since the enterprise bus which
would take them back to central Zagreb did not depart
until after the meeting had adjourned. Hence, the
numerical balance of forces at assemblies was in dis-
tinct contrast to the proportions prevailing at meetings
of elected bodies.
Yet not all assembly meetings were marked by tur-
bulence. Indeed, precisely because the assembly had
the character of a mass meeting, it tended to oscillate
between complete docility, with little or no worker par-
ticipation or involvement, and open revolt of the kind
described above. Again, the critical determinant of
what was going to happen was whether an issue
touched an ideological nerve. When it did, participa-
tion was vociferous and involvement high: all that was
needed was for one worker to start an attack and the
others quickly joined in support. This was a pattern of
participation quite different from those observed in
meetings of elected self-management bodies. For ex-
ample, a week before the assembly held on the Satur-
day pay dispute, the issue was brought up by a tool and
die mechanic at a meeting of the workers’ council.
When he asked why the pay everyone was expecting
had still not been delivered, he was quickly silenced by
a long tirade from the General Director. When the
same question was posed at the assembly, it was res-
ponded to at length by the assistant director. If this
succeeded in silencing the original questioner, it
merely provoked five other workers to take his place in
the forefront of the battle.
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17
The critical fact of widespread worker involve-
ment is clarified if we look at the assembly participa-
tion patterns from a purely quantitative point of view.
If a tally had been kept of who spoke for how long, it
would have revealed in both March and May instances,
that 10 workers asked 30-second questions while a
handful of executives gave 30-minute responses. In
other words, a purely quantitative analysis, taking no
account of worker involvement and making no dis-
tinction between workers speaking as individuals and
workers articulating a group interest, would have the
assemblies manifest the same worker passivity and
managerial domination that were present in the other
self-management bodies. It was the mass involvement
in and support for the cause, however, that made all the
difference in the world at the assemblies.
In contrast to issues that did not hit ideological
sore points and so did not evoke worker interest and
involvement, here the cleavage lines were so clear and
the support for the speakers so strong that no more
than a 30-second question was needed to make the
point. No more than the participation of a small num-
ber of leaders was required to bring it home. Similarly,
the lengthy explanations supplied by management
might well, in another context, be symbolic of execu-
tive domination; at these assemblies, however, they
were a sign of defensiveness. In short, worker partici-
pation in the assemblies took the form of spontaneous
leadership and the fact that a precondition of such
spontaneous leadership is the presence of a large num-
ber of followers is what makes assemblies much more
prone to this kind of conflict than the elected self-
management organs are.
At the same time, precisely because the assembly
is a mass, rather than representative, group, when a
proposed decision does not entail any conflicts in
ideological values held by occupational groups, the
probability of any worker participation from the floor
is reduced. No questions or comments arose in the as-
semblies convened to approve plans, adopt statutes, or
approve the list of candidates put up for elections to
various bodies. Yet when the original recommenda-
tions for these decisions had first passed through the
elected self-management organs, several workers had
offered their individual opinions and given sugges-
tions. In sum, the assembly setting is one which places
a premium on conformity to group norms of behavior.
The key question, then, is what group behavior will be,
and it is here that the presence of lack of overt ideologi-
cal conflict acquires its crucial significance.
Other Points of Ideological Conflict at Zvir
The previous section has shown that worker par-
ticipation and involvement in self-management on be-
half of a specific worker interest tended to coincide
with issues coming before the assembly and involving
ideological conflict with another enterprise group.
While distribution issues most frequently fell into this
category, not all and not only distribution issues
touched on deeply felt worker values.
Questions of responsibility also aroused wide-
spread involvement and debate. For example, in the
Saturday pay dispute, once the workers had given up
hope of actually receiving the retroactive wages, they
then belligerently turned to accuse management of in-
competence. They had come in on Saturdays and done
their jobs; if the value they had created had not been
&dquo;realized&dquo; that was the fault of management. The
executives, in turn, countered with the argument of
&dquo;collective responsibility&dquo;, asserting that the shortage
of funds occurred because no one had worked hard
enough. Undercurrents on the managerial vs. collective
responsibility argument continued to crop up in the
elected self-management bodies too. Each time, for ex-
ample, the firm’s failure to meet its plan targets was an
item on the agenda of either the central workers’ coun-
cil or the council of the production division, a good
deal of discussion in which workers actively partici-
pated occurred around the questions of whose fault it
was and who was responsible for &dquo;putting things in or-
der&dquo; so plan goals could be fulfilled. Yet, because the
decision on these items that had to be made was merely
one of accepting a quarterly or annual report, no
choice between the conflicting ideological value pre-
mises was necessitated when the question was called.
Hence, the potential conflict always remained a dor-
mant one.
Hiring practices also evoked worker participation
on behalf of a specifically blue-collar worker interest.
Here, the feeling was pervasive among workers that al-
though there was certainly a need for engineers and
technicians in a mechanically sophisticated production
process, Zvir itself had gone way overboard in recruit-
ing white collar and technical personnel. While many
executives shared this judgment, for the &dquo;direct produ-
cers&dquo; it was a special source of irritation. Not only was
there a shortage of production workers, meaning a
greater burden of the work fell on them; not only did
university-trained engineers, some of whom were
widely viewed as incompetent, regularly get preferen-
tial treatment in apartment allocations and of course,
higher salaries; but Yugoslav ideology holds that only
&dquo;direct producers&dquo; create value while &dquo;indirect produ-
cers&dquo; live off it. Hence, even though no one contested
the &dquo;necessary&dquo; character of professional, clerical, and
technical labor, non-manual employees were still often
viewed by the production workers as &dquo;parasites.&dquo; A
spontaneous mobilization of the production workers
in September, 1974 to achieve parity in overtime rates
with technicians was a manifestation of this ideologi-
cal value. The overtime dispute first passed through
18
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the assembly and the predictable worker-management
conflict took place; this time, however, the workers
were able to bring management over to their side, less
on the merits of their argument than by a threatened
refusal to perform overtime work altogether if prevail-
ing rates remained in effect. Again, ideological conflict
was resolved with a fait accompli, and new overtime
rates were soon put into effect by the workers’ council.
Individual appeals, too, often served to crysallize
outstanding worker grievances. Only the fact that, at
least in the course of this study, they never went before
the assembly saved the firm from other explosive con-
flicts. Appeals did come before the elected self-manage-
ment bodies, and when the appeal rubbed a sore spot,
the worker representatives would quite actively sup-
port the cause of the injured individual on behalf of
the plant workers in general. 17 Again, they were quite
selective in choosing which appeals to support. A
young engineer who demanded a promotion to a job
deemed unnecessary received scant sympathy; a plant
foreman who had worked at Zvir for 26 years and had
been refused a loan to repair his home for 5 years in a
row provoked a strong current of solidarity. The latter
case, in distinct contrast with the former, played into a
widespread sense prevailing among the production
workers that they were discriminated against in the
firm’s use of housing funds to attract and keep young
professional and technical personnel.
Note that the common element in all these ques-
tions is not the specific issue itself, but the fact that an
ideological value held by the production workers was
involved in the decision-making process. Thus, while
these particular issues were the ones which excited the
most worker interest at Zvir, it is quite conceivable
that entirely different questions may come to the fore-
ground in other enterprises for the same underlying
reasons. Production rhythms, for example, were signi-
ficantly absent as a source of controversy at Zvir. In
fact, as workers saw their pay as tied to productivity
and strongly agreed that it should be, they were
anxious to revise production quotas and increase piece-
rate incentives. The fact that each machine was indivi-
dually normed, giving each worker a considerable
amount of individual bargaining power, was undoubt-
edly a strong factor permitting the Zvir workers to in-
terpret &dquo;distribution according to work&dquo; in this way.
Yet one can easily imagine workers in another enter-
prise putting up strong resistance to proposed speed-
ups, especially should they not be accompanied by
wage raises.
The Logic of Non-Participation
In the issues noted above, worker par-
contrast to
ticipation and involvement at Zvir was noticeably ab-
sent in determinations of overall business policy and
in adoption or amendment of factory regulations to
bring them into line with the latest set of reforms in
self-management. On the whole, if worker participa-
tion on these issues occurred at all, it took highly indi-
vidualistic forms: questions on matters an individual
didn’t understand, a suggestion or two, an occasional
comment. At the same time, the specific issues falling
into these categories not only turned up most frequent-
ly on the agendas of the elected self-management
bodies but were also the decisions most important for
the overall destiny of the firm. Adoption of production
plans, setting investment rates, deciding on the size of
the firm’s total wage bill, approving capital loans and
credit agreements and so forth were all questions which
normally passed through both the elected self-manage-
ment bodies and the assemblies without a word of dis-
sent from the production workers. The same happy
fate was met by the enterprise statute, division regula-
tions, the self-management agreement by which the di-
visions agreed to associate, and all the other documents
setting forth the workers’ most fundamental rights in
self-management. While all of these questions were
normally accompanied by lengthy explanations and
occasional diatribes on the part of the executives and
specialists who drew them up, worker involvement in
them was close Why?
to non-existent.
Essentially, it would seem, because in the concrete
conditions within which Zvir operated, these decisions
involved no choice between conflicting ideological
values. On the contrary, everyone who worked in the
firm, from the General Director on down to the clean-
ing women, had precisely the same interest and the
same standards of judgment on these issues. All wanted
a business policy that would strike an optimal balance
between maximizing personal incomes in the long and
short run; all recognized that to keep the firm in the
good graces of political authorities, it was necessary for
its internal statutes to conform with existing law. As to
how these goals should be achieved, these were not
ideological issues to be settled through a conflict of
forces, but practical problems to be solved by the per-
sons most competent to do so: the firm’s management
and specialists. Indeed, in the workers’ eyes, this was
precisely what they were being paid to do, just as the
workers were paid to produce machinery. A worker’s
task was to do his work, not to meddle in the affairs for
which others were responsible. As one worker put it,
&dquo;I’m a real socialist. I don’t hang out in the director’s
office and I don’t spend the whole day running around
to a lot of meetings. I produce, I do my job, and if
everyone did the same thing, we’d all be a lot better
off&dquo;.
Worker criticisms of management, in this respect,
were not that management should not make decisions,
but simply that it shouldn’t make the wrong decisions.
A welder explained: &dquo;I don’t need to know the details
19
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of the plan, the financial plan, and all of that to do my
job. I don’t know about all the ins and outs of the mar-
ket ; only
I know that when this enterprise can’t pay me
on time,* someone isn’t doing his job&dquo;. Further, if an
executive did make a miscalculation, he should be
called to just as a worker was should he make a
account
mistake his machine; one of the major worker
on
gripes was the facility with which executives were able
to hide behind the screen of &dquo;collective responsibil-
ity’. 1 18
In other words, the failure of workers to partici-
pate in many of the most critical decisions Zvir had to
make was due less to a lack of information and power
than to an implicit decision on their part to delegate
these decisions to the parties they saw as most compe-
tent to make them. Precisely because the decisions were
so important and precisely because they were impor-
tant to all the members of the collective in the same
way, management’s judgements were not subject to the
workers’ suspicions in the way its positions on other
issues were.
Nor is the workers’ lack of involvement in these
issues explicable in terms of their holding to a &dquo;trade
union mentality.&dquo; Otherwise, one is hard put to ex-
plain the lack of overt concern with adoption of the
annual financial plan which determined the overall
size of the wage bill. While the attitudes and values of
the Zvir production workers regarding equity and fair-
ness are hardly different from those held by their west-
ern counterparts, their attitudes toward increasing
productivity, investment expenditures and labor rela-
tions were in marked contrast. Here, the Zvir workers’
recognition of the interdependence of their fate with
the fate of the firm is quite different from workers’
views of management and the firm in capitalist
countries.
At the same time, managerial activism on ques-
tions of business policy was high for precisely the same
reasons worker involvement was low. Whereas for the
worker, his job could be done regardless of whether or
not he personally was involved in formulating the pro-
duction plans, the plant chiefs’ could not; the latter had
to participate in setting production targets, in seeing
that plant capacity was being efficiently utilized, etc.
because this job meant that he was responsible for
achieving the goals set in the plan.
1 n f luence and Participation
Finally, ashould be taken of the ques-
brief note
tion of influence. As notedearlier, perceived influence
will vary with the degree to which one’s own prefer-
ences coincide with the final decision arrived at, re-
*Monthly paychecks were often late owing to Zvir’s perennial cash
shortages
gardless of the amount of one’s participation in the de-
cision-making process itself. Applying this to the two
kinds of issues described above, then, the following
picture emerges. At Zvir issues of ideological confron-
tation, where worker involvement and participation
was highest and most intense, tended to be resolved by
one side being able to present the other with a seem-
ingly unalterable fact. For the workers, the only &dquo;un-
alterable fact&dquo; they could normally draw on was the re-
fusal to go on working, an action costly to workers and
management alike and hence taken under only the most
extreme circumstances. Workers thus tended to lose
these conflicts, despite the high level of interest
aroused in them. On the other hand, decisions made on
value premises everyone was agreed on reflected the
workers’ preferences as much as those of all others in
the firm. The ironic result, then, was that the issues in
which the workers took the most active interest were
precisely the issues on which they were likely to per-
ceive themselves as least influential. At the same time,
the issues they were directly involved in the least were
the problems whose solutions was likely to give them
the greatest sense of &dquo;control&dquo; over enterprise policy.19
Worker participation at Zvir (in contrast to the partici-
pation of supervisory personnel) did not correlate with
either objective or perceived influence, and the fact
that Zvir’s overall ratio of worker to management par-
ticipation is so similar to that of other Yugoslav firms
suggests that this situation may be a general one.
Implication for Theoretical Approaches
To
Participation
With this in mind, we can return to the analyses
attempting explain
to the &dquo;failure&dquo; of workers to par-
ticipate in self-management with a new insight into
their validity or lack of it. Nevertheless, insofar as the
analysis presented here is based on a single case, the
tentativeness of the hypotheses and the exploratory
nature of the argument must be stressed.
&dquo;Lack of interest&dquo; in decision-making is indeed a
cause of worker non-involvement in many decisions;
yet, to the degree workers take no personal, individual
interest in certain questions for quite rational and
understandable reasons, it is quite difficult to see why
the remedies of education 20 and a higher standard of
living should cause worker participation to increase at
plants like Zvir. It was not that the Zvir workers were
uninterested in the financial plan because they
couldn’t understand it, but they never took the time to
have it gone over carefully because they weren’t inter-
ested in it. In other words, &dquo;lack of interest&dquo; is as much
a consequence as a cause of worker non-involvement.
Meanwhile, if lack of interest is a factor underlying
the low participation rates of workers in self-manage-
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20
ment, it is not necessarily a cause of the perceived lack
of influence of workers in decision-making. In fact, at
Zvir, the relationship was quite the opposite: the
issues the workers were the most interested in were the
ones where they were most frequently forced to aban-
don their cause.
Nor is it clear that the power of management and
specialists acts to brake participation. Regardless of
how powerful management was, the Zvir workers did
not hesitate to fight bitter battles on behalf of their own
interests when necessary. And where the workers did
not get involved, this was precisely because they felt
the decisions most congruent with their interests
would most probably come from following manage-
ment recommendations.
It is on the question of influence that charges of
managerial domination are most telling. Insofar as cer-
tain decisions involved mutually exclusive choices be-
tween managerial and worker value premises, workers
and management were indeed involved in a zero-sum
game: the possession of influence by one by definition
meant the lack of it by the other. Here again, however,
it is not clear why increasing legal restrictions on
managerial freedom of action would provide a solu-
tion. On the one hand, such restrictions may merely
frustrate the workers’ sense of their own control by
further clouding the responsibility question and in-
creasing the amount of time taken out of production to
decide issues on which everyone is fundamentally
agreed. On the other, let us note that in the case of Zvir,
the workers lost the Saturdays question and the profit
distribution debate not because management had made
a decision behind their backs, but because it was able
to present the actual situation of the firm in a way that
eliminated the possibility of choosing the alternative
the workers favored. Furthermore, when the conflict
over overtime rates occurred, the workers were able to
do the same vis-a-vis management. The point here is
that no matter how many legal restrictions manage-
ment is subjected to, none of them would prevent such
conflicts from arising since the bases for them are con-
flicting ideological principles both of which are incor-
porated into the self-management system itself. The
only way of correcting the balance in such situations
would appear to be through creating stronger trade
unions; yet the &dquo;trade union mentality&dquo; of the &dquo;wage
laborer&dquo; is precisely what self-management theoreti-
cally seeks to overcome.
At the same time, it is not clear that the market
operates to obstruct worker participation in self-
management, at least within the enterprise. Indeed, a
strong argument can be made that it is precisely the in-
come and other differentials between occupational
categories brought about by the market that provide
the material conditions for an identity of interests and
ideological values among blue collar workers to arise.
In this the market may be a prime cause of
sense,
worker participation. On the other hand, however, the
need for enterprise decisions to respond to the cues of
the market regardless of what the workers see as their
rights may well be the critical factor accounting for
their lack of perceived influence. Yet again, it is not
clear why making these decisions outside the enter-
prise altogether would increase it.
Finally, the example of Zvir should indicate that
whatever the power &dquo;Statist&dquo; elements in Yugoslavia
have, individual firms continue to have a good deal of
discretion in determining their own business policies;
indeed, the conflicts described above would never have
occurred at all if this had not been the case. At the same
time, the fact that management was able to strengthen
its position by interpreting regulations made outside
the firm itself in a way which prohibited adoption of
worker-preferred alternatives appears to lend sub-
stance to the charge that &dquo;Statism&dquo; reduces worker in-
fluence. Nonetheless, were the scope of external regu-
lation to be reduced, it would not necessarily result in
an increase of worker influence but rather, would
merely enlarge the influence of the market in enter-
prise decision-making. Moreover, many of the poli-
tically determined regulations which circumscribe the
autonomy of the Yugoslav firm are made specifically
to protect the production workers (e.g., hiring and fir-
ing provisions, election of directors, restrictions on in-
come differentials, etc.). Eliminating more of them
might well increase worker participation by creating
conflict over issues which currently are not resolved
inside the firm but simultaneously might reduce
NOTES
1. Indeed, it is rarethat social research shows such unanimity in
its findings Studies on worker participation in Yugoslav enterprises
are numerous, and the list I cite is far from complete. See V. Arzenšek,
"Participacija zaposlenih u jugoslovenskoj industriji," Moderna
organizacija no. 1-2 (1971): 134-43; O. Bajio, "Proces samoupravnog
odlučivanja posmatran u pojedinim fazama 1 celini" (Masters’ thesis,
University of Zagreb, 1973); Zlatko Jeličić, "Distribucija utjecaja
nekih odluka u radnoj organizaciji," Moderna organizacija, no. 5-6
(1970); Josip Obradović, "Distribucija participacije u procesu
donošenja odluka," Revija za sociologiju no. 1 (1972): 15-48; Josip
Obradović, William Rodgers, and John French, "Workers’ Councils
in Yugoslavia," Human Relations 23 (Oct. 1970): 459-71; Veljko Rus,
"The Yugoslav Enterprise," in Workers’ Self-Management and
Orgnaizational Power in Yugoslavia, edited by J. Obradović and W.
Dunn (Pittsburgh University Center for International Studies, 1978),
pp. 199-218; Josip Županov and Arnold Tannenbaum, "Control in
Some Yugoslav Industrial Organizations," in Control in Organiza-
tions, edited by A. Tannenbaum (New York McGraw Hill, 1968), pp.
91-112; Sidney Verba and Goldie Shabad, "Workers’ Councils and
Political Stratification : The Yugoslav Expenence," American Poli-
tical Science Review 72 (March 1978): 80-96
21
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worker influence even more than at present by per-
mitting certain rights definitively held by workers to
become objects of enterprise discretion.
If the case of Zvir is indicative of what happens to
worker involvement, participation, and influence in
self-management in enterprises with a well-educated,
mature and articulate proletariat, the gap between the
theory and practice of self-management may well be
both less serious and more serious than is generally
supposed. While the fact that workers as a group do
not take an active part in many of the most important
decisions made by enterprise self-management bodies
need not imply that self-management is not function-
ing in the interest of the &dquo;direct producer&dquo;, the fact that
when they do get involved they are frequently un-
successful in getting their interests satisfied poses omi-
nous overtones for the system. It is in a seeming failure
for participation and influence to correlate for produc-
tion workers that self-mangement faces one of its most
critical problems; a problem whose resolution depends
not so much on giving workers more opportunities to
participate, but on guaranteeing them influence in the
decisions most important to them. It is in a trade-off
between the values of worker participation and worker
influence that a possible, if temporary, synthesis be-
tween theory and practice might be found; continuing
to assume that one leads to the other may widen the gap
further.
Ellen T. Comisso
Department of Political Science
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093
2. See Mladen Zvonarević, "Socijalna moć, informiranost, i moti-
vacija uprocesu samoupravljanja," Na e teme 13 (June 1969): 896-
š
921; Ichak Adizes, Industrial Democracy: YugoslavStyle (New York:
Free Press, 1971), pp. 1-32: Gerry Hunnius, "Workers’ Self-Manage-
ment in Yugoslavia," in Workers’ Control, edited by G. Hunnius, G.
David Garson and John Case (New York Random House, 1973), pp.
268-325.
3. See J. Županov,
"Samoupravljanja i društvena moć u radnoj
organizaciji," Moderna organizacija no. 6-7 (1971): 455-65: Rudi
Supek, "Some Contradictions and Insufficiencies of Self-Managing
Socialism" Praxis 3/4 (Spring 1971): 375-99; Božidar Jakšić, "Yugo-
slav Society Between Revolution and Stabilization," Praxis 3/4
(Spnng 1971) 399-425; and Edvard Kardelj, Osnovni uzroci i pravci
ustavnih promena (Belgrade Komunist, 1973)
4. See Zagorka Pesic-Golubovic, "Socialist Ideals and Reality,"
Praxis 3/4 (Spring 1971) 425-470; Svetozar Stojanovic. Between
Ideals and Reality (Boston Beacon Press, 1972): Milovan Djilas. The
Imperfect Society Beyond the New Class (New York Harcourt.
Brace and World, 1969).
5. See M Markovic, "Basic Issues of Self-Mangement," paper
presented at the Korcula Summer School, 1973 (mimeo): V Cvjeti-
canin, "Characteristiques et dilemmes du socialisme autogestif
yougoslave," Praxis 3/4 (Spring 1971): 500-526; Sharon Zukin,
Beyond Marx and Tito (New York. Cambndge University Press,
1975), Albert Meister, Ou va l’autogestion yougoslave? (Paris Edi-
tions anthropos, 1971). Zupanov, "Samoupravljanja," Adizes (Indus-
trial Democracy), and Supek ("Some Contradictions") also suggest
the operation of market forces has been behind the growth of mana-
genal power in the firms.
6. See Rudi Supek, "Problems and Perspectives of Workers’ Self-
Management in Yugoslavia," in Yugoslav Workers’ Self-
Management, edited by J Broekmeyer (Dordrecht, Holland H
Reidel, 1970), pp. 250-86.
7. Both participation and involvement are legitimate forms of
expression within the self-management system, in contrast with strikes
and work stoppages. The latter certainly represent a method of exert-
ing influence on enterprise decision-making, but it is a method which,
if legal, nonetheless is a distinct alternative to exerting influence
through self-management; hence, such activities lie beyond the scope
of this analysis. Onn stirkes, see David Tornquist, "Strikes in Yugo-
slavia," Working Papers for a New Society (Spring 1975). 52-71; Neca
Jovanov, "Strikes in Yugoslavia," in Obradovic and Dunn, eds, Op.
Cit, pp. 69-99.
8. For purposes of simplicity, I assume throughout this paper that
perceived influence is a reasonably accurate reflection of real influ-
ence. Companng the attitudinal studies of Zupanov and others with
the results achieved with the more objective measures developed by
Obradovic, this assumption would seem to be a valid one.
9. I have, however, dealt with them at great length elsewhere. See
Ellen Comisso, Workers’ Control Under Plan and Market (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp 166-88. Portions of the sec-
tions which follow are abndged from that work.
10. Estimate given by a staff specialist in the Personnel
Department
11. On interindustry differentials at this time, see Comisso,
Workers’ Control, pp. 103-8; Popov, "Intersectoral Relations of Per-
sonal Incomes," Yugoslav Survey 13 (May 1972)- 66-80.
12. See studies cited in no. 1, above, especially Obradović, "Distn-
bucija participacije" When Obradović’s measurements of participa-
tion were applied to meetings I observed at Zvir, similar ratios of
management/worker participation resulted. Content analyses of
workers’ council minutes dating back to 1966 consistently reveal a
22
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ratio of 5:1.
13 The 1974 Constitution is ambivalent on the issue. See Ustav
SFR Jugoslavije, 1974, Uvod and Clanak 40.
14. Both of these decisions had been made by an assembly in Nov-
ember, 1973. At the same assembly, the workers extracted a promise
from the director that they would be paid back for the Saturdays if the
1973 plan goals were met.
15. By tradition, profits were divided equally among whomever
had a right to share in them. Bonuses were thus an equalizing measure
at Zvir.
"
16. Thus, Lipset, Coleman and Trow write, [a] cleavage in
values or ideology allows for enlargement of issues which start out as
conflicts of interest among only a small group of its members It does
this through transforming interest cleavages which, as they gain in
legitimacy, come to be shared and articulated, eliciting responses
from the members in terms of their own values and ideology". In S.M.
Lipset, J Coleman, and J Trow, Union Democracy (New York Ran-
dom House, 1956), p. 323. Such a dynamic was even more obvious at
Zvir in cases of individual appeals. See below.
17. Note that individual cases and appeals have special appeal for
the sense of "justice" of council members, in marked contrast to is-
sues of overall business policy. This would help to explain Misa Ježer-
nik’s comment to David Jenkins that the workers "spend hours dis-
cussmg whether the night watchman should get a free cup of coffee
and approve a hundred-million-dollar investment program in five
minutes." D. (Baltimore
Job Power Penguin, 1973), p. 101.
Jenkins,
18. Thus, it is hardly surprising that Zupanov found workers un-
willing to share in risk-taking and accept pay cuts when their firms
showed losses. See Josip Županov,
Samoupra vljanje i društ vena moc
(Zagreb Naše teme, 1968).
19. This would help to account for the fact that although the var-
ious influence-graph studies continue to show a wide disparity be-
tween the perceived influence of management and workers, the overall
amount of perceived influence or control tends to be higher in more
profitable firms. See Rus, "The Yugoslav Enterprise," in Organiza-
tional Power, eds Obradović and Dunn, pp. 199-218.
20 Hence, Arzensek’s finding that education does not have as high
a correlation with participation in self-management as might be ex-
pected. See Arzenšek. "Participacija," pp. 134-43. Note again that it
would be difficult to find manual workers more educated than the
Zvir workers anywhere