Full Employee Participation in Policy-Making Through Representative Council (workplace democracy)

Forrest Christianelliott jaques, Governance, Managing, Wilfred Brown Leave a Comment

Wilfred Brown, the Managing Director and Chairman of Glacier Metal Company during Elliott Jaques’s work there, continued to believe that all employees had interest in changes to POLICY. He delimited that against the rights of managers to do their jobs within policy. What was policy was defined within the works council. Elliott Jaques abandoned this later in favor of trusting managers to represent their subordinates, in direct contradiction to his supposed value of creating systems rather than trusting people to be “good” as managers. Here’s why Brown was right and Jaques was not.

Fox Glacier. (c) 2005 Robert Young (robertpaulyoung). Via Flicr (CC BY 2.0)

How Unionization Benefits the Firm (Wilfred Brown, retired CEO of Glacier Metal Company, speaks out)

Forrest ChristianWilfred Brown Leave a Comment

Wilfred Brown, Managing Director and Chairman of the Board at Glacier Metal Company (where Elliott Jaques came up with Stratified Systems Theory and levels of work) supported unions at his factories. Even managers can best defend themselves “if they have properly elected representatives.” From a conversation he had with Wolfgang Hirsch-Weber in the early 1980s.

Vance, a Trapper Boy, 15 years old. Has trapped for several years in a West Va. Coal mine. $.75 a day for 10 hours work. All he does is to open and shut this door: most of the time he sits here idle, waiting for the cars to come. On account of the intense darkness in the mine, the hieroglyphics on the door were not visible until plate was developed. Location: West Virginia. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, 1908 September.

What Work Used To Be Like

Forrest ChristianCareers Leave a Comment

I advocate everyone having work that fits. I know that it is the best way to get the most out of someone, and that many of the problems that spiteful people believe are caused by personal failings are actually a result of being too big or small for the roles that society has foisted upon folks. So many of us …