The Search for Industrial Democracy in British Public Services

The debate about how workers employed in organisations should have some say in the making of those decisions most affecting their daily working lives is a long and controversial one. Beginning in critiques of the private sector, and extended later to the public services, the debate polarises around two schools of thought. The first focuses on issues of control in organisations and the other on participation within them. Some early theorists wishing to democratise organisations, especially private businesses, supported workers ’ control, by arguing for policies to replace the capitalist, for profit, industrial system by a new industrial order. In this new industrial order, industries and organisations were to be controlled, partly or wholly, by associations of workers or their trade unions, rather than by a managerial elite. Proponents of workers ’ control have normally been opposed to the notion of an all-embracing role of the state, common to Marxist and other forms of socialism, and envisaged new forms of industrial organisation as the basis of a new society. This paper traces the development of ideas and practices in forms of industrial democracy in the public services and provides a tentative framework for analysing th