Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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The question of which aspects of the labor process get to be decided exclusively by management and which aspects workers can have a say over has been a matter of intense debate and struggle since the early days of American unionism in the aftermath of the Civil War. When workers assert control over how production is organized and how it gets done, they are challenging what have traditionally been considered the rights of business owners to make use of their resources and hired labor as they see fit.
✏️ This is where we get to one of the core issues in capitalism vs socialism. Who owns the means of production? Who gets a say in the decision-making process surrounding production? 🔗 View Highlight
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Employers insist that those rights are fundamental and inalienable. Under this perspective, attempts to limit management’s prerogatives are illegitimate attacks on the free enterprise system itself.
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sociologists Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin write: “For working-class radicals or socialists, ‘management rights’ are neither ‘inherent’ nor legitimate; on the contrary, such alleged rights constitute, in their view, a quasilegal form of illegitimate class power.”