LABOR: Workers on Boards

To an American, the idea of United Auto Workers President Leonard Woodcock and some of his union colleagues serving as directors of General Motors, and voting on such matters as the bonus of President Edward Cole, might seem farfetched. Yet something very like this arrangement has existed since 1952 in West Germany, where under law all large companies must give at least a third of the seats on their supervisory boards* to directors representing their workers. Now this system, known as Mitbestimmung (literally, having a voice), is spreading throughout Western Europe and has...

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