t and the labor movement were synonymous. Beginning in the 1960s, however, the two concepts began to drift apart. A differentiation may be made between the "workers' control movement" and the "labor movement" in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The differentiation is important, because of the attempts in the United States to control the content and process of work. In the conflict between "management rights" and "union rights," the concept of workers' control is often completely ignored.
The value of the concept of workers' control lies in its ability to provide a working knowledge of what workers' control has meant in the United States in the past, which may be used as a basis for understanding what occurs in this area during the periods of economic transition, and the development of guidelines for use in the allocation of responsibilities for the implementation of change in the nature and process of work in the American economy. The real message appears to be that workers' control, in effect, b
...