The Connecticut labor news., 1922-12-15
GERMAN EMPI OVERS EVADE
 INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY LAW Workers Share Management Reduced Absurd Degree U LawC Calculated to All Indus
 Relations.
By International Labor News Service.

By International Labor News Service
 Washington, D. C., Dec. 15.-All
 not we'll in Germany with the attemp
 to change by legislative enactmen
 from industrial kaiserism to industria
 democracy. The bankers and tn
 standpat employers are kicking owe
 the traces by refusing to admit em
 ployes to any participation in man
 agement. It IS not an open dehanc
 of the law but a clever evasion of it.
 provisions.
 Throughout the world the gospe
 has been spread that one of the mean
 of improving the industrial relations
 of employers and employees is the ex
 tension of the workers share in man agement. Progress toward tht achievement of Labor's ideals in the United States has been made by vol untary cooperation of workers anc employers. Germany, after over throwing junkerism by revolution put into the German Federal Consti- tuition a section (Io5) granting to the workers, manual and non-manual, the right to cooperate with the employ CTS on equal terms in the regulation of wages and working conditions, as we'll as in the general economic de-
  Germany apparently attained the in dustrial millennium by the stroke of a pen.
 Among the acts passed to give ef- feet to this provision were the Works Councils Act of Februafy 4, 1920, the act of February 5, 1921, providing for submission to the Works Council of the trade balance-sheet and profit and loss account, the Act of February I5, 1922, relating to the appointment Of members of Works Councils on the Board of Control of joint stock com panles. Nothing Tn the United States, including antitrust laws and Daugh- erty 1nJunctons, IS comparable to this attempt of the Germans to regulate industry by legislative fiat.
 Tn the absence of a spirit of co-op- eration. cooperation by force has not succeeded. Soziale Praxis of Septem- Der tells of many instances of at temps by companies to evade the acts. The last of these acts is evaded by altering rules so as to transfer part of the functions hitherto exercised by the Board of Control to special com mittees, called by various names, elected by the general meeting.
 In the terminology of American business 1t means that if the United States passed a law providing for rep resentatives of workers on Boards of Directors, the corporation concerned would immediately through action of the stockholders, take the powers Of the board away and place them in the hands of special committees.
 The Federal Association of German Industry and the Federation of Ger man Employers Associations have is sued detailed instructions on how to confne the influence of the Works Council members on the Boards of Control within the narrowest possible limits. Workers representatives on the board are not to receive informa- ton as to the affairs of the company and are not to be permitted to ex- anime their books, the contention be- ing that the board may delegate such power to an individual, but the indi- Vldual is not entitled to information unless the rest of the board is willing that he receive it.
 Other suggestions made by employ CTS associations for curbing all power and influence of workers on the boards of control are that the number of members of board of control may be increased; that certain companies may dissolve their boards of control; that the board may transfer some of its functions to it's chairman or to special committees and there is no law giving workers the right to be represented on such committees; that 1t IS not necessary that Works Council members be informed of letters circu- lated to members; that the rules of corporations should be altered so as to grant the board of control only to members appointed by the general meeting.
 Failures have been registered when legislatures have tried to establish in dustrial peace by law, as in the case of the Kansas Industrial Court law The German experiment is failing ap- parently because of the refusal of the employers to cooperate in observing the spirit as well as the letter of the law.
 Evidently the employers associa- tions, aided by clever legal advice, have so arranged matters that in spite of the constitutions provision for participation in management by the workers, the workers are left out in the cold and are to receive the treat ment usually accorded stepchildren on the boards of control, or boards of di- rectors as they are known in the United States. Voluntary co-opera- ton of employers and employees for mutual benefit and for the general economic development of productive forces has been the American method of procedure that has been successful.