LTV and the Role of Labor in Production

["Vic Thorpe" <just.solutions@pandora.be>]

Joseph,

I follow the logic of your response and would not disagree altogether with
the practical outcomes of your line of reasoning.  However, I do believe
that we need to escape from the existing production-centered paradigm in
order to make real progress in worker ownership and control.

Land, Labor and Capital (which, for me, includes 'entrepreneurship') are
indeed recognised factors - OF PRODUCTION.  Seen within this
production-centered view, certainly, the underpayment of returns to both
Labor and Land (environment) in order to maintain, or increase, returns to
Capital in face of an overall decline in the global profit rate, is at the
heart of the current economic, social, environmental and, therefore,
political stress.

People are only Labor when they are observed as inputs to Production.
Otherwise, they are fuller human beings with a variety of economic, social
and cultural needs - at a quick stab, I should nominate, for example,
shelter, food, security, esteem, socialisation...

>From a people-centered view,  Production must be put in its place.  I would
agree with Bill Greider (and probably others whom I have not read) that the
crisis is one of over-production.  Production for over-saturated rich
markets, not to fulfil human needs - even of the purely economic kind, let
alone the array of options given above.  A Production-centered society is
bound not to satisfy over the long term.

This also has implications for Organised Labor.  Unless it is able to escape
from its current narrow focus on money-wage workplace issues and recapture
some of the broader social concepts of the early days of labor organising,
it will continue to suffer the declining response of real people that is
evident both in society at large and in its own membership trends.  The
importation of these concepts into actual workplace fire-fighting, such as
LTV, is not such a long stretch as it may seem at first glance.

Although the future of steel production in the USA has a gloomy prognosis,
it may be that we can view LTV (and all firms) differently from merely being
engines of specific widget production.  Maybe we can view them more
constructively and less wastefully, as engines of economic, social and
political self-fulfilment.  Hence, the capital, land and skills available in
the firm may be turned to other useful purposes if the traditional purpose
fades with the change of economic direction.  Maybe LTV, viewed as a social
undertaking, can have a more useful future as a non-steel producer,
employing its people, its equipments and expanding its business horizons.

I take three quick examples:
1.  The unofficial labor work-in at Lucas Aerospace in the UK during the
1970's saw machines traditionally used for producing tanks, missiles and
warplanes, used to produce solar panelling, experimental MHD trains,
facilitators for Thalidomide-damaged kids and a short-haul commuter aircraft
that is still the most efficient in its class.  The exercise was perceived
as a threat to the stable labor view of the production/management divide and
was stepped upon by both the official trade unions and by the Wilson Labour
government.
2.  Mondragon does not abandon its people during a change in markets but
uses its central capital pool to kick-start alternative firms that expand
into new areas.
3.  There is an excellent OEOC paper (that should be in the Archive
somewhere) that describes the transformation of a Russian factory from the
hopeless relic of a Soviet planned economy producing unwanted mica
insulation materials into a thriving community, producing engineering
services, packaged chickens (!) and all kinds of required stuff - and, most
essentially, building a community from it all in which people feel valued
and can control their futures.

So, maybe worker control means something more than just participation in the
production process.  Maybe it can also mean deciding the useful direction of
that process and building a broader social, economic and political
alternative.  Maybe that is why it is so threatening to organisations - like
trade unions - that have come to define themselves increasingly in terms of
closed production systems?

What do others think?

Vic