Disenfranchised

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-219
Author(s):  
Joel Andreas

Chapter 8 examines the consequences of industrial restructuring, which began in the early 1990s and continues to the present day. The great majority of state-run and collective enterprises have been privatized, and all firms—including those in which the state has retained a stake—have been turned into shareholding companies. Tens of millions of workers have lost their jobs, and permanent job tenure has been replaced by much more precarious employment relations. As work unit communities have been transformed into profit-oriented enterprises, workers have been reduced to hired labor, losing their status as legitimate stakeholders and eroding the foundations for workplace participation. Shop-floor self-management has been replaced by harsh disciplinary regimes enforced by bonuses, fines, and the threat of dismissal, and staff and workers congresses have been sidelined. Workers, whose influence is now explicitly seen as compromising efforts to maximize profits, have been disenfranchised.

Author(s):  
Joel Andreas

Disenfranchised recounts the tumultuous events that have shaped and reshaped factory politics in China since the 1949 Revolution. The book develops a theoretical framework consisting of two dimensions—industrial citizenship and autonomy—to explain changing authority relations in workplaces and uses interviews with workers and managers to provide a shop-floor perspective. Under the work unit system, in place from the 1950s to the 1980s, lifetime job tenure and participatory institutions gave workers a strong form of industrial citizenship, but constraints on autonomous collective action made the system more paternalistic than democratic. Called “masters of the factory,” workers were pressed to participate actively in self-managing teams and employee congresses but only under the all-encompassing control of the factory party committee. Concerned that party cadres were becoming a “bureaucratic class,” Mao experimented with means to mobilize criticism from below, even inciting—during the Cultural Revolution—a worker insurgency that overthrew factory party committees. Unwilling to allow workers to establish permanent autonomous organizations, however, Mao never came up with institutionalized means of making factory leaders accountable to their subordinates. The final chapters recount the process of industrial restructuring, which has transformed work units into profit-oriented enterprises, eliminating industrial citizenship and reducing workers to hired hands dependent on precarious employment and subject to highly coercive discipline. The book closes with an overview of parallel developments around the globe, chronicling the rise and fall of an era of industrial citizenship.


2019 ◽  
pp. 53-81
Author(s):  
Joel Andreas

Chapter 3 describes the institutional foundations of the Chinese work unit system and the practices of worker participation in the early 1960s, after the system was fully established and before the onset of the Cultural Revolution. Participatory institutions included self-managing teams on the shop floor, technical innovation groups, factory elections, representative congresses, and other mechanisms designed to solicit suggestions from below, learn about and defuse employees’ grievances and concerns, and mobilize workers to monitor and criticize factory leaders. Despite high levels of participation, predicated on lifetime job tenure and relatively egalitarian distribution, industrial governance was democratic only in a very limited sense. The party insisted on maintaining a political monopoly and harshly suppressed any hint of independent political activity. Not only was the scope of workers’ influence restricted largely to the shop floor, but they also had little autonomy. Although participation was extensive, the system was more paternalistic than democratic.


Vestnik ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 328-331
Author(s):  
С.К. Молдабаев ◽  
С.А. Мамырбекова ◽  
Д.Н. Маханбеткулова

Согласно Концепции Государственной программы улучшения здоровья населения на 2020-2025 годы в рамках дальнейшего внедрения системы ОСМС в РК одним из основных задач госудаства является повышение солидарной ответственности граждан за свое здоровье. Существующая солидарная ответственность должна побуждать пациентов развивать навыки самопомощи/самоменеджмента с целью лучшего управления собственным здоровьем. Цель исследования. Анализ роли самоменеджмента пациентов в системе солидарной ответственности за свое здоровье. Материал и методы. Данный обзор основывается на материалах ВОЗ и статей зарубежных и отечественных исследователей. Выводы. На сегодняшний день, в системе здравоохранения Казахстана одним из основных моментов является солидарная ответственность государства, пациента и работодателя. Ведь каждый гражданин должен принимать важные решения, которые оказывают существенное влияние на состояние его здоровья. Поэтому стратегии по повышению грамотности пациентов, их вовлеченность в процесс принятия решений и развитие самоменеджмента должны быть одними из фундаментальных стержней существующей системы ОСМС и политики здравоохранения. According to the Concept of the State Program for improving the health of the population for 2020-2025, as part of the further implementation of the compulsory health insurance system in the Republic of Kazakhstan, one of the main tasks of the state is to increase the joint responsibility of citizens for their health. The existing shared responsibility should encourage patients to develop self-help / self-management skills in order to better manage their own health. Purpose of the study. Analysis of the role of patients' self-management in the system of joint responsibility for their health. Material and methods. This review is based on WHO materials and articles of foreign and domestic researchers. Findings. Today, in the health care system of Kazakhstan, one of the main points is the joint responsibility of the state, the patient and the employer. After all, every citizen must make important decisions that have a significant impact on his health. Therefore, strategies to improve patient literacy, their involvement in the decision-making process and the development of self-management should be one of the fundamental pillars of the existing compulsory health insurance system and health policy.


1970 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Macfarlane

Shop stewards, or other forms of workshop representation, are a common feature of British industry. It is not known for certain how many such shop floor representatives are active; estimates vary between 90,000 and 200.000, “the truth is probably somewhere between these two figures”. What is certain, however, is that the great majority of industrial workers, particularly in large-scale industry, have recourse to lay trade union representation for the settlement of shop floor grievances. Often such representatives are “the union” for the ordinary workman who does not come into contact with full-time union officers. “For the great majority of British trade unionists the workplace representative is their only direct personal link with their union.” He also provides a front-line defence against the arbitrary use of authority by management. If no shop steward existed, managerial authority, unchecked by the countervailing power of shop floor representatives, would be open to abuse. If such managerial authority was also supported by a system of legal powers which further strengthened its position, it would make possible “the use of penal sanctions to compel acceptance of working conditions which free agents would not endure”. Such was the case in the British Merchant Navy until less than five years ago.


1952 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-6) ◽  
pp. 351-382
Author(s):  
Ralph E. Yeatter ◽  
David H. Thompson

Tularemia, a disease of rabbits and hares (lagomorphs), rodents, and several other animals, is transmissible to man. In the period 1926- 1940. Illinois had more than 3,000 reported cases of human tularemia, about twice as many as any of the other states. The great majority of these Illinois cases were traceable to contact with cottontail rabbits. This paper deals with the relation of human tularemia in different parts of the state and in different years to weather, to the abundance of rabbits, and to some other aspects of its epidemiology. In analyzing the information on tularemia in Illinois, the writers have made an effort to determine the methods of management which would permit Illinois hunters to enjoy the sport of rabbit hunting without undue risk of infection.


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