recent weeks when workers control has been requested in numerous enterprises and explained in tradeunion congresses. One of the first to suggest workers control was the union at Renault-Algerie. At a Assembly on May 2oth, 1964, the Renault section passed a motion in which it “asked the government to promulgate a law instituting workers control in the non self-managed enterprises.” (In Le Peuple and Alger Republicain, May 28th, 1964.) At the congress of the Regional Union of Algiers, a delegate spoke on workers control (see Le Peuple, September 7th, 1964): “Another participant,” writes Le Peuple, “proposed instituting workers councils to control the employers’ management (handling of funds, profits) in the capitalist plants.” In a study on the industrial zone of Rouiba-Reghai, Le Peuple concluded with an article September 25th, 1964, entitled: “Enterprise and Workers’ Control Committee in Employers’ Management” in which it was shown that the broadening of the powers of the enterprise committees must aim at giving them power of decision in the economic area, thus putting into practice workers control over production. The Federation of Oil Workers at the time of their national congress (beginning of October) launched the idea of joint management. The press commented on this slogan as being “a form of workers control.” Many studies and documents on the oil industry in the press have shown that the objective there, too, is to broaden the power of the enterprise committees. Recently workers control was discussed at the congress of the UGTA. At the congress of the Lumber and Building Workers, a delegate declared, Le Peuple reports: ‘The private and _ self-managed enterprises must participate in elaborating national planriing so that the plan will be of effective economic force. In the plants and industrial complexes, the UGTA must be able to propose delegates able to intervene in administrating the plan. In order to make it imperative to apply the plan in the private sector, we
propose that the UGTA organize
effective workers control in the pri-
vate enterprises, by granting broad
powers to the enterprise committees,
which, under union auspices, must
become management bodies.” (Also
see Alger Republicain of the same
date.)
A few days later, the congress of
the EGA (Electricite et Gaz
d’Algerie) workers continued the dis-
cussion on workers control, not only
in the capitalist sector but also in
the state sector of the economy.
Thus an Algiers delegate said (see
the reports in Le Peuple and Alger
Republicain for December 12th,
1964): “In our particular case of
struggling against the bureaucracy,
management by the ranks is required,
and we must create the organisms to
give us the right to control and to
manage EGA as a whole. It’s up to
the congress to concretize these
measures by forging the instru-
ments to apply them.”
With regard to workers control in
the private sector, the same report
stressed: “For the unions in the
front line of the struggle in capitalist
production, workers control of pro-
duction, of merchandising and of
planning is the most important task,
if we want to meet the ~ constant
sabotage of our economy by the em-
ployers who have not understood and
will doubtlessly never understand
that our socialist option is irrever-
sible.”
The question was considered so
important that the EGA workers in
the port of Algiers proposed 4
motion concerning the line that the
Federation of the EGA _ should
support at the second national con-
gress of the UGTA—workers con-
trol organized by the UGTA. Here
is the motion:
“In view of the coming con-
gress of the UGTA, the second
national congress of the EGA,
meeting December roth, 11th,
12th and 13th in Algiers, passes the
following resolutions:
“. . . Whereas it is necessary to
carry out the Charter of Algiers in
practice;
“|, . And the national mass
organizations control the _ state
apparatus but imperfectly;
THE WEEK — March 10, 1965 . And the UGTA includes in its ranks the workers of field and industry: “(1) Proposes that the UGTA sit with, full rights in all the state organisms and that the National Assembly be composed essentially of workers and poor peasants. “(2) On the capitalist enterprises. “Without . opposing working with boses who are ‘willing to play the game,’ we hold that workers control of production, merchandising and planning is the only worthwhile guarantee to prevent injury to our socialist option. “The Federation of the EGA goes on record to struggle henceforth to put the UGTA congress in March 1965 on. the axis of these two fundamental problems.” In recent days, a series of strikes was unleashed in the capitalist industrial sector (at Durafour, SATI- Michelin, Saints-Freres, even in the nationalized Minoteris because of a bureaucratized management uncontrolled by the ranks of the workers). With regard to this the daily Alger Ce Soir of December 15th, 1964, ran a headline on the WORKERS CONTROL requested by the 600 workers of SATI-Michelin who “are raising the problem of broad-
ening the rights of the enterprise committee to include control of the management of the business.” It has been’ established that