Worker Participation and the Spillover Effect: The Case of Labor-Management Committees

Theoretical expectations of participatory theorists (e.g. Pateman, Blumberg) are applied to labor management committees (LMCs) in an effort to predict the spillover effects of workers’ participation in firm decision-making on their political and social participation. The two focal points are Jamestown, N.Y. and Buffalo, N.Y. Witte has argued that conditions may obstruct the hypothesized spillover effects from occurring: co-optation, structural impotence, and misrepresentation. In Jamestown and Buffalo, evidence that all three can be expected is found. The hypothesized spillover effects are not likely to emerge from the LMC experiments in the areas studied. It is suggested that structural impotence is perhaps the major obstruction to the spillover effect in these cases and in firms in capitalist economies.