Representing Employee Interests: Works Councils and the Rank and File: Representation Strategies and Avoidance Rituals

Works council representatives have competing social definitions of what constitutes their rank and file. In this article these definitions are clarified in terms of target groups and externally available human resources: colleagues, clients, mandators and audiences. An elaborate policy is developed to find guidelines and proposals for improving the rank and file relationship, and to discover 'manageable' solutions to given problems. This also requires the specification of tangible goals for a rank and file relations policy in terms of the needs served and gains expected by the works council members themselves from increased and/or intensified contact with target groups. Four such operational goals are made explicit in this study: (a) enlarged participation; (b) mobilizing consensus; (c) mobilizing power and (d) solidarity. Their common denominator is a wish to stand less alone in confrontations with management. Problems in the rank and file relationship, however, may serve to cover up more serious problems in the works council-management relationship. This is discussed as the fear of taking over the initiative. Four common works council rituals, taken as ways of avoiding the overt acknowledgement of this fear to 'stand up for one's right', are discussed: the 'garbage can' ritual, the 'inadequate information' ritual, the 'Tom, Dick and Harry' ritual and the 'back to the rank and file' ritual. These may divert attention from the real issue: the capacity of the works council to act as vanguard in the representation of workers' interests vis-a-vis the management.