The Bullock Report and Employee Participation in Corporate Planning in The

In January 1977 the Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy (Chairman: Lord Bullock) was published [1]. It is notorious that 'industrial democracy' is a phrase to which many different meanings can be attached, but the Committee in its terms of reference was directed to consider only one possible definition: the representation of employees on the boards of directors of the companies for which they work. Since the Committee was requested by the Government to report within a year, a strict timetable to which it managed to adhere, a restriction on the subject-matter of its deliberations was undoubtedly necessary. More seriously, the definition reflected the realities of the political debate about 'industrial democracy'. The subject had been dragged into the arena of Parliamentary and general public debate largely through the sponsorship of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) [2], although other bodies and persons, notably the Commission of the European Communities and. Mr. Giles Radice, M.P., have taken a hand. Between 1970 and 1977 the Commission has put forward four sets of proposals in different contexts for the harmonization of the various provisions of the member states for employee representation and all the proposals have favoured some form of employee representation on a 'supervisory' board [3]. As a member of the European Communities since January 1, 1973 the U.K. has had to respond to these proposals. Mr. Radice, at a crucial point, put political pressure on the Government to establish the Bullock Committee by introducing into Parliament a private member's bill based on the TUC's proposals [4]. The major, new institutional development proposed by the TUC in order to give effect to its conception of industrial democracy was a system of employee representation on the board. The Bullock Committee was required to take into account "in particular" the proposals of the TUC, as well as experience in Britain, the EEC and other countries. Surprise has been registered in some quarters that the TUC should have advo* This article, written in December, 1977, has been updated by a Postscript, written in March, 1979. ** Mr. Davies is a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford.