ETC sponsors WPDC study on workers' participation

The Employment and Training Corporation has sponsored a national survey on workers' participation and employee involvement in Malta to be conducted by the Workers' Participation Development Centre (WPDC) of the University of Malta.

The "Trends in Worker Participation and Employee Involvement in Malta" research project will, for the first time, identify all current forms of worker participation or employee involvement in Malta and Gozo beyond collective bargaining; analyse the implications of such forms on workers, management and organisations; and identify the training and educational needs associated with performing such participatory roles effectively.

This first ever national survey of worker participation and employee involvement in Malta will focus on the private and quasi-public sector - the whole gainfully occupied population but excluding the public service where participation schemes are no longer practised and small firms employing fewer than 50 employees. This means an approximate target population of 800 firms employing some 80,000 workers.

The survey will document, among other things, the extent to which participation/involvement schemes are widespread in the Maltese workplaces; the types and variations of participation schemes that currently exist; and the extent to which the six parameters identified here are matched in practice in each workplace which will be documented as having some participatory policy in force.

The parameters are:

¤ Participation in the structures of decision-making, whether by direct or indirect representation;

¤ Frequent feedback of economic results to employees (including information, but also possibly financial benefits - such as profit-sharing or stock/share options);

¤ Full sharing with employees of management-level information, skills and expertise;

¤ Guaranteed individual rights (equivalent to civil liberties);

¤ An independent board of appeal in case of disputes; and

¤ The adoption of a particular typeset of attitudes, values or consciousness.

Other issues under examination include the degree of control that employees enjoy over any single decision; the issues over which that control is exercised; and the organisational level (and therefore the class or grade of employees involved) at which that control is exercised.

An audit of the skills and competences held and those deemed to be required for any involved employees to participate actively and optimally within the participatory structures provided - such as organisational skills, basic knowledge of accounting and auditing, public speaking, committee procedures, report writing - and the identification of any specific training initiatives which may be useful to bolster or cultivate such skills among employees where a skills and competence gap is identified.

The extent to which any such schemes enjoy the enthusiastic support, compliance or hostility of stakeholders within and possible outside the enterprise, including company directors, professional management, trade unions, workers and investors.

The extent to which these schemes connect with more traditional forms of industrial relations practices - and how they are perceived to blend with these, and whether with good or bad effects, by managers, trade unions, directors, and workers at large. (There is ample scope for role conflict.)

Follow-up studies at regular intervals will be able to document and appraise the evolution and trends in worker participation/employee involvement practices in Malta.

Population under study

The population under study consists of private employers, independent statutory bodies, as well as parastatal firms, corporations and others where Government has a controlling interest.

A typology of forms of such institutionalised participation in Malta would include:

¤ Involvement in decision-making schemes;
¤ Consultation schemes;
¤ Information schemes;
¤ Profit-sharing schemes;
¤ Co-ownership/employee shareholding schemes
¤ Worker co-operative schemes
¤ Schemes involving directors elected by, and from, the workforce (worker-directors).