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Etats-Unis : pourquoi les salariés sont absents des CA ?

Passionnant article de Justin Fox sur la participation des salariés au CA des entreprises américaines. Dans son article « Why U.S. Corporate Boards Don’t Include Workers » (21 août 2018), Justin Fox met en avant deux facteurs (le juridique et le politique) pour expliquer cette non présence des salariés dans la culture américaine.

 

Extrait :

The U.S., it turns out, also used to have entities much like works councils, which went under names like “employee representation plans,” “company unions” and just plain “industrial democracy.” They came into vogue later than in Germany, but constituted a major movement from about 1915 through 1935, when Congress put a stop to them (which doesn’t sound like what Jensen and Meckling would call a “voluntary arrangement”). I cannot claim to be an expert on this history, but I do know a lot more about it than I did a few days ago, so here goes. (…)

This would seem to have gotten us pretty far from the question of why American corporate boards generally don’t include worker representatives. But I think there is a connection. Union officials have occasionally gotten seats on corporate boards in the U.S.: United Automobile Workers presidents Douglas Fraser and then Owen Bieber served on Chrysler’s board from 1980 to 1991 after Fraser’s lobbying helped Chrysler secure a government bailout in 1979-1980, and after the bailout of 2008-2009 the Chrysler and General Motors boards each included a representative of the UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, which happened to have become the companies’ biggest shareholder. 5 Union and government-employee pension funds have also occasionally used their clout as shareholders to pressure managements that they see as anti-worker. And employee stock ownership plans and worker cooperatives (which got a boost from new legislation enacted this month) both give workers a say as owners.

But all of these seem quite different from the German setup, where rank-and-file workers are expected to be involved in company governance from the shop floor (or bank branch or research and development center) to the boardroom. What Warren has now proposed can be seen as a sort of very high level employee involvement program. Even if it doesn’t go anywhere (and I’m guessing it won’t, at least not any time soon), perhaps it can restart the discussion over whether we shouldn’t be encouraging other kinds of employee input too.

 

À la prochaine…

place des salariés

ESOP : où est-on aux États-Unis ?

Publication d’une étude américaine sur l’ESOP : « ESOP Companies Report Continued Economic Growth in 2014 », Digital Journal, 10 septembre 2015.

Results from the Employee Ownership Foundation’s 24th Annual Economic Performance Survey of ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) companies show that ESOPs continue to see increased economic growth. Additionally, ESOP companies continue to have increased share value, report high productivity among employee owners, and have overwhelming support for the ESOP among leaders of the companies, according to the results of this 2015 survey which was conducted among members of The ESOP Association in the summer of 2015.

(…) The survey asked companies to indicate their performance in 2014 relative to 2013:

  • 72.14% indicated a better performance; 14.55% indicated a worse performance; and 13.31% indicated a nearly identical performance to the previous year
  • 77.69% indicated revenue increased; 23.31% indicated revenue decreased
  • 68.94% indicated profitability increased; 31.06% indicated profitability decreased
  • 65.22% of companies have created an ESOP education program or ESOP advisory committee since establishing the ESOP

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian