The Workers' councils reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Workers' councils

Workers' Councils are essensially councils, or deliberative bodies, composed of working class or proletarian members. While the term may include instances where employers negotiate with workers, or workers deliberate without power, the most common use of the term is to describe self-governing workers without bosses.

Workers' councils have arisen repeatedly through modern history with a variety of names. Notable instances include the Soviet Union during 1917, Spain during 1936, Hungary during 1956 and France during 1968.

The key features of a workers' council is that a single place of work (factory, school, farm) is controlled collectively by the workers of that workplace; that there is no manager, or the manager is direcly under the control of the workers' council; and, that the composition of the workers council is determined by the workers who comprise it.

Workers' councils have also affiliated and formed higher bodies for co-ordinating between one another. These bodies usually operate on the principle of recallable delegates. This means that the body that elects the delegate may remove them at any time.

See also: soviet

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