German law also provides for a system of "codetermination," or worker representation, on the supervisory boards of large companies.
Simon's approach, which was similar to the codetermination philosophy of modern German business management, reflected his experience serving on the advisory boards of the Deutsche Bank and Allianz Group insurance company in Frankfurt.
For this, industrial unions that could avail themselves of established systems of industrial democracy and codetermination seem to have been particularly well placed.
Labour also has a right of codetermination (Mitbestimmungsrecht) through representation on managerial boards.
Endorsing the German model of industrial relations, the report says that "mandatory works councils — elected bodies of employees with rights to information, consultation, and codetermination of certain employment conditions at local workplaces — have the potential to make both firms and workers better off".
Besides, the slogans of the 1970s that were meant to bolster the democratic pillar of the compromise between capital and labour, from economic and industrial democracy to codetermination, look quaint in an era where workers of the "gig economy" cannot even unionise, let along participate in some broader management of the enterprise.
These were ways not taken in late 20th century Britain, opportunities to build a more responsible capitalist model on postwar German lines, where "codetermination" is compulsory for firms employing 500 workers or more.
A system of codetermination, as in Germany would have to be imposed by governments--I don't see the alternative.
May's promise of a break with the past, her attacks on financial and business elites and on pay gaps, her embrace of things like an industrial strategy, regionalism, and codetermination by employees, and her repeated focus on the problems faced by the less well-off, adds up to an enormous agenda.
"Codetermination," as it was called in Germany and Sweden, provided workers with quasi-constitutionalized shop-floor representation on nonwage matters, such as work organization, that industrial unions had been unable or unwilling to address before 1968.
