Mutualist Options for Employee Ownership, Industrial Democracy and Workplace Reform

Race Mathews

Few human aspirations are more fundamental than that of being "masters of our own destinies" - of being in control of our lives not only as citizens but in our workplaces.  Mutuals and mutuality are a key means of transforming the dream of workplace autonomy and industrial democracy into a reality. Examples of workplace mutuality include employee mutuals, employee share ownership plans (ESOPs) and worker co-operatives. Unhappily, Australia has been notably slower and less successful than comparable countries in adopting mutualist workplace practices and models. Explicit policies for mutualist solutions to Australia's festering labour market problems and flagging economic performance now need to be taken seriously, not least by the Labour Movement and the Australian Labor Party.

Mutualism

Mutualism is about self-help - about people helping themselves by helping one another. What mutualist bodies - bodies such as mutual life assurance societies, permanent building societies, friendly societies and co-operatives - also have in common with one another is that they are almost always a response to urgent community needs. For example, the Rochdale Pioneers - the twenty-eight poor cotton weavers who established their retail co-operative in Toad Lane in Manchester in 1844 - were responding to an urgent community need for affordable household requisites such as food and fuel.

Credit co-operatives were a response to the need for affordable carry-on loans for smallholder farmers, and later for affordable consumer finance. Friendly societies were initially a response to the need for funeral benefits, and, later, for unemployment benefits, sickness benefits and medical and hospital care. Access to affordable life assurance was offered by mutual life assurance societies, as was access to affordable home loans by building societies. Agricultural processing and marketing co-operatives met a pressing need on the part of farmers to capture value added to their produce beyond the farm gate.

Trade unions were originally mutualist bodies or co-operatives formed by employees in response to a pressing need to obtain better working conditions and a just price for their labour. Worker co-operatives responded to the need on the part of workers for secure employment and access to the added value from their labour, by enabling them to own their workplaces and jobs - by enabling labour to hire capital rather than capital labour.

The Employee Mutual

Needless to say, mutualist measures for employee ownership and control of workplaces offer nothing to the increasing number of Australians who are unemployed, under-employed or experiencing chronic job insecurity. The initial challenge for mutuality in the workplace is to obtain work for those to whom currently it is being denied. While, as will be seen, mutuals such as the great complex of manufacturing, retail, financial, service and support co-operatives - now the Mondragon Co-operative Corporation - at Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain have been triumphantly successful in creating new jobs and putting back to work great numbers of people who would otherwise have remained unemployed, other forms of mutualism may be of more direct and immediate relevance to the current predicament of Australia's unemployed. 

For example, employee mutuals - a new and radical mutualist model for dealing with employment problems which is currently being pioneered in Britain - may well have much to offer Australia. Like all other mutuals, employee mutuals are about people helping themselves by helping one another.

Employee mutuals bring together key stakeholders in the labour market in a dynamic partnership for employment growth and upgrading. The aim is to help their members find work, improve their skills and manage their working lives. Members of employee mutuals include both unemployed and employed workers, together with small and larger businesses, non-government organisations and community groups.

Employee mutuals are member-owned bodies, operating on a co-operative basis, although not necessarily registered as co-operatives. There is a small professional staff, but the balance is heavily towards voluntarism and contributions in kind. Close links are maintained between employee mutuals and their local communities, and employee mutuals seek to be closely attuned and responsive to local circumstances and needs. 

The benefits for workers include access to such core services as training, benefits advice, career counselling, job search and child care. Not least, belonging to an employee mutual helps the unemployed to keep in touch with the world of work. Business members benefit from the role of the employee mutual as an employment agency, supplying permanent or temporary staff, on either a full-time or a part-time basis.

An additional benefit for business members is that the employee mutual can accredit the workers it provides and guarantee to replace them in the event that they turn out to be unsuitable. Business members pay lower fees than non-members for services from the employee mutual.

Employees and self-employed members pay a modest weekly contribution to the employee mutual. Contributions from the unemployed are mainly in kind. An unemployed member might enter into a contract with the mutual, to provide an agreed number of hours of voluntary work in return for services such as job search and support.  For example, the employee mutual might train unemployed members to provide child care for those who have jobs.

Unemployed members might also make up teams for canvassing local employers for jobs both others members and themselves, marketing the services of the mutual to businesses and encouraging them to join. Other again might be trained as trainers in basic skills including literacy, and encouraged to act as mentors for their peers. 

The employment mutual might provide volunteers for local projects such helping older or disabled people or making improvements to the local environment. It would be possible to record members' contributions in cash and kind on a smart card, which could also be debited for services from the mutual.

Business members pay the employee mutual contributions in proportion to their sizes and turnovers. Their presence gives other businesses confidence in the reliability of the employee mutual and the quality of its services. Business members can also help out the employee mutual by providing it with office accommodation, or making available seconded secretarial staff.

In some instances, businesses and the employee mutuals to which they belong might joint venture a service which they both need, such as a child care centre. Business members can help employee mutuals with the development of their business plans, audit their books and monitor the outcomes of their work.

Employee mutuals can accept government contracts for the delivery of employment and training programs. Ideally, membership of an employee mutual would be acceptable to government agencies as proof of being in search of work when establishing eligibility for benefit payments. The government could also introduce modified benefit rules for members of employee mutuals, in order to reduce fears such as of a loss of income during the transition into work, and thereby make it easier for the unemployed to take jobs. Government seed funding might be necessary in order get employee mutuals started, but they should become independent of it as soon as possible.

How all this might work is apparent from the example of the Wise Group of construction and home-improvement companies in Glasgow. Training and work experience programs offered by the Wise Group are currently being taken up by about 1500 people each year. To date 90 per cent of the group's trainees and 55 per cent of the participants in its work experience programs have got jobs.

The group now plans to expand its intake of trainees to 5000 within four years. It will also accompany the increase with the establishment of an employee mutual which all its trainees will be able to join. The new mutual is envisaged as "providing a sophisticated, cohesive and structured package of support to people when they leave our programmes  which will help them find and retain jobs and access further education". ^[1] Its services will include provision of information about job vacancies, along with access to opportunities for continuing education, child care and a credit union. A small management team will work with an extensive network of volunteer local agents on housing estates around Glasgow. ^[2]   

Entry-Level Workplace Mutuals

How then, when the initial hurdle of getting people back into the workforce has been cleared, can mutuality contribute to enabling them to own their jobs either wholly or in part - to become "masters of their own destiny" in the workplace, as well as in their capacity as citizens? A useful mutualist starting point is the Employee Share Ownership Plan. One way of understanding ESOPs is as entry-level workplace mutuals, valid either as they stand, or as the starting points from which fully worker-owned businesses can evolve. ESOPs have the educative advantage of proceeding from the familiar to the unfamiliar - from holding shares in a workplaces to wholly owning it.  None of this means that ESOPs are a panacea for all forms of workplace dysfunction. Nor should the claims made for them be immune to scrutiny.

The Whitlam government's Income Tax Assessment Act (No.2) 1974 amended the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 through the addition of a new Section 26AAC designed to promote and facilitate the adoption of ESOPs. The measure was supported by the Coalition Opposition of the day, and further amendments have been enacted by both Labor and Coalition governments. Current ESOP provisions are in Section 13A of the Act. In 1999, the conservative coalition government asked the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Planning (HRSCEEWR) to inquire into and report on ESOPs. The Nelson committee  - so named for its chairman, the conservative MP Dr Brendan Nelson - recognised that there been a bi-partisan intention throughout to foster employee share plans and participation in them among general employees, while at the same time limiting their use as vehicles for aggressive tax planning. ^[3]

Strengths of ESOPs

The case for the ESOP idea is plain. Traditionally, ESOPs have been seen to mitigate the adversarial relationship between workers, managers and shareholders by bringing their interests more closely into alignment with one another. Workers who own shares are more likely to understand the problems of running a business and, in particular, the risks shouldered by the investors who supply a business with its capital. They are better informed about the business than outsider shareholders, and accordingly the more likely to be patient investors and supportive of long-term planning for its future. Their stake in the business makes them more loyal to it, and thereby reduces the likelihood of high labour turnover and difficulties in retaining skilled staff who are in short supply. It is in their interest as stakeholders to make the business more productive by cutting costs and improving quality. 

Businesses with ESOPs are less likely to move away from the communities where their workers live, and accordingly can be significant contributors to the stabilising of local and regional economies.  Experiencing the benefits of workplaces based on stakeholding, partnership, collaboration and co-operation may make businesses more open to pursuing similar values in their external relationships -  for example, to working more closely with one another through collaborative networks for procurement, training and marketing such as are highly developed in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy. Investing through ESOPs encourages workers to save for their retirements, and accordingly also boosts national savings. Workers in a small business whose owner is retiring can use an ESOP for an employee buyout, and thereby ensure that the business continues and their jobs are preserved.               

As well, as the UK researcher, Charles Leadbeater, has pointed out in a seminal 1997 study for the influential Demos think-tank, the grounds for ESOPs are likely to be stronger still in the future:

Employee ownership will help companies and employees shape the forces which are changing the way we work and save, the way our companies are owned and managed. Employee ownership will help us to make the most of flatter, networked organisations. Equity based pay will help define an employment contract to take the place of the traditional "wage-effort" bargain. In an increasingly risk-laden, uncertain world, employee partnerships can help to provide a sense of security at work, as well as contributing to a new approach to saving, education and pensions. ^[4]

Reservations

However, for all these great strengths of ESOPs, they have also been the subject of significant reservations, such as, for example, were set out by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in a policy statement adopted by its congress in 1989, and its 1993 handbook Employee Share Ownership Plans: Handle with Care. The then President of the ACTU, Martin Ferguson, warned in his introduction to the handbook that:

Share ownership plans will not of themselves produce better and more productive workplaces. However when coupled with workplace change, greater communication and opportunity for genuine participation, employee share ownership can be a positive factor in improving business performance as well as providing financial benefits to employees. ^[5]

A submission  to the Nelson committee by a major industry body, the Remuneration Planning Corporation Pty Ltd (RPC), reiterated that:

Financial participation projects which have a high degree of employee and union consultation in their design and which imply a high degree of employee participation in decision making, enabling employees to exercise some control over the factors that influence productivity, are likely to succeed. Those which are implemented without consultation, and which do not involve any employee participation in decision making are likely to fail. ^[6]

The Nelson committee concurred on the evidence before it that "Employee share plans are effective only if employees feel involved in the operation of their employer and feel that their actions and views can influence its wellbeing". ^[7] The conclusion from all this is plain: ESOPs succeed to the extent that they observe and embody mutualist principles and practices.

Nor is this all. The committee also concluded that to date the intentions of the parties and parliament have been widely disregarded, circumvented and subverted. ^[8] Evidence to the committee from well-informed external sources such as the Remuneration Planning Corporation and the Australian Employee Ownership Association (AEOA) disclosed that substantial ESOPs - defined as plans with greater than 50 employee participants and/or holding more than 2 per cent of the company's capital - were effectively confined to Australia's larger public companies.

According to research by the AEOA:

For all intents and purposes, employee share ownership is limited to the 13 per cent of employees who work for listed public companies. Out of this group of employees only a minority can presently claim, thanks to an ESOP, to be shareholders of the companies which employ them.

As a 1997 survey made available to the committee by the RPC confirms, "Of those public companies with an employee share plan, more than 80 per cent would only offer participation to senior executives, and less than 10 per cent would have meaningful, all-employee plans in place". ^[9]  

Far from the divide between the aggregate values of plans open to all employees and those restricted to senior executives being reduced, it is increasing dramatically. The committee reported a recent  survey as having revealed that "in the year from 1 April 1999 to 31 March 2000, executive share plans increased in value by some 124 per cent while non-executive employees experienced gains to 29 per cent". ^[10] The findings of the survey are consistent with the disclosure in a submission to the committee from the Finances Sector that:

In 1992 the chief executive of a major financial institution was paid 42 times the wage of a first-year bank teller. In 1998, the chief executive's position attracted a salary 103 times that of a first year bank teller. ^[11]

In 1999-2000, salaries and bonuses paid to the CEOs of Australia's top 20 companies increased by 23 per cent to an average of $1.97 million, or 48 times the average weekly wage. ^[12]   

Over and above the hijacking of ESOPs by major companies for the benefit of their most senior executives, they have been abused on an on-going basis by the tax avoidance industry as a vehicle for creating "plans specifically designed for aggressive planning by corporate taxpayers and high wealth individuals". ^[13]

While the loophole has been brought to the attention of successive governments, legislative amendments to date have failed to terminate the abuse. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) advised the committee that of some $1.5 billion invested in aggressive taxation schemes arising from employee benefit provisions, about one quarter, or $375 million, was contributed by employee share plans. ^[14] The committee recommended that:     

The Australian Taxation Office receive an additional specific appropriation to fund investigation of the promoters of aggressive tax schemes, Further consideration should be given to appropriations in support of ATO-initiated legal action should this be supported by the outcome of systematic inquiry. ^[15]

All told, evidence to the committee invites the interpretation that what ESOPs have in all too many instances been about is fleecing the many for the benefit of the few.  Despite a quarter of a century and more of outlays for tax concessions for ESOPs totalling many hundreds of millions of dollars, no more than 400,000 of Australia's 7,304,200 employees currently belong to share ownership plans, and the aggregate value of the plans is no more than $12 billion, and perhaps as little as $9 billion. ^[16]

As the RPC pointed out in evidence to the committee, "Australia's ESOP participation is well behind most of the other OECD countries and it could be argued up to 30 years behind Japan". ^[17] None of this means that there are not excellent Australian ESOPs, but rather that the aspirations to which the Whitlam government legislation first gave expression - and which every subsequent government irrespective of party affiliation has reiterated - have yet to be fulfilled.

Window of Opportunity

The tabling of the Nelson report in parliament marks a window of opportunity for Australia to do better. Key recommendations by the committee for fostering ESOPs include:

* that Parliament enact a single piece of legislation, bringing under one Act all laws governing employee share plans, their structure, taxation treatment, reporting and disclosure requirements;

* that any legislation providing for employee share ownership plans contain a preamble that clearly articulates the public policy goals intended by parliament;

* that an Employee Share Plan Advisory Board be established to provide advice on the policies to be implemented in order to foster the widespread development of employee share ownership plans amongst general employees, and in sectors where uptake has been poorer, such as in small and medium companies and in sunrise industries ^[18]

* that an Employee Share Plan Regulatory Agency be established, by legislation, and operate under the aegis of the ATO;

* that the government direct the ATO to collect information about all aspects of employee share ownership arrangements, including the revenue foregone by the Commonwealth through ESOPs;

* that three years from the commencement of its operation, the Share Plan Regulatory Agency examine the operation of employee share ownership plans and supporting legislation, and report to Parliament. In particular, the agency should examine:

* the cost to revenue of employee share plans whether they operate under Division 13A or not;

* participation rates;

* whether the legislation is achieving the public policy outcomes intended when it was enacted; and

* any possible improvement to the legislative arrangements that would promote the further spread of plans amongst general employees.

While a minority report from Labor members of the Nelson committee expressed strong reservations over the adequacy of the committee's recommendations for eliminating the use of ESOPs for tax avoidance purposes - and concern that unintended additional opportunities for abuse might be created - both reports in most other key respects reflect bi-partisan support for ESOPs. In the words of the minority report "The Labor members do support the widening of employee share ownership among non-executive employees" ^[19] .

The minority report also singled out for explicit endorsement the statement by the committee chairman, Dr Nelson, that "We are not interested in doing anything to liberalise access to employee share ownership plans at the executive end of the market ... if there is to be any liberalisation it is about making sure that employee ownership is more accessible to everyday workers". ^[20]

The support from the Labor members is consistent with that of their counterparts in Britain, where the Blair Labour government has recently enacted far-reaching new ESOPs legislation, which aims in part to achieve a greater take-up of ESOPs by unlisted firms. A recent comprehensive analysis of employee share ownership by the British taxation authorities has revealed that to date about 1000 unlisted British companies have adopted ESOPs. ^[21]

Mondragon

Impressive as have the strengths of ESOPs have been seen to be, they fall short by far of those of fully worker-owned businesses such as those at Mondragon. The essentials of the Mondragon story are simple. The businesses which now comprise the Mondragon Co-operative Corporation (MCC) were founded by a committed adherent of social Catholicism, the Basque priest Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta. The Basques were on the losing side in the Spanish Civil War. In Arizmmendiarrieta's words, "We lost the Civil War, and became an occupied region". ^[22] Appalled by the widespread destitution in the aftermath of the defeat, Arizmendiarrieta set out to rebuild the local economy in Mondragon, along with the confidence and self-esteem of his parishioners.

His approach reflected a unique amalgam of ideas. Influenced as was Arizmendiarrieta primarily by his social Catholicism, he also drew freely on a rich and disparate range of other traditions including Rochdale co-operativism, Raiffeisenian credit unionism, social democracy, Christian socialism and Bellocian distributism. Mondragon co-operativism and the triumphant success of the co-operatives which embody it is his enduring memorial. ^[23]

From a standing start in 1956, the Mondragon co-operatives have grown to the point where they are now the largest business group in the Basque region of Spain, the ninth largest business group in Spain and a major competitor in European and global marketplaces. What began forty-four years ago as a handful of workers in a disused factory, using hand tools and sheet to make oil-fired heaters and cookers, has now become a massive conglomerate of some 160 manufacturing, retail, financial, service and support co-operatives. Annual sales are now approaching - and will shortly exceed - $A12 billion.

The MCC report for 1998 shows that sales of manufactured goods were up on 1997 by 13.8%, assets by 25.9% and profits by 31.7%. All told, the MCC provides jobs for roughly 3% of the Basque region's 1,000,000 workers. While the region has lost 150,000 jobs since 1975, and the level of unemployment is currently around 20%, employment in the co-operatives increased between 1997 and 1998 from 34,397 to 42,129. Export sales of MCC products in 1998 were up on 1997 by 18%, to 47%. ^[24] The MCC is Spain's largest exporter of machine tools and largest manufacturer of white goods such as refrigerators, stoves, washing machines and dishwashers. It is also the third largest supplier of automotive components in Europe - designated by General Motors in 1992 as "European Component Supplier of the Year" - and a leading supplier of components for domestic appliances.

Whole factories are designed and fabricated to order in Mondragon, for buyers overseas. In addition, subsidiaries operated by the MCC in conjunction with overseas partners manufacture - for example - semi-conductors in Thailand, white goods components in Mexico, refrigerators in Morocco and luxury motor coach bodies in China. MCC construction co-operatives carry out major civil engineering and building projects at home and abroad, the building of key facilities for events such as the Barcelona Olympic Games. The steel structure for the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao - a building comparable in stature to the Sydney Opera House - was fabricated by a Mondragon co-operative.

The MCC also includes Spain's fastest-growing retail chain - Eroski - which currently operates 37 Eroski and Maxi hypermarkets, 211 Consum supermarkets, 419 self-service and franchise stores and 333 travel agency branches. The MCC financial co-operatives - the Caja Laboral Popular credit union (CLP) and the Lagun-Aro social insurance co-operative - are among Spain's larger financial intermediaries.

The basic building blocks of the MCC are its manufacturing, retail, financial and service co-operatives, otherwise known as primary co-operatives. The primary co-operatives embody and exemplify the key values and principles of mutualism. Each primary co-operative is governed by a General Assembly. General Assembly meetings are held at least annually to receive reports and determine policy. The Assembly in turn elects by and from its members a Governing Council, ranging from three to twelve members. The Council steers the affairs of the co-operative between Assembly meetings. Governing Council members hold office for staggered four-year terms, with elections at two year-intervals.

There is also an Audit or Watchdog Committee to independently monitor the co-operative's financial performance and its compliance with its formally established policies and procedures. The Governing Council holds regular consultative meetings with a Management Council consisting of the Chief Executive Officer and his senior executives. Independent of the Assembly and its offshoots, workplace groups within the co-operative elect a Social Council, which has a quasi-trade union function, with responsibility for areas such as job evaluation and industrial health and safety. Recent years have seen an increasing emphasis on industrial democracy - on participation and consultation at the shopfloor level - within many of the co-operatives.

Individual co-operatives are linked in co-operative groups. Originally, the groups had a geographical basis. However, with the establishment of the MCC in 1991 - with the replacing of Mondragon Mark I by the current Mark II model - they have been re-constituted along functional lines. There is a Financial Group, a Retail Group and an Industrial Group, with the Industrial Group in turn split into seven sub-groups.  The aim is for the co-operatives within each group to engage in in-depth and continuous strategic planning, to identify and exploit economies of scale and business synergies, and to operate within an agreed overall strategy.

A further and final level of linkage is afforded by the peak bodies of the MCC: the MCC Congress, the General Council and the Standing Committee. The key role of the Congress is setting the overall policy and direction of the co-operatives.  The General Council is responsible for drawing up and applying overall corporate strategies and co-ordinating the activities of the co-operatives and co-operative groups. The Standing Committee monitors the performance  of the Committee and the groups, and sees that the decisions of the Congress are implemented. 

To what then are the achievements of the MCC attributable? Firstly, the success of the co-operatives stems from the fact that every permanent worker is an equal co-owner of the co-operative where he is employed, with an equal say on a one-member-one-vote basis in the governance of the co-operative and an equal proportionate share in its profits or, on occasion, losses. Each worker has an individual capital account which is credited annually with his share of the co-operatives profits and enables him to maintain an on-going appraisal of the performance of the co-operative and its the management and his fellow members. In the words of a recent CEO of the MCC, Javier Mongelos, "The workers who own these co-operatives know their future depends on making profits". ^[25] The upshot is - among other things - a reduction in the agency costs the co-operatives incur, and a corresponding increase in their competitive advantage. ^[26]

Secondly, the primary co-operatives are serviced on a mutualist basis by a unique system of secondary support co-operatives. Arizmendiarrieta became aware at an early stage of the development of the co-operatives of the need for them to be self-sufficient. The support co-operatives were his answer. Capital is now sourced by the primary co-operatives from a support co-operative, the Caja Laboral Popular credit union (CLP), as is - for example - superannuation and other benefits from the Lagun-Aro social insurance co-operative, research and development services from the Ikerlan and Ideko research and development co-operatives and technical skilling from the university of technology co-operative. The structure of the support co-operatives differs from the primary co-operatives, in that they are owned and governed jointly by their workers together with their primary co-operative clients. Profits distributed to workers in the secondary support co-operatives are linked to those of the primary co-operatives.

Third - and finally - the Mondragon credit union, the Caja Laboral Popular, has been much more than simply a source of capital for expanding current co-operatives or creating new ones. In the phase of rapid expansion which preceded the maturing of the co-operatives as signalled by the establishment of the MCC, what was then the Empresarial or Entrepreneurship Division of the CLP offered a uniquely comprehensive and effective service for incubating co-operatives and ensuring their success. Groups seeking to establish co-operatives were initially assigned a mentor or "godfather" to work with them in the preparation of their application for a loan. Once loans were secured, the mentors remained with the co-operatives in order to assist them in the setting up of their business and enabling them to operate profitably.

As a condition of its loan, a new business entered into a Contract of Association with the CLP which specified - among other things - the mutualist structure and processes it should adopt. It was likewise a condition of the contract that specified performance and financial data should be reported to the CLP on a regular basis. Thanks to regular and comprehensive reporting, the CLP could count on receiving early warning where co-operatives experienced difficulties, and provide added specialist support through an Intervention Group within its Empresarial Division.

So effective was the Entrepreneurial Division that only a handful of the co-operatives have failed to become going concerns. ^[27] Consequent on the establishment of the MCC - on the move of the co-operatives from the Mark I to the Mark II stage of their development - the functions of the Empresarial Division have now been re-assigned, with some elements being incorporated within the MCC and others in new management consultancy support co-operatives. Mondragon's on-going expansion is now much less through establishing new co-operatives, and more through strategic acquisitions and alliances.

Conclusion

That the co-operatives have changed the way they go about their business in response to changing circumstances should surprise nobody. Their approach was aptly summarised by Arizmendiarrieta when he wrote "We build the road as we travel".  We in Australia should not be too proud to learn from the Mondragon experience, and in our turn "build the road as we travel".  We have much to gain from mutuals and mutualism, not least in the workplace, and the sooner a start is made the sooner the benefits can begin to be enjoyed.

Race Mathews is a Senior Research Fellow in the International Centre for Management in Government at the Monash-Mt Eliza School of Business and Government, and a former board member and chairman of the Waverley Credit Union Co-operative Ltd. He was previously chief of staff to Gough Whitlam as Leader of the Opposition 1967-72, a federal MP, a state MP and minister and a municipal councillor. His Australia's First Fabians: Middle-Class Radicals, Labour Activists and the Early Labour Movement was published by Cambridge University Press in 1994, and his Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stakeholder Society in 1999 by Pluto Press (Australia) and Comerford and Miller (UK). His E-mail address is <race@netspace.net.au>