Bullock report on INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY: A summary of the majority report, with comment Available to Purchase

The critical recommendations of the majority report are as follows: • employee representation on company boards should be compulsory in companies with 2 000 employees or more • this representation should be based on the present unitary board and not on the supervisory board principle • there should be three groups of director: one representing shareholders; another representing employees and a third group of co‐opted members acceptable to both the other groups • the shareholder representatives and the employee representatives should be equal in number and each group, separately, should be greater than the number of co‐opted members. (This is the 2x + y formula.) • employee directors should be chosen solely through trade union machinery • only unionised employees should influence the choice of employee directors • this influence should be exercised exclusively through a Joint Representation Committee (JRC), representing the unions in the company, and not directly by employees • before any scheme is adopted it must receive the support of more than 50 per cent of the total employee force, through a secret ballot of both the non‐unionised and the unionised employees • for this ballot to be valid at least one third of the eligible employees must vote in it • the new system could be triggered off only by a request to hold such a ballot • the request could come only through the recognised unions in the company • an Industrial Democracy Commission would be formed to supervise and monitor the introduction of the system and to conciliate and adjudicate in certain types of dispute • the system could not be expected to work without a major training effort. (This report is probably unique among government reports in quantifying this effort in terms of time, facilities and cost) • any new law should deal only with representation on company boards and should not concern itself with other forms of representation below this level, eg works councils