ORIENTATION: HISTORICAL SYNOPSIS OF EMPLOYEE 
REPRESENTATION MOVEMENT 
A proper perspective of any social relationship can best be gained 
through an historical approach. It is desirable, therefore, to recount 
at least cursorily the development of employee representation. 
ANTECEDENTS OF RECENT MOVEMENT 
The recent adoption of employee representation in the United 
States and other countries was antedated by various socialistic and 
academic proposals and experiments in France and Germany with 
which are generally associated the names of Louis Blanc and Ferdi- 
nand Lassalle.! These early experiments have more in common, 
however, with socialism and the codperative movement, and are 
not causally related to the present development. The same may 
also be said of John Stuart Mill's approval of workers’ election of 
managers.? 
Shop committees or their counterparts under other names existed 
before the development of trade unionism. In many cases such 
committees were merely temporary complaint delegations; and partly 
out of such spontaneous efforts to deal collectively with their em- 
ployers were evolved the workers’ more permanent organizations 
known today as unions. 
Apart from the latter movement there were advocates of employee 
representation before any employer, so far as appears, adopted a 
definite plan of representation. Thus in 1886 an article entitled the 
“Shop Council” by J. C. Bayles, was published by The Society for 
Political Education in New York City. It proposed a small joint 
committee composed of two management and two employee mem- 
! Kirkup, Thomas, History of Socialism (fifth edition), pp. 48-9; 108-10. 
*Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy (seventh edition), Bk. 4, 
Ch. 7, “On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes,” Par. 6. 
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