i EMPLOYEE REPRESENTATION 
to “check up” the foreman, enabling the individual worker to obtain 
from some authority above the foreman a favorable answer to some 
request which the foreman was unwilling to grant. 
Experience demonstrates that whilé employee representation 
should and does serve to eliminate favoritism in the treatment of indi- 
viduals or groups, it should not and need not do so by depriving the 
foremen of any necessary authority, by duplicating any of their 
proper functions, or by insulating them from either higher officials or 
their own subordinates. It would seem desirable, therefore, to utilize 
knowledge of this experience in convincing minor officials and super- 
visors of the wisdom of installing employee representation and in 
working out with the rank and file those features which will affect 
the foremen. 
The first of these ends may be accomplished in several ways. The 
more fully the evidence can be made a part of the foremen’s own 
experience the more effective it is likely to be. For this reason the 
constructive value of conferences, whether of management with men, 
or within the official family, may best be taught by the practice of 
foremen’s meetings. As to the more specific question relating to 
the effect of employee committees upon the prerogatives of foremen, 
the testimony of foremen in other plants where employee representa- 
tion has for several years been successfully operating would probably 
seem most conclusive.” If the plant in question is one of several under 
the same administration, and a representation plan has been in effect 
in the other plants, foremen from this might visit the others and 
learn at first hand what men in positions similar to their own think 
about it. It is not essential that every foreman be fully converted 
before the plan is introduced, but it is highly desirable that the 
majority should have satisfied themselves that the step is likely to 
prove beneficial. 
EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION IN DRAFTING PLAN 
Plans of employee representation have been inaugurated by pres- 
idential fiat. Fully phrased, others have been submitted to em- 
ployees for acceptance or rejection by majority vote. In still other 
instances an industrial evangelist has preached to employees in suc- 
cessive mass meetings, concluding by inducing them to accept a ready. 
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