II. Workers’ Participation in Tanzania
Workers. Participation: A conceptual Analysis

Workers' participation is a common phenomenon in the world
today. Many countries both capitalist and socialist have embarked
upon various programmes for workers’ participation, yet different
meanings have been given to the concept of participation and dif-
ferent institutions have been created to effect participation. The
differences in objectives and in institutional arrangements for par-
ticipation lie in the differences in the socio-economic and political
factors prevailing in each country at a particular period. Par-
ticipation has ranged from simple trade union bargaining as is
common in the capitalist countries like the United States to more
integrative forms of participation like the Yugoslavia, with its
model of self-management in industry. In Tanzania, the Presiden-
tial Circular No. 1 of 1970 also introduced its own form of
workers' participation by directing the formation of Workers’
Councils in all the public sector. These are only some of the exam-
ples of the countries where experiments at workers’ participation
have been embarked upon. Many more countries have established
some kind of mechanism for workers’ participation.®

All these efforts of giving a ‘new status’ to the worker in
economic organisations is a result of the realisation of the
problems formal organisations have posed to the individual
workers in society today. Modern man is a man who is bom
amidst organisations. Formal organisations have proliferated in
the economic, political and military aspects of life. This
phenomenal expansion of organisations has occurred not only in
the capitalist countries but also in the socialist countries. Since the
focus here is on workers participation, I want to narrow my
discussion to economic organisations. The expansion economic
organisations in the capitalist countries has been largely a result of
the rise of the private enterprise. Private enterprises have
developed tremendously, particularly since the Industrial
Revolution, in both Europe and the United States which led to the
emergence of big organisations. Government in these countries
have also increasingly involved themselves in the provision of ser-
vices for their citizens, thus leading again to the creation of many
government agencies. In the socialist oountries, formal
organisations have emerged from the need by the governments to

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