Two decisions which were not accepted concerned (1) the
abolishing of the Workers’ Canteen at the Mill and (2) the demand
for wage increase.

In the first meeting, the Council decided to abolish the canteen
because the management purported that a lot of time was spent in
the afternoon for meals thus lowering production. Thus it was
decided that instead of the workers spending one hour for lunch at
the canteen, they should be given Shs. 22/50 instead of giving
them meals worth that amount each month. This applied only to
the operatives in the production sections and not to the ad-
ministrative workers. The Board of Directors did not accept the
decision and told the Workers’ Council to investigate whether the
abolishing of the canteen would really lead to increase in produc-
tion. So in fact the Board of Directors, did not refuse completely
the Council’'s decisions but gave the Council more time for in-
vestigation. Later the Mill decided to reopen the canteen and now
it is operating again. The same applied to the question of wages.
The Workers’ Council was told that more investigation would be
made on wage policy before the actual answer would be given. As
such the Board of Directors of Friendship Textile Mill has not
been over-ruling the Workers’ Council decisions.

THE ORDINARY WORKERS AND PAR-
TICIPATION

Up to now I have tried to examine how the Workers' Council
functions in practice and have tried to show how far the workers’
representatives do in fact participate in the Council meetings. Now
I want to go further and examine the extent to which the rank and
file workers are integrated in the whole process of decision-
making. This is an important consideration since participation by
the workers cannot be meaningful and effective if everything ends
at the Workers' Council meetings. The ordinary workers through
their representatives must feel that they do in fact participate in
decision-making. Only by feeling that they do participate can the
programme achieve its objectives. Hence it is imperative to ex-
plore how the workers in the different departments for sections of
the Mill are integrated in the whole process of decision-making.

Since participation as laid down in the Circular is an indirect
one i.e. through the Workers’ Council, the workers’ represen-
tatives must really try to represent the workers’ views and interests
in the Workers' Council meetings. Channels must exist whereby

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