Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/78

 The members are elected, as in the case of the factory committee, by universal suffrage. They exercise disciplinary power in place of the foreman. They have in general the exclusive right to hire, dismiss, admonish, and punish. The foreman exercises only a technical authority; moreover, he is often subject to the approval of the committee, or has even been elected by it.

(c) In many factories another committee is charged with classing the workmen as regards the wages—maximum, minimum, or average—to be paid them. Like all the others, this committee is elected by universal suffrage of the workmen, the employer being in no way specially represented in it.

(d) And lastly—and that is perhaps a farther departure from accepted customs—there exists in many places a factory committee of arbitration, to which disputes, individual or collective, between employers and workmen are finally submitted, which is composed solely of delegates elected by the workmen.

How does such a system work?

It would be ridiculous to say that it