Ask Lemmy

There isn’t an inherent value to making all businesses democratic because very often most workers have no idea how the larger company works as a whole.

I work for an import company. My union warehouse steward is constantly judging the financial health of the company based on the volume of boxes he is shipping. The problem is he has no idea the relative value of those boxes so while he’s bemoaning we sent out 1/4 of the number of boxes on Tuesday that we sent out on Monday he’s missing that the total value of Monday’s sales were 3x Tuesdays. In 5 years of working with the guy he has never wrapped his brain around this. Our company would be much worse off if he had a say in how it works because he simply cannot see the larger picture as those skills were never developed. This is not uncommon and I myself have been the guy who cant see that larger picture in other roles.

Should the janitorial staff have equal says as to the executives in how funds should be allocated? Do we recognize that not everyone has the same skill set and level of skill as others?