ABSTRACT
In the field of industrial relations the Russian Revolution promised a transformation as profound as the overthrow of political absolutism. Workers' control radically transformed industrial relations. Workers' control marked a break in the managerial monopoly of the decision-making process. For the short period of its existence, labor was propelled into the realm of decision-making on the shop level, converting labor into managers or co-managers with authority over input and output, personnel policy, and finance. Each group—the Soviets, management, the workers, the factory committees, the Provisional Government—approached problems in its own way and either deliberately or accidently worked at cross purposes with everyone else. Throughout the first period of Soviet industrial relations this was a primary problem and it cut across all attempts at workers' control, collective management, one-man management, collective bargaining, and nationalization of industry. In the November decree the political question of factory committee power vis-a-vis trade unions and political organs was also dealt with.
