ABSTRACT
The cause of workers’ co-determination in enterprise may be traced to the prewar years. Following the War, the workers joined with employers, as social partners, in a cooperative effort to reconstruct and develop the war-torn Dutch econ omy. The Labor Party (PvdA, Partij van de Arbeid) emerged in February 1946 out of a restructuring of the Social-Democratic Workers Party (SDAP, SociaalDemocratische Arbeiderspartij) and several breakaway groups from other par ties, and in the same year it entered into a center-left coalition with the Catholic People’s Party (KVP, Katholieke Volkspartij), which was to govern the country until 1958. But in 1950, when Parliament passed the Act on Works Councils (Wet op de Ondernemingsraden), under which every employer with 25 or more employees was required to set up a works council, stiff employer resistance to giving employees an actual voice in management prevented the works councils from having more than a consultative or advisory role.2 The issue of workers’ rights in enterprise festered during the 1950’s, and by the end of the decade the general question of the democratization of enterprise, including the right of 1 John P. Windmuller, Labor Relations in the Netherlands (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 408. 2 Ibid., pp. 408-411.
