ABSTRACT
Historically, the French were among the founders of industrial democracy. Although industrial democracy has been repeatedly demanded from the left wing, and often opposed by employers in west European countries as usurping managerial authority and property rights, there is a centre-right point of view based on Catholic social thought which favours participation. The belief in discipline and order which is still evident in German life, runs like a thread through the industrial relations system. As in the case of France, there has been legislation about workers representation since World War I. Works councils in Italy were re-established after World War I, as they were in other west European countries. They vanished in their democratic form with the post-war revolutionary upsurge and the many strikes, which led to the Fascists coming to power, and the supremacy of Fascist syndicalism and the principle of the corporate state.
