Every person will have both a voice and a vote in managing their workplace, together with all other workers who work together to produce their good or service.
       Management authority will flow from the bottom up instead of from the top down. Workers will elect their supervisors and managers, their fellow workers they recognize as the most experienced and capable in the work they do. If they fail to manage the workplace correctly, the workers who voted them in can vote them out and delegate the responsibility to someone else.
       Workers in each industry — such as the different branches of manufacturing, communication, agriculture, education, transportation, distribution, and so on — will  elect representatives from each industry to coordinate and manage each industry on the local, regional and national levels. They will elect their reps to a new national Congress of representatives from all industries to coordinate and manage the economy as a whole.
       Working Democracy combines grassroots local control at the single workplace level with representative democracy for each higher level of industrial management to ensure the entire economy runs smoothly and efficiently.
       Working Democracy is more efficient because workers manage their own work and can assess every day the effectiveness of the way it is done. They can make necessary changes without going through layers of bosses who may not even know or understand what the problem is.
       Working Democracy ensures resources are used wisely and aren’t wasted. When people are working for themselves they understand the importance of making the right choices when it comes to what to produce and how to produce it.
       Working Democracy directs our science and technology to producing what is most beneficial for the most people, not what is merely most profitable for a few.

Working Democracy means . . .

JOB SECURITY
       Workers’ jobs are secure only when workers, not employers, own those jobs.
       When a handful of people on a corporation’s board of directors can make decisions that destroy the livelihoods of thousands of workers, that’s not democracy.
       Working Democracy puts basic economic decisions in the hands of the people. Nobody is going to vote to eliminate their own source of livelihood unless the community of workers decides they can produce something different that has a greater benefit for the country.
       Coordinating their decision with the rest of the economy through their elected industrial management councils and Congress, including the educational division that can teach workers new skills, workers and communities can adjust their jobs to meet the changing needs and wants of society. The livelihoods of workers will be preserved instead of destroyed, with added benefit for society as a whole.

A SHORTER WORKWEEK
        As technology develops labor productivity rises, which means we can produce more in the same or shorter work time. Technology should therefore enable us to maintain the same or an improved standard of living with a shorter workweek.
        Yet the opposite is true today. Americans are working longer and harder than ever, with all the personal and family stress that overwork produces.
        Today technology is used by corporations to lower labor costs and increase profits, which harms rather than benefits the majority.
        Working Democracy puts control of technology in the hands of the people, to be used for the benefit of people. As our productivity continues to rise, the hours of work required to produce the goods and services we need will continue to fall, and the workweek of each worker can continue to be reduced.
        Work will continue to be an important part of our lives in defining who we are as individuals. But it won't be the only part.
        With a shorter workweek we’ll have time to develop our other talents and personal potential. We’ll have time to be the best parents, students, friends and neighbors we can be. We will be complete, not one-dimensional, human beings.

BEST POSSIBLE LIVING STANDARDS
       Working Democracy will provide the incentive to bring people into work instead of throwing them out. The more workers we have to do each job, the fewer hours each worker will need to work each week to get the job done. In this way the unemployment and underemployment that are the cause of poverty can be reduced to a minimum.
       Today even full-time workers live in poverty because their jobs pay too little to provide a proper standard of living. Working Democracy will compensate all jobs fully, in the understanding that all useful work is equally necessary to run the economy.
       Standard of living is determined not only by the level of personal consumption but also by access to social services: schools, libraries, parks, hospitals and clinics, public transportation.
       Today these aspects of the American standard of living are in decline because government budgets are squeezed to help enrich the top wealth holders even more through tax cuts.
       Working Democracy will incorporate social services in the overall system of democratic economic planning and administration. The people will decide the amount of resources and labor to allocate for social services. As resources are in fact not scarce but plentiful, social services can be maintained at a high level without unduly cutting back on personal consumption.

A SAFE ENVIRONMENT
      Having a house and garage full of stuff doesn’t mean a high quality of life if the air is unfit to breathe, the water and land poisoned by industrial pollutants, the Earth’s resources exhausted, and rising temperatures threaten the very future of civilization.
       The quality as well as quantity of goods produced must be considered. They should be made to last so they don’t stress the environment by being thrown away and replaced sooner than necessary. This will also reduce energy use and the production of greenhouse gases by reducing overall production levels.
       How goods are produced is also critical. The time and resources that minimize industrial pollution and waste must be allocated to ensure we maintain a rational balance between consumption and preserving the environment.
       Working Democracy can achieve this balance because production will be to meet the needs of people, and not to sell ever more merchandise for maximum profit through reckless and unplanned growth.

A JUST SOCIETY AND A PEACEFUL WORLD
       Economic exploitation is the underlying injustice that breeds all kinds of other social injustice.
       When a few people enrich themselves by taking the lion’s share of the wealth produced by the work of the majority, society is divided into opposing interests and the result is conflict and strife.
       Extreme poverty and deprivation exist in an economycapable of producing great wealth. The upper classes and the governments they control in countries throughout the world use fraud and force to suppress the aspirations of their working populations.
       Rulers of different countries fight each other for valuable resources such as oil, and for control of markets and trade advantage.
       But it is the poor of those countries who do the actualfighting and dying. It is the working people who are caught in the middle of rulers’ wars and suffer the most and gain the least from them.
       Working Democracy promotes peace and social justice by eliminating exploitation, because as the Bible says, “Love of money is the root of all evil.”
       People will work together as a unified community of workers, with common goals democratically decided by themselves. Every person will have the inalienable right to be a working member of the community and to receive full compensation for the work they contribute to the common effort. No one will have the right to profit and enrich themselves on the backs of the people who produce thewealth.
       While exploitation breeds destructive competition, oppression, irrational hatreds and war, Working Democracy promotes intelligent cooperation, social equality and peace.