This is a CTP of initiative: RIPESS/ Groupe Terre (Belgium)
This CTP is about the strengthening of participative management in Groupe Terre as from the mid-2000s, even though it has been a transversal objective since the beginning of its activities in the 1960s. However, the 2000s were characterized by a great increase in the number of workers, which resulted in the necessity to re-think ways of practicing participative management. To illustrate this process, we will take the example of the definition of a new wage scale (as from 2006), followed by a staff policy (2013). We will also build our analysis on the drawing-up of the Charter of the Group (2011).
In 2006, the Group realized that they needed to work on a new wage scale for reasons detailed in the “co-production” category of this CTP. A first salary grid was proposed in front of the General Assembly in 2008, which insisted on the necessity to develop objective criteria in order to fairly place workers somewhere in the scale. The General Assembly also acknowledged the idea according to which the wage issue was in fact only a part of the staff policy and that they should be simultaneously treated. To develop the staff policy, the interviewee explains how they decided to divide the work: “We did not write the entire staff policy within the General Assembly. Instead, we decided to divide it in 5 chapters: job description, remuneration, recruitment, trainings and evaluation. For each chapter, a working group had to propose guidelines. Once the guidelines approved, we started writing the staff policy for real. It took around 5 years”. Indeed, the final staff policy emerged in 2013, after a 5-year participative process characterized by an educational approach and an equality regarding participation in the negotiations. In the middle of the process, they realized that this staff policy should be accompanied with a formalization of the Group activities vis-à-vis the outside world. This formalization would take the form of a Charter.
However, drawing-up the Charter (comprising a vision and values) in 2011 was less easy for three reasons essentially: first, it was directly done within the General Assembly; then, because the text was far shorter, it implied a careful choice of each words; finally, the concepts dealt with in the Charter were not necessarily well-understood by all the workers. As the interviewee recognizes, “There were notions that were less understandable for certain people. There was explanatory work during the General Assembly, but, if we could do it all over again, we might adopt another educational approach”.
In this section, we will come back on the fundamental reasons which led Groupe Terre to develop a new wage and staff policy and a Charter.
Regarding the wage issue, it is worth recalling that the “Terre project” was historically a militant movement driven by principles of equality and equity, which were translated into the wage policy. As the interviewee explains, this had repercussion on the wage scale, which was very low: « When I arrive in the Group in 2002, there is a wage scale of 1.7. It means that if you take the lowest salary and you multiply it by 1.7, you have the highest salary. The gross wage was about 2500€ for a manager and around 1500€ for less or non-qualified positions. I think the wage scale was even lower before, because we come from a militant movement with the idea according to which everyone earns the same”. However, as from 2006, managers of the group came to realize that this beautiful principle had negative side-effects: “At one point, we realized that the salary levels had a dampening effect on recruitment because people were not willing anymore to undertake certain positions with the conditions we proposed: I am talking about technical positions (particularly in the construction field) or positions which require specific skills (e.g. welding activities). We had to cope with a dilemma: we could find people agreeing to commit themselves for this kind of wages but without the required skills; on the other hand, the people with the expertise we sought often told us that they would not embark for these wage levels because they were offered twice or three times as much elsewhere”. As a response, they decided to start working on a new salary grid, and realized soon enough that solving the wage issue could not be achieved without re-thinking the staff policy as a whole. In other words, the wage issue acted as a gateway to elaborate a staff policy.
On the other hand, The Charter was drawn-up in 2011 in order to strengthen the identity of the group both at the internal and external levels. On the internal side, it had to do with the fact that Recolt’Terre had won 2 years before an important call for tender, which ultimately led to a significant influx of new workers, who were not necessarily aware of what Groupe Terre was about: “These people came here first and foremost because they needed a job. We realized at one point that they had to know that we had a project and that they should adhere to the latter”. On the external side, the idea was that the Charter would help explaining in a few lines the main objectives of the Group, which were not necessarily always very clear given the variety of structures and activities: “When we talk with external people, with federations or networks for example, we see that they are a bit confused. They do not understand why we have so many entities. This is why we are constantly trying to make it clearer”.
This category follows the long-term changes in the history of Groupe Terre, which can be declined in 3 phases, each of them having contributed to the mutation of the dynamics of participative governance: 1) the militant movement (from the 1960s to the early 1990s), 2) the family movement (from the beginning of the 1990s to the mid 2000s), 3) the general interest movement (from the mid-2000s until now), which corresponds to the period covered by this CTP.
When Groupe Terre started its activities in the 1960s, people were driven by strong militancy: “There is a militant movement which develops throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. This movement, characterised by strong commitment, started structuring: Terre asbl appeared and it was managed by the General Assembly which appointed the board of directors, approved the accounts and took decisions regarding projects in the North and in the South”. This way of thinking and doing persisted as long as the volume of activities remained modest.
But when they expanded, as from the beginning the 1990s, the limits of this approach were raised, especially from the brand-new President who happened to be the son of the former one: “The second movement was federative in nature with a strong family dimension. It was still very present when I arrive in Terre [in 2002]. There was a charismatic leader until the beginning of the 1990s. Then, there was a transition and his son took over the presidency. At that moment, activities were expanding. He found out that the latter could not be pursued and developed under the leadership of only 2 or 3 persons [...] Consequently, there was a movement aiming at providing more autonomy to each structure. [...] The idea was to develop hard cores in each entity, in order to develop their activities on the market they were part of”.
The movement towards more autonomy for each structure of Groupe Terre was counterbalanced by the development of transversal policies as well as a Charter to provide a common vision and objectives for every entities: “The third movement could be the one of general interest. There were great cultural changes in our group. Because the staff is extremely stable (it is not rare to find people with 20 or 25 years of service), some of them followed the path from militancy to family, and from family to general interest. There were misunderstandings and we felt the need to model these changes, by restructuring and developing transversal policies”. The restructuring resulted in the transfer of several departments (finance, IT, human resources) to Groupe Terre asbl in 2012 while the development of new policies resulted in a staff policy and a Charter, which were both written according to a participatory methodology.
The participative management model is the object of strong contestation from the trade-unions, as mentioned by two previous interviewees (Salvatore Vetro, in charge of external relations and William Wauters, President of Groupe Terre).
As Salvatore Vetro explained, the fundamental reason explaining divergence is the confrontation between two models of democracy (ie. direct democracy vs representative democracy): “The principal problem, regarding our relationship with trade-unions, is their opposition to direct democracy. We work in direct democracy with a complex system of meetings on every issue (operational, strategic or political decisions). People are involved in these decisions, they are part of a transparent enterprise and they know that if they express something, they will be heard. In the opposite direction, we have representative democracy, with workers deciding every four years who is going to represent them. With representative democracy, workers tend to give up any commitment in the enterprise because they lean on their union representatives to defend their interests”. As a consequence, trade-unions have difficulties in recognizing the legitimacy of a parallel system questioning their “raison d’être”.
Their opposition has been translated into recurring attacks over the years and several attempts to convince Terre workers to call for or become trade-unions representatives, as explained by William Wauters “Every 4 years, attacks from the trade-unions are more and more violent. There was a clear and unequivocal evolution, which went as far as writing letters and making phone calls to our employees in order to convince them to register on the lists but, until this year, no worker had agreed to do so. [...] It is bad for them to face resistant bastions, it sets a bad example. And as Terre is the last bastion, attacks are more and more violent”. Finally, in 2016, a discontent worker presented his candidature for social elections, which led to arm wrestling between the group and trade union organizations. As William Wauters recalls, “the day before his candidature, this worker was not unionized. He was alone and there were 6 open mandates. When there is only 1 candidate on 6, the law stipulates that there is no obligation to establish the required bodies, so we did not establish them, despite demands by the trade-unions organization. By the way, we received during one of our meetings with workers a union representative and he was poorly received by all workers. His only argument consisted in saying that democracy relied on the respect of law, but we were respecting it! Following that, the trade-unions asked us to release him in order to attend trade-unions meetings and we refused since he did not actually serve any mandate [...] This worker finally went to work for a Flemish enterprise”.
Groupe terre has anticipated early-on the necessity of fostering empowerment in order to further participative governance. This participative system relies on two complementary ideas: 1) all the workers have the capacity to participate in the management of their enterprise, education and trainings allowing them to develop their skills, 2) sharing capacities ensures the pursuit of the social goal and strengthens the quality of management. Concretely, the participative system relies heavily on the General Assembly, but also on several kinds of meetings, held at group, structures or sectors levels.
The General Assembly of Groupe Terre asbl is the focal point of the participative management system. It is composed of around 80 workers (on 350) who asked for attendance. For workers with more than one year’s service, a simple demand suffices whereas brand-new workers need to formulate a formal written application. Moreover, and contrary to the other meetings mentioned, General Assemblies happen on Friday nights (outside working hours) 3 or 4 times a year. As a consequence, attending them can be thought as militancy since it shows a willingness to take part to political, strategic and operational decisions on spare time.
The General Assembly is completed by other locations for participative management, which take place on working-time and which seeks competence development or empowerment of the workers. At the level of Groupe Terre, we can find “evaluation meetings”, aimed at evaluating the participative practices within Groupe terre and the “figures and letters meetings” aimed at informing all workers on the activities of each structure once a month. It is complemented by thematic breakfasts, which happen every 2 months and address general topics, such as the Belgian electoral system (during election times) or the issue of biological or locally-driven agriculture. As the interviewee explains, “We are in a process of education. These thematic meetings are a way to educate ourselves on topics which concerns us not necessarily as workers, but as people in general”.
There are also sector meetings which allow monthly discussions between the head of section and his workers on the ways to implement what was decided in the board of directors of the considered entity. For example, Terre asbl (one of the 10 entities of Groupe Terre) which deals with textile collections, has a board of directors in charge of the implementation of the policies decided during the General Assembly. It is composed of the collecting sector, the sorting sector and the shops sector and each of them organizes a monthly meeting. These sectors can formulate strategic propositions to the board of directors, which can validate or reformulate them. In summary, these meetings allow establishing a back and forth process between workers on the field and decision-making bodies at the level of the structure. It is complemented by a “big meeting” once a year which gathers administrators and the workers in order to look back over the past year and discuss future prospects.
The main lesson is the more and more urgent necessity of a legal recognition of participative management. Today, participative management is not integrated in the legislation, being at the national or at the European level. This absence often results in the rejection of this model by the traditional actors of social dialogue (ie. trade-unions). In their opinion, the lack of legal framework makes participative management illegitimate, even though the considered entity assumes its obligation regarding labour law and even goes further by informing and consulting workers when decisions are taken.
At the Belgian level, Groupe Terre is member of USCOP (Union of SCOP), the network of cooperative and participative societies in Wallonia and Brussels. A short review of their principal claims will provide us with the means available to public authorities if they want to support participative management. First, members of USCOP call for an appropriate legal framework in order to provide legal certainty and allow the access to existing supporting mechanisms. They also call for an adaptation of the federal and regional fiscal frameworks so as to ensure the non-divisibility of reserves for example (these reserves, constituted by the surplus accumulated over the years, do not belong to anybody in principle and are used for investments in the cooperative system). USCOP also calls for a clearer social framework, which would allow combining several statuses (eg. allowing a worker or a manager to be both the co-owner and an employee of his enterprise). Finally, they call for regional measures in favour of the development of entities applying participative management, including specific subsidies.
Another lesson is that applying participative management is time-consuming and does not necessarily allow a great responsive capacity. If we take the example of the staff policy, even though a great amount of time was taken to make it the fairest and the most adequate possible, members of Groupe terre quickly realized that they should work on it again since it was subject to criticism. The first criticism focused on the current impossibility for workers to evolve in a same function. At the moment, the only way to have a pay rise is to apply for another function (which implies an opening). This signifies that a worker who would take more responsibilities over the years without applying for another function would have the same salary. Another criticism focused on the transversal feature of the wage grid (ie. there is a single grid for all the employees of the group) which, according to some people, would impede the upgrading of knowledge-related skills. This set of criticism explains why the group felt the need to launch a new participative process in order to improve the current staff policy, and which will probably take a few more years.
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