This might not seem a good time to be advocating worker representation on company boards. In most of the English-speaking world the idea has never taken off, and directors post-Covid are struggling to reassert some kind of authority over Gen Z staff who want to be heard and to work on their own terms, often at home. But Daniel Chandler is giving it a go. In his new book, Free and Equal – out last month with enthusiastic puffs from David Miliband, Zadie Smith and about 30 others – he argues for a goal of fully half companies’ board seats being reserved for workers, on the basis that the UK workplace in particular is an antiquated and undemocratic preserve of “subservience and powerlessness”. There’s another justification: German boards have workers and profit margins there don’t seem to have been affected badly. As it happens Germany is in recession, but the book is doing well.
