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This article gives a profile of the development in the field of worker participation and economic and industrial democracy within an international framework. Shifts in governmental and private policies and strategic approaches are discussed. This includes union approaches and worker training efforts.

American unions are undergoing a new set of challenges, to initiate strategic planning on technological change within a context of cooperative and hostile labor relations and new economic constraints. Amidst major difficulties, there are some encouraging developments which have taken place.

The objective of this paper is to clarify some of the perspectives of the discipline of sociology, to identify radical viewpoints and how they have evolved and converged, and to indicate some of the consequences of a radical sociology and its prospects. A radical sociology calls for a radical perspective, namely, a structural perspective. Such a perspective requires uncovering economic and political realities in the attempt to understand social structure. Intellectual relevance should not merely be cloaked in terms of efficacy demands which derive from state welfarism and militarism, but should be the extension of a radical and structuralist perspective.

This article outlines some of the recent strategies developed by unions in the United States to promote greater employee involvement and influence over decisions at the workplace. In particular three points of focus are identified as worker participation areas: new technology, work environment and skills training/education. Unions have developed some important proactive strategies, but are struggling within a labor relations climate which is split between anti-union employers and those who are advocates for participative management practices. The change in political climate may have important consequences in the near future.