Misplaced Pages

#587412

97-595: Project Cybersyn was based on viable system model theory approach to organizational design , and featured innovative technology for its time. It included a network of telex machines ('Cybernet') in state-run enterprises that would transmit and receive information to and from the government in Santiago . Information from the field would be fed into statistical modeling software ('Cyberstride') that would monitor production indicators, such as raw material supplies or high rates of worker absenteeism, in "almost" real time, alerting

194-481: A 7.7% rise in GDP and 13.7% rise in production in its first year, but needed to maintain continued growth to find long-term success. Beer proposed what was initially called Project Cyberstride, a system that would take in information and metrics from production centres like factories, process it on a central mainframe, and output predictions of future trends based on historical data. An initial implementation date of March 1972

291-411: A New Socialism , citing it as an inspiration for their own proposed model of computer-managed socialist planned economy . The Guardian in 2003 called the project "a sort of socialist internet, decades ahead of its time". Authors Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski also dedicated a chapter on the project in their 2019 book The People's Republic of Walmart . The authors presented a case to defend

388-462: A brief introduction to the cybernetic description of the organization encapsulated in a single level of the VSM. A viable system is composed of five interacting subsystems which may be mapped onto aspects of organizational structure. In broad terms Systems 1–3. are concerned with the 'here and now' of the organization's operations, System 4 is concerned with the 'there and then' – strategical responses to

485-584: A case involving the International Longshoremen's Association refusing to work with goods for export to the Soviet Union in protest against its invasion of Afghanistan , that a no-strike clause does not bar unions from refusing to work as a political protest (since that is not an "arbitrable" issue), although such activity may lead to damages for a secondary boycott . Whether a no-strike clause applies to sympathy strikes depends on

582-464: A dire situation—can be applied in times of peace and at a global scale" especially as the project was never completed due to the military coup in 1973, which was followed by economic reforms by the Chicago Boys . Chilean science fiction author Jorge Baradit published a Spanish-language science fiction novel Synco in 2008. It is an alternate history novel set in a 1979 after a military coup

679-429: A form of political protest. Like student strikes, a hunger strike aims to worsen the public image of the target. A "sickout", or (especially by uniformed police officers) " blue flu ", is a type of strike action in which the strikers call in sick . This is used in cases where laws prohibit certain employees from declaring a strike. Police, firefighters, air traffic controllers, and teachers in some U.S. states are among

776-446: A fraction of a day per worker per annum, on average, exceeding one day only in a few exceptional years. Since the 1990s, strike actions have generally further declined, a phenomenon that might be attributable to lower information costs (and thus more readily available access to information on economic rents ) made possible by computerization and rising personal indebtedness, which increases the cost of job loss for striking workers. In

873-442: A last resort. The object of collective bargaining is for the employer and the union to come to an agreement over wages, benefits, and working conditions. A collective bargaining agreement may include a clause (a contractual "no-strike clause") which prohibits the union from striking during the term of the agreement. Under U.S. labor law, a strike in violation of a no-strike clause is not a protected concerted activity . The scope of

970-545: A member refuses to cross a picket line. Sympathy strikes may be undertaken by a union as an organization, or by individual union members choosing not to cross a picket line. A jurisdictional strike in United States labor law refers to a concerted refusal to work undertaken by a union to assert its members' right to particular job assignments and to protest the assignment of disputed work to members of another union or to unorganized workers. A rolling strike refers to

1067-420: A minimum guarantee for these services and punish violations. Similar limitations are applied to workers in the private sector whose strike can affect public services. The employer is explicitly forbidden to apply sanctions to employees participating to the strikes, with the exception of the aforementioned essential services cases. The government , under exceptional circumstances, can impose the precettazione of

SECTION 10

#1732772175588

1164-449: A national-scale. Because of the network of telex machines in factories across Chile the government of Salvador Allende was able to rely on real-time data and was able to respond to the changing strike situation. The total costs of the economic simulator amounted to £5,000 at the time of design ($ 38,000 in 2009 dollars). The telex network enabled communication across regions and the maintenance of distribution of essential goods across

1261-490: A no-strike clause varies; generally, the U.S. courts and National Labor Relations Board have determined that a collective bargaining agreement's no-strike clause has the same scope as the agreement's arbitration clauses, such that "the union cannot strike over an arbitrable issue." The U.S. Supreme Court held in Jacksonville Bulk Terminals Inc. v. International Longshoremen's Association (1982),

1358-456: A penal action (for a maximum of 4 years of prison) if the illegal strike causes the suspension of an essential service. Precettazione has been rarely applied, usually after several days of strikes affecting transport or fuel services or extraordinary events. Recent cases include the cancellation of the 2015 strike of the company providing transportation services in Milan during Expo 2015 , and

1455-470: A problem in a certain interval, the higher level was notified. The results were discussed in the operations room and a top-level plan was made. The network of telex machines, called 'Cybernet', was the first operational component of Cybersyn, and the only one regularly used by the Allende government. The software for Cybersyn was called 'Cyberstride', and used Bayesian filtering and Bayesian control . It

1552-601: A small business all these functions might be done by one person or shared between the participants. In larger enterprises roles can differentiate and become more specialized emphasizing one or more aspects of the VSM. Local conditions, the environment and nature of the service or product, determines where warehousing, sales, advertising, promotion, dispatch, taxation, finance, salaries etc., fit into this picture. Not all enterprises charge for their transactions (e.g. some schools and medical services, policing) and voluntary staff may not be paid. Advertising or shipping might not be part of

1649-435: A space where managers could see relevant economic data, formulate feasible responses to emergencies, and transmit advice and directives to enterprises and factories in alarm situations by using the telex network. The principal architect of the system was British operations research scientist Stafford Beer , and the system embodied his notions of organisational cybernetics in industrial management. One of its main objectives

1746-421: A strike where only some employees in key departments or locations go on strike. These strikes are performed in order to increase stakes as negotiations draw on and to be unpredictable to the employer. Rolling strikes also serve to conserve strike funds . A student strike involves students (sometimes supported by faculty) refusing to attend classes. In some cases, the strike is intended to draw media attention to

1843-753: A system or of an element of the system. There are two aphorisms that permit observers to calculate Variety; four Principles of Organization; the Recursive System Theorem; three Axioms of Management and a Law of Cohesion. These rules ensure the Requisite Variety condition is satisfied, in effect that resources are matched to requirement. These aphorisms are: (Principles are 'primary sources of particular outcome') These principles are: This theorem states: (Axioms are statements 'worthy of belief') These axioms are: This law ('something invariant in nature') states: In Brain of

1940-445: A work stoppage each year on average, these strikes also contained more workers than ever recorded with an average of 20,000 workers participating in each major work stoppage in 2018 and 2019. For the period from 1996 to 2000, the ten countries with the most strike action (measured by average number of days not worked for every 1000 employees) were as follows: Most strikes are organized by labor unions during collective bargaining as

2037-459: Is work-to-rule (also known as an Italian strike , in Italian : Sciopero bianco ), in which workers perform their tasks exactly as they are required to but no better. For example, workers might follow all safety regulations in such a way that it impedes their productivity or they might refuse to work overtime . Such strikes may in some cases be a form of "partial strike" or "slowdown". During

SECTION 20

#1732772175588

2134-455: Is a viable system and capable of autonomy. The model was developed by operations research theorist and cybernetician Stafford Beer in his book Brain of the Firm (1972). Together with Beer's earlier works on cybernetics applied to management, this book effectively founded management cybernetics . The first thing to note about the cybernetic theory of organizations encapsulated in the VSM

2231-469: Is able to audit (via 3*) past performance so "bad times" for production can be compared to "good times". If things go wrong and levels of risk increase the System 3 asks for help or puts it to colleagues for a remedy. This is the pain of an algedonic alert, which can be automatic when performance fails to achieve capability targets. The autonomic 3–2–1 homeostatic loop's problem is absorbed for solution within

2328-406: Is correspondent to autopoiesis . A viable system is any system organised in such a way as to meet the demands of surviving in the changing environment. One of the prime features of systems that survive is that they are adaptable. The VSM expresses a model for a viable system, which is an abstracted cybernetic (regulation theory) description that is claimed to be applicable to any organisation that

2425-428: Is derived from the architecture of the brain and nervous system. Systems 3-2-1 are identified with the ancient brain or autonomic nervous system . System 4 embodies cognition and conversation. System 5, the higher brain functions, include introspection and decision making. In "Heart of Enterprise" a companion volume to "Brain...", Beer applies Ashby's concept of (Requisite) Variety : the number of possible states of

2522-479: Is developed via a collection of papers to learned bodies, including UK Police and Hospitals, to produce a visualization of the "Total System". Here a "Relevant ethic" evolves from "Experimental ethics" and the "Ethic with a busted gut" to produce a sustainable earth with reformed "old institutions" becoming "new institutions" driven by approval (eudemonic criteria "Questions of Metric" in Platform... pp 163– 179) from

2619-452: Is necessary as the domain of action of the system and without it there is no way in the model to contextualize or ground the internal interactions of the organization. Algedonic alerts (from the Greek αλγος, pain and ηδος, pleasure) are alarms and rewards that escalate through the levels of recursion when actual performance fails or exceeds capability, typically after a timeout . The model

2716-403: Is that viable systems are recursive ; viable systems contain viable systems that can be modeled using an identical cybernetic description as the higher (and lower) level systems in the containment hierarchy (Beer expresses this property of viable systems as cybernetic isomorphism ). A development of this model has originated the theoretical proposal called viable systems approach . Here we give

2813-548: The Chartist movement was at its peak in Britain, a true and widespread 'workers consciousness' was awakening. In 1838, a Statistical Society of London committee "used the first written questionnaire… The committee prepared and printed a list of questions 'designed to elicit the complete and impartial history of strikes.'" In 1842 the demands for fairer wages and conditions across many different industries finally exploded into

2910-631: The Industrial Revolution , when mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act (either by private business or by union workers). When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in

3007-619: The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , which guaranteed the right to unions and striking, but Chinese officials declared that they had no interest in allowing these liberties. In June 2008, the municipal government in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone introduced draft labor regulations, which a labor rights advocacy group says would, if implemented and enforced, virtually restore Chinese workers' right to strike. In

Project Cybersyn - Misplaced Pages Continue

3104-491: The National Labor Relations Board permitting employers to establish separate or "reserved" gates for particular trades, making it an unlawful secondary boycott for a union to establish a picket line at any gate other than the one reserved for the employer it is picketing. Still, the practice continues to occur; for example, some Teamsters contracts often protect members from disciplinary action if

3201-729: The Preamble to the French Constitution of 27 October 1946 ever since the Constitutional Council 's 1971 decision on the freedom of association recognized that document as being invested with constitutional value. A "minimum service" during strikes in public transport was a promise of Nicolas Sarkozy during his campaign for the French presidential election. A law "on social dialogue and continuity of public service in regular terrestrial transports of passengers"

3298-530: The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that there is a constitutional right to strike. In this 5–2 majority decision, Justice Rosalie Abella ruled that "[a]long with their right to associate, speak through a bargaining representative of their choice, and bargain collectively with their employer through that representative, the right of employees to strike is vital to protecting the meaningful process of collective bargaining…" [paragraph 24]. This decision adopted

3395-675: The U.S. Steel recognition strike of 1901 , and the subsequent coal strike of 1902 . A 1936 study of strikes in the United States indicated that about one third of the total number of strikes between 1927 and 1928, and over 40 percent in 1929, were due to "demands for union recognition, closed shop, and protest against union discrimination and violation of union agreements". A 1988 study of strike activity and unionization in non-union municipal police departments between 1972 and 1978 found that recognition strikes were carried out "primarily where bargaining laws [provided] little or no protection of bargaining rights." In 1937, there were 4,740 strikes in

3492-707: The autonomy of workers instead of imposing a USSR -style system of top-down command and control. Beer also was reported to have read and been influenced by Leon Trotsky 's critique of the Soviet bureaucracy in preparation for his design of the system in Chile. In July 1971, Fernando Flores , a high-level employee of the Chilean Production Development Corporation ( CORFO ) under the instruction of Pedro Vuskovic , contacted Beer for advice on incorporating Beer's cybernetic theories into

3589-406: The decision problem ) is the subject of Chaitin 's metamathematical conjecture algorithmic information theory and provides a potentially rigorous theoretical basis for a general management heuristic. If a process is not producing the agreed product more information, if applicable, will correct this, resolve ambiguity, conflict or undecidability. In "Platform for Change" (Beer 1975) the thesis

3686-409: The general strike may have been the secessio plebis in ancient Rome . In The Outline of History , H. G. Wells characterized this event as "the general strike of the plebeians ; the plebeians seem to have invented the strike, which now makes its first appearance in history." Their first strike occurred because they "saw with indignation their friends, who had often served the state bravely in

3783-417: The "software milieu" while culture adopts the systems approach and " Homo faber " (man the maker) becomes "Homo Gubernator" (self-steering). In applying the VSM variety measures are used to match people, machines and money to jobs that produce products or services. In a set of processes some jobs are done by one person. Some are done by many and often many processes are done by the same person. Throughout

3880-624: The 2011 Canada Post lockout was ruled unconstitutional, with the judge specifically referencing the Supreme Court of Canada's 2015 decision in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Saskatchewan . In some Marxist–Leninist states, such as the People's Republic of China , striking was illegal and viewed as counter-revolutionary , and labor strikes are considered to be taboo in most East Asian cultures. In 1976, China signed

3977-586: The Cybersyn system. Eventually the Allende government was brought down by a CIA-supported coup d'état in 1973. Other governments, such as those in Brazil and South Africa , expressed interest in building up their own Cybersyn system. In the history of computing hardware , Project Cybersyn was a conceptual leap forward, in that computation was no longer put exclusively to work by the military or scientific institutions. There were 500 unused telex machines bought by

Project Cybersyn - Misplaced Pages Continue

4074-469: The Firm (p. 163) Beer describes a triple vector to characterize activity in a System 1. The components are: Beer adds "It would help a lot to fix these definitions clearly in the mind." System 4's job is essentially to realize potential. He then defines Consider the management of a process with cash earnings or savings for a company or government: These methods (also known as normalisations) can be similarly applied in general e.g. to hours worked in

4171-501: The Firm to his colleagues past and present with the words " absolutum obsoletum " which he translated as "If it works it's out of date". Strike action Strike action , also called labor strike , labour strike in British English , or simply strike , is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work . A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances . Strikes became common during

4268-553: The Royal Necropolis at Deir el-Medina walked off their jobs in protest at the failure of the government of Ramesses III to pay their wages on time and in full. The royal government ended the strike by raising the artisans' wages. The first Jewish source for the idea of a labor strike appears in the Talmud , which records that the bakers who prepared showbread for the altar went on strike. An early predecessor of

4365-511: The Soviet Union, strikes occurred throughout the existence of the USSR, most notably in the 1930s. After World War II, they diminished both in number and in scale. Trade unions in the Soviet Union served in part as a means to educate workers about the country's economic system. Vladimir Lenin referred to trade unions as "Schools of Communism". In France , the first law aimed at limiting

4462-464: The State or other authorities or may be a response to unsafe conditions in the workplace. A sympathy strike is a strike action in which one group of workers refuses to cross a picket line established by another as a means of supporting the striking workers. Sympathy strikes, once the norm in the construction industry in the United States, have been made much more difficult to conduct, due to decisions of

4559-414: The United States, the number of workers involved in major work stoppages (including strikes and, less commonly, lockouts) that involved at least a thousand workers for at least one full shift generally declined from 1973 to 2017 (coinciding with a general decrease in overall union membership), before substantially increasing in 2018 and 2019. In the 2018 and 2019 period, 3.1% of union members were involved in

4656-587: The United States. This was the greatest strike wave in American labor history . The number of major strikes and lockouts in the U.S. fell by 97% from 381 in 1970 to 187 in 1980 to only 11 in 2010. Companies countered the threat of a strike by threatening to close or move a plant. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , adopted in 1967, ensures the right to strike in Article 8. The European Social Charter , adopted in 1961, also ensures

4753-662: The ability of workers to take collective action was the Le Chapelier Law , passed by the National Assembly on 14 June 1791 and which introduced the "crime of coalition." In his speech in support of the law, the titular author Isaac René Guy le Chapelier explained that it "must be without a doubt permitted for all citizens to assemble," but he maintained that it "must not be permitted for citizens from certain professions to assemble for their so-called common interests." Strike actions were specifically banned with

4850-536: The autonomy of its metasystem. Development (the System 4 role of research and marketing) is asked for recommendations. If more resources are required System 5 has to make the decision on which is the best option from System 4. Escalation to higher management (up the metalinguistic levels of recursion) will be needed if the remedy requires more resources than the current level of capability or variety can sustain. The pleasure of an algedonic alert which are performance improving innovations can also be handled in this way. In

4947-449: The business or they might be the principal activity. Whatever the circumstances, all enterprises are required to be useful to their users if they are to remain viable. For all participants the central question remains: "Do I do what I always do for this transaction or do I innovate?" It is embodied in the calls on System 4. The VSM describes the constraints: a knowledge of past performance and how it may be improved. Beer dedicated Brain of

SECTION 50

#1732772175588

5044-508: The collapse of the putsch. The use of the English word "strike" to describe a work protest was first seen in 1768, when sailors, in support of demonstrations in London , "struck" or removed the topgallant sails of merchant ships at port, thus crippling the ships. The first historically certain account of strike action was in ancient Egypt on 14 November in 1152 BCE, when artisans of

5141-467: The context. Some in the labor movement consider no-strike clauses to be an unnecessary detriment to unions in the collective bargaining process. Occasionally, workers decide to strike without the sanction of a labor union, either because the union refuses to endorse such a tactic, or because the workers involved are non-unionized. Strikes without formal union authorization are also known as wildcat strikes . In many countries, wildcat strikes do not enjoy

5238-681: The control centre. A related development was known as the Project Cyberfolk, which allowed citizens to send information about their moods to the Project organizers. The Ops room used Tulip chairs similar to those used in the American science fiction TV show Star Trek , although according to the designers, the style was not influenced by science fiction movies. Computer scientist Paul Cockshott and economist Allin Cottrell referenced Project Cybersyn in their 1993 book Towards

5335-597: The country. According to Gustavo Silva, then the executive secretary of energy in CORFO , the system's telex machines helped organize the transport of resources into the city with only about 200 trucks driven by strike-breakers , lessening the potential damage caused by the 40,000 striking truck drivers. The strike actions against the Allende government were funded by the United States as part of an economic warfare . The elected Allende government survived in part due to

5432-429: The data, and other panels with status information, although these were of limited functionality as they could only show pre-prepared graphs. This consisted of slides. The project is described in some detail in the second edition of Stafford Beer's books 'Brain of the Firm' and 'Platform for Change'. The latter book includes proposals for social innovations such as having representatives of diverse 'stakeholder' groups into

5529-525: The development boom of the 1970s in Australia, the Green ban was developed by certain unions described by some as more socially conscious. This is a form of strike action taken by a trade union or other organized labor group for environmentalist or conservationist purposes. This developed from the black ban, strike action taken against a particular job or employer in order to protect the economic interests of

5626-421: The dissent by Chief Justice Brian Dickson in a 1987 Supreme Court ruling on a reference case brought by the province of Alberta ( Reference Re Public Service Employee Relations Act (Alta) ). The exact scope of this right to strike remains unclear. Prior to this Supreme Court decision, the federal and provincial governments had the ability to introduce "back-to-work legislation", a special law that blocks

5723-404: The effects of external, environmental and future demands on the organization. System 5 is concerned with balancing the 'here and now' and the 'there and then' to give policy directives which maintain the organization as a viable entity. In addition to the subsystems that make up the first level of recursion, the environment is represented in the model. The presence of the environment in the model

5820-482: The feasibility of a planned economy aided by contemporary processing power used by large organizations such as Amazon , Walmart and the Pentagon . The authors, however, question whether much can be built on Project Cybersyn in particular, specifically, "whether a system used in emergency, near–civil war conditions in a single country—covering a limited number of enterprises and, admittedly, only partially ameliorating

5917-517: The first modern general strike . After the second Chartist Petition was presented to Parliament in April 1842 and rejected, the strike began in the coal mines of Staffordshire , England , and soon spread through Britain affecting factories , cotton mills in Lancashire and coal mines from Dundee to South Wales and Cornwall . Instead of being a spontaneous uprising of the mutinous masses,

SECTION 60

#1732772175588

6014-410: The general strike ) about 9 workdays per worker were lost due to strikes. In 1979, the loss due to strikes was a little more than one day per worker. These are the extreme cases. In the 79 years following 1926, the number of workdays lost in Britain was less than 2 hours per year per worker. In the U.S., idleness due to strikes never exceeded one half of one percent of total working days in any year during

6111-571: The groups commonly barred from striking usually by state and federal laws meant to ensure the safety or security of the general public. Newspaper writers may withhold their names from their stories as a way to protest actions of their employer. Activists may form " flying squad " groups for strikes or other actions, a form of picketing , to disrupt the workplace or another aspect of capitalist production: supporting other strikers or unemployed workers, participating in protests against globalization, or opposing abusive landlords. On 30 January 2015,

6208-453: The institution so that the grievances that are causing the students to strike can be aired before the public; this usually damages the institution's (or government's) public image. In other cases, especially in government-supported institutions, the student strike can cause a budgetary imbalance and have actual economic repercussions for the institution. A hunger strike is a deliberate refusal to eat. Hunger strikes are often used in prisons as

6305-671: The last forty years or more". One example cited was the successful formation of the United Auto Workers , which achieved recognition from General Motors through the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37. They were more common prior to the advent of modern American labor law (including the National Labor Relations Act ), which introduced processes legally compelling an employer to recognize the legitimacy of properly certified unions. Two examples include

6402-451: The late 19th and early 20th centuries. Strikes are sometimes used to pressure governments to change policies. Occasionally, strikes destabilize the rule of a particular political party or ruler; in such cases, strikes are often part of a broader social movement taking the form of a campaign of civil resistance . Notable examples are the 1980 Gdańsk Shipyard and the 1981 Warning Strike led by Lech Wałęsa . These strikes were significant in

6499-402: The legions, thrown into chains and reduced to slavery at the demand of patrician creditors". The strike action only became a feature of the political landscape with the onset of the Industrial Revolution . For the first time in history, large numbers of people were members of the industrial working class; they lived in towns and cities, exchanging their labor for payment. By the 1830s, when

6596-792: The long campaign of civil resistance for political change in Poland , and were an important mobilizing effort that contributed to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of communist party rule in Eastern Europe. Another example is the general strike in Weimar Germany that followed the March 1920 Kapp Putsch . It was called by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and received such broad support that it resulted in

6693-438: The management itself need not be, but the routine response functions must be ordered to reflect best known heuristic practice. These heuristics are constantly monitored for improvement by the organization's System 4s. Pay structures reflect these constraints on performance when capability or potential is realized with, for example, productivity bonuses , stakeholder agreements and intellectual property rights. In ascending

6790-526: The management of the newly nationalized sectors of Chile's economy. Beer saw this as a unique opportunity to implement his ideas on a national scale. More than just offering advice, Beer left most of his other consulting contracts and devoted much of his time to what became Project Cybersyn. He traveled to Chile often to collaborate with local implementors and used his personal contacts to secure help from British technical experts. The Chilean government found success in its initial nationalization efforts, achieving

6887-481: The passage of Napoleon 's French Penal Code of 1810 . Article 415 of the Code declared that participants in an attempted strike action would be subject to an imprisonment of between one and three months and that the organizers of the attempted strike action would be subject to an imprisonment of between two and five years. The right to strike under the current French Fifth Republic has been recognized and guaranteed by

6984-407: The performance of tasks or products in a production process of some kind. When actuality deviates from capability, because someone did something well or something badly, an algedonic alert is sent to management. If corrective action, adoption of a good technique or correction of an error, is not taken in a timely manner the alert is escalated. Because the criteria are applied in an ordered hierarchy

7081-518: The period 1948-2005; the average loss was 0.1% per year. Similarly, in Canada over the period 1980-2005, the annual number of work days lost due to strikes never exceeded one day per worker; on average over this period lost worktime due to strikes was about one-third of a day per worker. Although the data are not readily available for a broad sample of developed countries, the pattern described above seems quite general: days lost due to strikes amount to only

7178-427: The postal service), and in more cases provincially. In addition, certain parts of the economy can be proclaimed " essential services " in which case all strikes are illegal. Examples include when the government of Canada passed back-to-work legislation during the 2011 Canada Post lockout and the 2012 CP Rail strike, thus effectively ending the strikes. In 2016, the government's use of back-to-work legislation during

7275-490: The previous government. Each was put into a factory. In the control centre in Santiago, each day data coming from each factory (several numbers, such as raw material input, production output and number of absentees) were put into a computer, which made short-term predictions and necessary adjustments. There were four levels of control (firm, branch, sector, total), with algedonic feedback . If one level of control did not remedy

7372-571: The project was called Synco , both an initialism for the Spanish Sistema de INformación y COntrol , ('system of information and control'), and a pun on the Spanish cinco , the number five, alluding to the five levels of Beer's viable system model . Stafford Beer was a British consultant in management cybernetics . He also sympathized with the stated ideals of Chilean socialism of maintaining Chile's democratic system and

7469-408: The project. The Radio Ambulante podcast covered some history of Allende and the Cybersyn project in their 2019 episode The Room That Was A Brain . Viable system model The viable system model ( VSM ) is a model of the organizational structure of any autonomous system capable of producing itself. It is an implementation of viable system theory . At the biological level, this model

7566-639: The recursions of the viable system the context of each autonomous 5-4-3-2 metasystem enlarges and acquires more variety . This defines a metalanguage stack of increasing capability to resolve undecidability in the autonomous lower levels. If someone near process level needs to innovate to achieve potential, or restore capability, help can be secured from management of higher variety. An algedonic alert, sent when actuality deviates by some statistically significant amount from capability, makes this process automatic. The notion of adding more variety or states to resolve ambiguity or undecidability (also known as

7663-478: The right to strike in Article 6. The Farah Strike , 1972–1974, labeled the "strike of the century," was organized and led by Mexican American women predominantly in El Paso, Texas. Strikes are rare, in part because many workers are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement . Strikes that do occur are generally fairly short in duration. Labor economist John Kennan notes: In Britain in 1926 (the year of

7760-609: The same legal protections as recognized union strikes, and may result in penalties for the union members who participate, or for their union. The same often applies in the case of strikes conducted without an official ballot of the union membership, as is required in some countries such as the United Kingdom . A strike may consist of workers refusing to attend work or picketing outside the workplace to prevent or dissuade people from working in their place or conducting business with their employer. Less frequently, workers may occupy

7857-412: The strike action (or a lockout) from happening or continuing. Canadian governments could also have imposed binding arbitration or a new contract on the disputing parties. Back-to-work legislation was first used in 1950 during a railway strike, and as of 2012 had been used 33 times by the federal government for those parts of the economy that are regulated federally (grain handling, rail and air travel, and

7954-426: The strike was politically motivated and was driven by an agenda to win concessions. As much as half of the then industrial work force were on strike at its peak – over 500,000 men. The local leadership marshaled a growing working class tradition to politically organize their followers to mount an articulate challenge to the capitalist, political establishment. Friedrich Engels , an observer in London at

8051-412: The strike, i.e., can force the postponement, cancellation or duration reduction of a national-wide strike. The prime minister has to justify the decision of applying the precettazione in front of the parliament . For local strikes, precettazione can also be applied by a decision of the prefect . The employees refusing to work after the precettazione takes effect may be subject of a sanction or even

8148-525: The strikers. United States labor law also draws a distinction, in the case of private sector employers covered by the National Labor Relations Act , between "economic" and "unfair labor practice" strikes. An employer may not fire, but may permanently replace, workers who engage in a strike over economic issues. On the other hand, employers who commit unfair labor practices (ULPs) may not replace employees who strike over them, and must fire any strikebreakers they have hired as replacements in order to reinstate

8245-427: The striking workers. Strikes may be specific to a particular workplace, employer, or unit within a workplace, or they may encompass an entire industry, or every worker within a city or country. Strikes that involve all workers, or a number of large and important groups of workers, in a particular community or region are known as general strikes. Under some circumstances, strikes may take place in order to put pressure on

8342-431: The theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon criminalizing strike action in his work The Poverty of Philosophy . A recognition strike is an industrial strike implemented in order to force a particular employer or industry to recognize a trade union as the legitimate collective bargaining agent for a company's workers. In 1949, their use in the United States was described as "a weapon used with varying results by labor for

8439-608: The time, wrote: by its numbers, this class has become the most powerful in England, and woe betide the wealthy Englishmen when it becomes conscious of this fact … The English proletarian is only just becoming aware of his power, and the fruits of this awareness were the disturbances of last summer. As the 19th century progressed, strikes became a fixture of industrial relations across the industrialized world, as workers organized themselves to collectively bargain for better wages and standards with their employers. Karl Marx condemned

8536-422: The very implementation of CyberSyn, which required a social structure based on autonomy and coordination to make its tools viable. [...] Of course politically it was always possible to use information technologies for coercive purposes however that would have been a different project, certainly not SYNCO". In a 2014 essay for The New Yorker , technology journalist Evgeny Morozov argued that Cybersyn helped pave

8633-422: The way for big data and anticipated how Big Tech would operate, citing Uber 's use of data and algorithms to monitor supply and demand for their services in real time as an example. In July 2023, Morozov would go on to produce a nine-part podcast about Cybersyn, Stafford Beer and the group around Salvador Allende, titled 'The Santiago Boys'. In October 2016, the podcast 99% Invisible produced an episode about

8730-427: The workers in the first case and, in abnormal situations, if those parameters fell outside acceptable ranges by a very large degree, also the central government. The information would also be input into economic simulation software ('CHECO', for CHilean ECOnomic simulator) that the government could use to forecast the possible outcome of economic decisions. Finally, a sophisticated operations room ('Opsroom') would provide

8827-454: The working day a participant, in completing a task, may find the focus shifts between internal and external Systems 1–5 from moment to moment. The choices, or decisions discriminated, and their cost (or effort) defines the variety and hence resources needed for the job. The processes (Systems 1) are operationally managed by System 3 by monitoring performance and assuring (System 2) the flow of product between System 1s and out to users. System 3

8924-531: The workplace, but refuse to work. This is known as a sit-down strike . A similar tactic is the work-in , where employees occupy the workplace but still continue work, often without pay, which attempts to show they are still useful, or that worker self-management can be successful. For instance, this occurred with factory occupations in the Biennio Rosso strikes – the "two red years" of Italy from 1919 to 1920. Another unconventional tactic

9021-579: Was adopted on 12 August 2007, and it took effect on 1 January 2008. In Italy, the right to strike is guaranteed by the Constitution ( article 40 ). The law number 146 of 1990 and law number 83 of 2000 regulate the strike actions. In particular, they impose limitations for the strikes of workers in public essential services, i.e., the ones that "guarantee the personality rights of life, health, freedom and security, movements, assistance and welfare, education, and communications". These limitations provide

9118-501: Was given. According to technology historian Eden Medina, 26.7% of the nationalised industries which were responsible for 50% of the sector revenue had been incorporated to some degree into the Cybersyn system by May 1973. The implementation schedule was very aggressive, and the system had reached its prototype stage in 1972. The Cybersyn system was used effectively in October 1972, when about 40,000 truck owners took strike action on

9215-405: Was stopped and "the socialist government consolidates and creates 'the first cybernetic state, a universal example, the true third way, a miracle'." Baradit's novel imagines the realized project as an oppressive dictatorship disguised as a bright utopia. In defence of the project, former operations manager of Cybersyn Raul Espejo wrote: "the safeguard against any technocratic tendency was precisely in

9312-420: Was to devolve decision-making power within industrial enterprises to their workforce to develop self-regulation of factories. As mentioned above, after the military coup on 1973-09-11 , Cybersyn was abandoned, and the operations room was destroyed. The project's name in English ('Cybersyn') is a portmanteau of the words 'cybernetics' and 'synergy'. Since the name is not euphonic in Spanish, in that language

9409-476: Was written by Chilean engineers in consultation with a team of 12 British programmers. Cybersyn first ran on an IBM 360/50 , but later was transferred to a less heavily used Burroughs 3500 mainframe. The futuristic operations room was designed by a team led by the interface designer Gui Bonsiepe . It was furnished with seven swivel chairs (considered the best for creativity) with buttons, which were designed to control several large screens that could project

#587412