The Workers' Paradise

May 14, 2012

Take Wisconsin Back? Create Real Jobs

Filed under: Society — Tags: , — John McNamara @ 8:27 am

This morning, while listening to the news, I heard a report in which Paul Ryan, the conservative US Representative from Janesville, urged his fellow Republicans to work hard and “take back” Wisconsin in the Gubernatorial and Senate recall elections on June 5th. I found this quite odd since the Republican party currently controls the Senate, the Assembly and the Governor’s office. In fact, it is the actions of the dominant party of Wisconsin that has caused the recall election.

I am watching the race from a far. It will be a flurry of activity, no doubt. While I understand that the incumbent governor has raised over $13 million from out of state and the Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has barely $1 million on hand, I can hope that there will actually be a discussion. My advice to the challenger? Take a cue from Mayor Paul Soglin. Start championing the cooperative community of Wisconsin as the real job creators.

Co-operative jobs are, simply, better jobs. They will stay in Wisconsin. They will be sustainable over the long term. The cooperative model can even help provide services to the communities. Presuming that the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act survives the US Supreme Court, cooperatives will be the most sustainable and effective model of health care delivery.

The State needs to do more to help cooperatives move forward.

  • Allow workers to pool their unemployment benefits in a lump sum to start a worker cooperatives;
  • Help workers buy out companies in crisis (crisis due to not being profitable enough) or to allow the current owners to retire without losing their retirement to Capital Gains taxes.
  • Examine educational options such as Ed Visions in Minnesota as a means of a true overhaul of the k-12 school system.

Co-operators exist throughout Wisconsin. A message pushing the co-operative model will find a lot more support than Mayor Barrett might think. It might even encourage people who normally vote Republican to cross over. It is time to start a new chapter in Wisconsin’s progressive history. A candidate in this recall race who embraces the core values of co-operatives will also find that they are embracing the core values of many Wisconsinites and the historical beliefs of small “r” republicans and small “d” democrats.

The GOP leadership, such as it is these days, wants to take Wisconsin back to a place that most of us really don’t want to live. It is also a place that really never existed in the United States. The GOP race to the bottom for the vast majority of the citizens while their wealthy benefactors receive a blank check needs to be aborted.

We don’t need a welfare state for any group. We need a community that believes in sustainably, mutual self-help, and self-responsibility. I think that message, through the co-operative model, crosses party boundaries. I hope that Tom Barrett gets it.

April 16, 2012

Getting Back to Normal?

Filed under: Governance,Management,Movement — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 10:03 am

I am looking forward to the future! For the last nine months, I have been in the role of General Manager of my co-operative. It has been a very difficult time made more difficult by the ebbs and flows of a business cycle based, in part, on government funded programs and bad weather. This year, the money was mostly ebb with little flow.

The biggest lesson that I am walking away with is the realization that hierarchy in a worker cooperative is dangerous at best. Creating a “boss” and recreating the dynamics of the traditional workplace do not allow a worker cooperative to succeed. It creates a fertile ground for petty political maneuvering around personal agendas instead of open and transparent discussions about the value of cooperation. It causes the workforce to engage in a bizarre form of sibling rivalry in which the GM and the Board play the role of indulgent parents.

I am very happy that our co-op decided to get rid of our GM position and replace it with a council consisting of department leaders and senior workers. We have yet to see how this will work, but we have spent the last nine months practicing. Although I accepted the title of Interim General Manager, I attempted to diffuse as much power as possible to the various work teams. By a previous board decision, discipline and accountability issues had already been turned over to a Behavior Review Council-this made me the first GM without the authority to discipline.

It is an exciting time to be in the worker coop world. New worker coops are starting every day. Older worker coops, like mine, are reinventing themselves, and new energy is coming into the movement from the Steelworkers and Academia. Hopefully, now that my interim period is coming to an end, I can return to chronicling and commenting on the exciting energy that is out there!

I will be in Halifax for two months beginning May Day. I hope to return to my Monday postings, so please start checking. The world really is changing. After 170 years, co-operatives are finally coming into their own and we get to be a part of this incredible transition.

March 26, 2012

A Big Day in Pittsburgh

Filed under: Movement — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 9:12 am

For those of you who may not get the emails, the long awaited announcement by the USW and Mondragon will be made at 11:00 am EDT in Pittsburgh, PA. I haven’t really heard much about this project other than it will involve a modern industrial operation that will blend the concepts of worker ownership and collective bargaining.

I know a few of the people that have been part of an advisory group that will only say that this is a very incredible project. Unfortunately, the press conference is not be web cast (they cited the cost, but it seems that some form of a web cast could have happened with GoTo Meeting or other software). In any event, the press conference will be recorded and loaded up to Youtube–so you my want to keep an eye out for it this week.

I can’t wait to learn the details. For no other reason than this will shape my dissertation; however, I see this as ushering in a new form of worker cooperation. In the US, we already have the traditional model of the US Federation member coops (collectives and hierarchies), we have the WAGES model that focuses on specific socio-economic groups, and  then there is the Cleveland Model. The Mondragon-USW will be yet another way of figuring out worker cooperation. The difference is that it will be teaming with the traditional industrial union movement from the design stage and not as an after thought (see Cooperative Home Care NY). It will be interesting to see how the labour union interacts with the principles of cooperation. Will “managers” be excluded from collective bargaining? Will managers be excluded from co-operative membership? If the answers are “yes”, what will this mean in terms of Agency? If the answer is “no”, then how will the collective bargaining work?

Today is an exciting day in the history of worker ownership–stay tuned!

 

February 13, 2012

Markets Can Be Healthy

Filed under: Education,Movement — Tags: , , , , — John McNamara @ 12:12 pm

As part of my studies this semester, I am reading the English edition of Cooperative Enterprise: Facing the Challenge of Globalization* by Stefano and Vera Zamagni.

In their opening chapters, they lead a discussion about the nature of cooperation (from their Italian perspective), the nature of competition and the nature of the market.

For decades, Stefano has argued that capitalism has been incorrectly used as a synonym for “free market.” Indeed, that connection is so embedded in our culture in the United States that anyone suggesting anything else often gets labeled a socialist. The dominant paradigm sees the dichotomy of the planned economy of socialism and the market economy of capitalism. There isn’t any other means except the historically defunct feudalism.

Today isn’t about getting into the argument about State Capitalism of the former Soviet Union and modern China, rather, it is about debunking the intimate connection between a free market and capitalism. The Zamagni’s carry this thought throughout the introduction to their book.

Essentially, they argue in the language of Flora and Fauna taxonomy. If we consider the “marketplace” to be the Genus of this particular economic strain, then capitalism is but one species within it. Co-operation, they argue is a unique species within the free market. Cooperation is not opposed to the marketplace, but utilizes it in a manner that seeks to maximize the benefit for the community. Capitalism utilizes the market to maximize the benefit for those owning the capital. Both are subject Adam Smith‘s invisible hand of the marketplace that provide the mechanism for each type of business to make adjustments. Both seek to use government (although capitalism is much better at it) to ameliorate the effect of the invisible hand towards the benefit of their shareholders or stakeholders as the case may be.

As a condition of this, competition plays different roles. In the capitalist species, competition is expected to be a ruthless Darwinian arbitrator determining the most fit organization (again for the benefit of the narrow group of stockholders). In the Co-operative species, however, competition plays a much different, almost helpful, role. The authors argue that the root word for competition is cum petere (“literally, tend together toward a common goal”). It is the basis of a free market. This is the antithesis of “creative destruction”:

“We are well aware of the many economic advantages created by this mechanism. But we are equally familiar with its brutality, its harmful social and political reprecussions. And it is clear that creative destruction may enjoy some legitamacy as long as the value of what is created is grreater than that of what is destroyed, that legitamcy ends when–as is the case today–the relation is inverted. We call the specific form of competitive practiced by cooperatives ‘competitive cooperation’, which is a powerful antidote to the damage that would be done by positional competition. “(Zamagni, 2010, 4)

A competition to see who can best serve the community is part of a truly free market. Further, a free market also requires an educated consumer. In the cooperative species, this means much more that printing ingredients on labels. For one, it means that the consumer (in the broadest sense), must be able to read and understand that label! It means that the consumer must posses the analytical skills to discern between products and services and the related price. During this election year, we will hear a lot about paying for education and the free market, but we will likely not hear about how they are connected. We can’t have a free market if we don’t have a populace educated to a level that allows them to make informed decisions.

Of course, this is one of the key traits of the Co-operative species as espoused by the 5th Principle: Education, Information and Training. The principle states: “Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-operatives. They inform the general public – particularly young people and opinion leaders – about the nature and benefits of co-operation.”

Co-operation, not capitalism, embraces the free market. Capitalism uses a vicious form of competition, the type found in nature by parasites, to stifle other actors in the market. The Zamagni’s quote economists Rajan and Zingales’s work Saving Capitalism from Capitalism (2003, University of Chicago Press):

“The worst enemies of capitalism are not union agitators with their corrosive critique of the system, but the managers in pinstriped suits who sing the praises of competitive markets in every speech while they try to suppress them with every action.”

The next time you hear someone trying to red-bait our movement, you could have a lot of fun pointing out that the practice of modern capitalism is much closer to the Kleptocracy of Russia and the party contolled economy of China while the true competitors and champion of the free market are, in fact, co-operatives.

*The only place that I have been able to find an English copy of Cooperative Enterprise has been through Abe’s Books, however, if your local book coop has a good search engine, they might also be able to find it.

January 30, 2012

Cabot Creamery Cooperative Contest

Filed under: Uncategorized — John McNamara @ 5:44 pm

For those of you with kids in middle school: Grades 6-8

 

“The farmers of Cabot Creamery Cooperative want to reward those that give back to their communities – a pillar of the cooperative ideal,” said Cabot Community & Education Program Manager, Marie Frohlich. “This poetry contest asks students in Grades 5-8 to express how they’ve worked alone, with their families, friends or in the classroom to give back in a special way. We want to know how working to change the lives of others has changed their own lives.”The poetry contest is co-sponsored by Potato Hill Poetry, a Massachusetts-based studio founded by Andrew Green, a former English teacher in the Vermont public school system. Andrew, through Potato Hill Poetry, seeks to ignite a passion for poetry in young people and schools around the country.”Poetry and community service go hand in hand,” says Andrew. “Each is a giving back to the world, an offering, a reaching out. Poetry, like volunteer or community work, requires attention to detail and selflessness. It’s the self trying to connect with another, to make a difference. This contest offers middle-school students an opportunity to reflect on their own volunteer experience in a poem, to capture the essence of that experience by putting it into words. In community service, it’s people working with other people to create something larger for the benefit of others. In poetry, it’s thought and image, word and sound all working together to create a good poem.”Poems must be on the topic of giving back to the community, and participants can include students from Grades 5-8. Entries must be your own original, unpublished work. You may submit only one poem, no longer than 20 lines in length. Poems must be received by April 30, 2012. Winners will be chosen by June 1, 2012. Entry is free. Submissions will not be returned.To be accepted, the author’s name, grade level, school name and address, and teacher or adult sponsor’s name, phone number and email must accompany all entries. Find out more at www.potatohill.com.Entrie s, including the information mentioned above, can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:Cabot Creamery CooperativeAttn: Poetry ContestOne Home Farm WayMontpelier, VT 05602FAX: 802.371.1200Email healthinfo@cabotcheese.coopPrizes include:Grand Prize Winner: $250 plus inclusion on Cabot Butter BoxesSecond Place: $100Three Finalists: $50AND, all winning poems will be published on www.potatohill.com and www.cabotcheese.coopAB OUT CABOT CREAMERY COOPERATIVECabot Creamery Cooperative has been in continuous operation in Vermont since 1919, and we make a full line of cheeses, yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, and butter. Best known as makers of “The World’s Best Cheddar,” Cabot is owned by 1200 dairy farm families located throughout New England and upstate New York. For additional information on Cabot Creamery, visit http://www.cabotcheese.coop

Contact: Bob Schiers(888) 214.9444 or bschiers@cabotcheese.coop

SOURCE Cabot Creamery Cooperative

January 16, 2012

All Work Has Value

Filed under: Pensimientos,Worker Rights — John McNamara @ 10:46 am

On Martin Luther King, jr. Day, one the administrators of Union Cab’s facebook page posted this quote:

“You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Memphis Sanitation Strike, April 3, 1968

Dr. King was murdered the day after giving this speech. It is a great sentiment from a great leader. One perfect for today. Of course, the sanitation strike was about more than labor, it was also about human dignity and the continued efforts to force the south of the United States to shed its racist past. It was also part of Dr. King’s recognition that the issues facing America were more than racism, but that class and global economics played a role in the oppression being felt in Memphis.

It reminds me of a quote from another great leader: Don Arizmendiaretta. His translates roughly as:

“The world has not been given to us simply to contemplate it but to transform it and this transformation is not accomplished only with our manual labor but with first with ideas and action plans.”

and

“The human person that proceeds to cultivate his or her ideas with the only objective of being productive, insensibly and fatally, becomes a slave to the productive machine.”

It is not uncommon, I have found, in our larger worker cooperatives for the division of labor to breed animosity and distrust. This is especially true when it involves those workers who either have cultivated their skills and talents, or simply have an affinity for managing the governance of the organization.  Because we come from a larger economic community where the role of the “boss” is suspect, it seems easy for us to distrust anyone in our cooperatives who might actually take on some of the necessary tasks look like the work of the boss. I don’t know how many times I have heard the tired analogy from Animal Farm expressed whenever a worker is upset with a decision of the board or a committee (I generally wonder if the person making the comment has actually read the book or has merely memorized the Cold War anti-communist mantra).

The point of all of this is that all work has value. As Dr. King points out to the sanitation workers, it doesn’t matter the job may be, it has dignity and worth. Ironically, it is a lesson that we often need to re-learn in our co-ops (which often tend to be in the small job industries). The members who engage in planning and moving the co-operative towards its goals and vision, should earn just as much dignity and worth as those who operate in the revenue producing segment.

I think that both Dr. King and Don Arizmendiaretta would agree that, at the heart of it all, all work is worthy of dignity and worth because it is performed by human beings. It is really the human, that makes work worthy and dignified. In a world that determines success by the bottom line, that point gets lost quickly; however, in our co-operatives (which exist specifically to create human and dignified workplaces), it must be embraced.

December 12, 2011

Towards a Cooperative Legislative Education Foundation

Filed under: Education,Movement — John McNamara @ 4:21 pm

Cooperatives need to start being engaged in the development of public policy. This doesn’t mean taking sides in the bipartisan wars that often force US citizens to choose which party to support: the party supported by Wall Street that wants to eliminate regulations and the party supported by Wall Street that supports some regulation.

The Corporatists already have a thriving organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council.They have become quite newsworthy over the last year as state after state has begun passing laws developed at their conventions and in their think tanks. As The Center for Media and Democracy has shown, this 30 year project of the Corporatists to destroy Keynesianism and even revert back to the days prior to the Sherman Anti-trust Act, has been behind significant legislation that has undone decades of the social contract in the United States.

We can wring our hands about this, or we can learn the lessons worth learning. Our elected representatives have little time to learn about new ideas. They need people to help inform them and even draft proposed legislation. There is nothing wrong with concerned citizens doing this. The problem is that only one side of the multi-factor equation is really acting along these lines and that is ALEC.

I propose that we worker co-operators (and maybe even the other sectors as well) form a similar think-tank. We need to start working together to develop public policy that promotes the ethics, values and principles of co-operatives. These proposals will create a more sustainable community and provide the antidote to the profiteering ways of wall street by providing the means for a base economic structure. The profiteers can still profiteer, but communities can also choose to build strong local economies to offset the effects of the corporatist class.

I propose calling this group the “Co-operative Legislative Education Foundation” or CLEF. The Clef is a musical symbol used to instruct the music. It serves as a reference point for the musical. So, this organization, CLEF, will also serve as a reference point for our communities. I like the idea of using the Middle C Clef as a symbol for this foundation:

File:CClef.svg

This suggests that our goal will not be the extremes of our community, but the balanced middle. The proposals for this organization should be at least bi-partisan but include as many sponsors as possible. Our goal should not be to get a single party elected but to create good public policy that builds strong local economies.

Over the last ten years, the US worker cooperative movement has blossomed. We have moved from a rag tag group of alienated co-operatives with few regional and local support systems to a thriving movement. We have a well established federation, the USFWC, which will be hosting the 5th National Worker Co-operative Bi-annual Conference in Boston next June, we have two strong regional groups: The Western Worker Cooperative Conference and the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy. We have helped to create CICOPA North America. We have a busy peer adviser network in the Democracy at Work Network and an educational non-profit, the Democracy at Work Institute. We need a political wing–again, not to promote any political party–to develop and promote good public policy that will advance our co-operatives, build strong sustainable local economies, and re-power workers in taking control of their lives through democratic control and ownership of their work.

Creating CLEF will be one of my goals in the coming year. For those of you with the time and interest, I hope that you contact me–our movement is already creating a better world, by drafting and supporting public policy, we can do even more and create opportunities for millions of workers in this country.

December 5, 2011

Great Negotiators

Filed under: Uncategorized — John McNamara @ 3:07 pm

What is the role of “management” in a worker co-operative?

In some, it seems that they take over, effectively adopting the role of Agency in the organization and turn the membership, the workers, into passive actors in their own enterprise. In others, a great effort is made to deny their existence–this can be through the use of titles or structurally choosing to have no formal power in the organization.

Most of our co-ops, I think, settle along this continuum. In our worlds, the “managers” by name or otherwise, have the ability to make some decisions, but generally can’t really tell anyone else what to do. This puts them into a very interesting role–that of negotiator.

In the role of negotiator, the “manager” assesses the needs of the organization, the needs of the membership, the needs of the consumers. Balancing all of this against the Co-operative Identity and the co-ops own mission and values. It isn’t an easy job. In fact, I would argue that “managing” a worker co-operative is a quantum level higher than managing a non-co-operative in the same industry (or even a consumer co-op in the same industry). Of course, the benefit of the worker co-operative world is that we don’t have to make decisions alone. We can, and should, bring the other members into the discussion as much as possible.

Some might think that this sort of participatory, democratic management might slow the organization down. It doesn’t as long as the communication lines are kept open. If the group is kept in the loop, then a quick decision, generally, can be made with a few phone calls, emails, or based on the pre-arranged parameters established by the group. Of course, this depends on the level of functioning as well. If the group is committed to things such as Robert Rules of Order and other mechanisms designed to ensure “sunlight” in democracy but horrible for timely decisions, then the process can really bog down. To overcome this, we only need take the concept of Sarbanes-Oxley to heart. SOX was the law written after the Enron debacle to help stop Enrons from happening again. Ultimately, it presumes that separation of duties and knowledge will stop most conspiracies. The Enron conspiracy consisted of about 4-5 people. The idea, here, is that if the teams report their actions, if the ability to sign of on deals requires 2-3 people, and if the decisions need to be noticed, it will be possible for quick decisions to be made in a democratic structure without opening the door for corruption.

In worker co-operatives, this may mean assigning a person to negotiate and sign off on insurance policies, but requiring the discussion and bids to be reviewed by the team. This allows an overall concept to be forged and still allows the “manager” to negotiate and close a deal. It also works internally.

Well, my discussion drifted a bit here. I was originally hoping to discuss how managers in worker co-ops engage in negotiation on a daily basis. Encouraging members to operate at a high-level of functionality and efficiency, working with consumers to adjust expectations, and meeting with vendors to get the best deal available all while maintaining high levels of loyalty and commitment to the co-operative. Internally, it is all about recognizing the member as an owner and helping them understand their role as an owner. We can’t “crack the whip” or bark orders at people. We need to nudge and educate the individual worker-owner, but we also need to communicate. We need to listen and be willing to learn a better way to do the job. It really is a negotiation which, I am learning, is a major part of  “co-operation” although it is something that we don’t really talk about.

November 28, 2011

Co-ops Need to be Part of the 2012 Election Cycle

Filed under: Education,The Cleveland Model — John McNamara @ 11:40 am

This morning I received an email from a friend about running for the county board. My response was supportive, with a caveat. Talk about how the County can promote cooperatives as a means of rebuilding a sustainable economy.

As the 2012 election cycle begins (in Wisconsin, the spring election for local goverment commences on December 1st when Candidate can start circulating petitions) and the recall election of Governor Walker edges ever closer to reality (over half of the needed signatures have been collected in just two weeks with 45 days left), co-operatives need to get their message out.

While our co-ops tend to be apolitical beasts, we need to recognize that there are times when we must be involved. Now is one of those times. It doesn’t mean endorsing candidates, but it does mean getting worker co-operatives recognized and talked about.

Last year, in Madison, we successfully managed to make worker co-operatives (and co-operatives in general) an issue in the Mayoral campaign. One candidate embraced us, the other ignored us. Very little separated the two (and if it wasn’t for a major controversy over a local hotel, it might not have been close). Today, we have a Mayor who has committed to working with co-operatives and will be hosting a conference on co-operatives for city planners and decision makers next spring.

This coming year, we have even more to talk about. There is the National Cooperative Development Act working its way through the Congress. There are more examples of local communities embracing co-operatives. Not the traditional “hippie” communes of Madison, San Francisco and Portland but places like Cleveland, OH and Richmond, CA. Cities who have suffered the most from globalization have started to rebuild their economies with worker co-operatives. As the article in the Los Angeles Times (see the Richmond link) points out, these aren’t just the usual boutique bakeries (although they do exist), but include plumbers and other professional services.

We need to push the candidates, regardless of their party, to recognize co-operatives as a strong economic model for growth. It is a model that depends on the the mutual self-help and self-responsibility of its membership. Co-operation offers a true alternative to the tired debate between neo-liberalism and Keynesian economics. This year, the International Year of the Co-operative, offers us a great opportunity to talk about the real “road to serfdom” which is the subordination of our communities to globalized capital.

Start bugging the candidates–if they are running for congress, ask them to declare their support for the National Cooperative Development Act. If they are local elections, ask them to support (or even suggest) ideas on how the county or municipality can help co-operatives develop and succeed (such as ensuring that co-operatives are part of the development process for any city project–i.e., can a co-op model solve the problem before the city).

If enough people start asking the co-op questions, the candidates will definitely hear us. If we ask enough, they might even respond. If we keep asking, they might even learn about and start supporting co-operatives after they get elected.

November 11, 2011

Mega-Academic Coop Conference for IYC12

Filed under: Uncategorized — John McNamara @ 6:59 pm

CALL FOR PAPERS
Cooperating for Change
in the International Year of Cooperatives

June 24th-27th, 2012

University of Quebec at Montreal
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The United Nations had declared 2012 to be the International Year of Cooperatives. In response, cooperative organizations around the world have been planning events to acknowledge, promote, investigate and celebrate the achievements of cooperatives.
In this spirit of collaboration and celebration, the leading cooperative research and education organizations and networks operating in Canada – the Canadian Association for Studies in Cooperation (CASC), the Interdisciplinary Research and Information Centre on Collective Enterprises (CIRIEC Canada), the International Cooperative Association Committee on Cooperative Research (ICACCR) and the Association of Cooperative Educators (ACE), the Measuring the Cooperative Difference network and Territorial Development and Cooperation network – are joining forces with their most important stakeholder groups – the Canadian Cooperative Association (CCA), le Conseil canadien de la coopération et de la mutualité (CCCM), le Conseil québécois de la cooperation et de la mutualité (CQCM), le Comité de la relève coopérative du Québec, the Ontario Student Cooperative Association and the North American Students of Cooperation – to organize this conference.
The goal of the conference is to bring together the overlapping communities of researchers, educators, practitioners and policy makers from academia, professional associations, civil society organizations and government to share knowledge and engage in discussion about policy proposals and strategic directions for the sector, both in Canada and internationally.

Conference Theme
The theme of the joint conference has been chosen to draw attention to the core mission of cooperatives, which is to make a positive difference in the lives of their members and communities.
How cooperatives take up this mission has always been conditioned by historical circumstances. In our own times, the various challenges of and opportunities for cooperative activity are conditioned by such factors as the changing nature of our economies (e.g. trade liberalization, lean production, transnational production, shorter product lifecycles, economic concentration, etc.) and the environmental (e.g., climate change, global warming, habitat and species loss, degradation of arable land) and socio-economic harm created by these economic changes (e.g., high levels of under- and unemployment, contingent labour, chronic poverty, income polarization, food insecurity, inadequate social and educational programs).
Cooperatives in Canada and around the globe have been responding to these problems, often in innovative ways. This theme of the conference is intended to highlight the fact that in responding to these challenges and opportunities, cooperatives produce change. Some of the changes are directly intended, others are unanticipated by-products. These changes occur within and across different social realms – the economic, political, the cultural – as well as impacting our natural world. Changes also, and perhaps most importantly, occur within and among the members of cooperatives, producing the personal growth and changes in organizations with facilitate better economic, social and environmental performance.

Conference Topics
We invite abstracts and proposals that investigate how cooperation, including inter-cooperation among cooperatives, promotes change in the lives of cooperative members, their communities and the larger society.
Possible topic areas include the following:
• Management Structures and Practices
• Ownership and Governance Structures and Practices
• Business and Marketing Strategies
• Social, Economic and Environmental Impact Evaluation
• Youth and Student Cooperatives
• Social and Solidarity Cooperatives
• Inter-cooperation between Cooperatives Internationally
• Aboriginal Communities
• Poverty Reduction and Local Development Strategies and Practices
• Local, Organic and Fair Trade Production in Agriculture
• Sustainable Production in Extractive and Resource Industries
• The Role of Education in Cooperating for Change
• The Role of Research in Cooperating for Change
• The Role of Public Policy in Cooperating for Change

Submission Guidelines
We invite researchers, students, and practitioners to submit any of three types of proposals:

  1. Individual Papers – Proposals should include: a) your name, title, affiliation and email address; b) a short (two-line) biographical note; c) title of the paper; d) a 100 word abstract (to be printed in the program), and; e) a 500 word summary of the argument, which should include the relationship of the paper to the literature, the research question, methods and, where applicable, findings. Proposals for both empirical and theoretical papers are invited.
  2. Panel Proposals – Proposals should include: a) the title of the panel; b) a 250 word description of the issue or theme that the panel investigates and how the individual papers relate to the theme/issue; c) the names, affiliations and contact information for all panel participants, and; d) 250 word  descriptions of all panel presentations. Panel proposals should include 3 or 4 presentations.
  3. Proposals for Roundtables – Proposals should include: a) the title of the roundtable; b) a 500 word description of the issue or theme that the roundtable investigates and how the appropriateness of the individual members for participating the roundtable; c) the names, affiliations and contact information for all panel participants, and; d) a short description of the key points/areas that the members of the roundtable will cover. Participants are not expected to deliver formal papers.
  • The deadline for the early bird call for proposals for panel sessions and roundtables is Nov. 21st, 2011. Priority for travel subsidies and scholarships will be given to applicants who meet this deadline.
  • The final deadline for paper abstracts and proposals for panels and roundtables is January 24th, 2012.
  • Abstracts and proposals may be submitted either in English or French (in either Word or Rich Text Format). They should be sent by email to casc.acec@usask.ca. A total of two presentations per person will be permitted.
  • All proposals (for individual papers, panels and roundtables) are subject to peer review. Applicants will be informed of acceptance by February 15th, 2012. A directory of conference delegates will be published in the Conference Program; if you do not want to have your name, contact information and institutional affiliation published, please notify us when you submit your abstract.

Program Committee Members

  • Darryl Reed (York University), President, Canadian Association for Studies in Cooperation (CASC).
  • Lou Hammond Ketilson (University of Saskatchewan), Chair, International Cooperative Association Committee on Cooperative Research (ICACCR).
  • Marie J. Bouchard (University of Quebec at Montreal), Vice-president, Interdisciplinary Research and Information Centre on Collective Enterprises (CIRIEC Canada) and Chair, Canada Research Chair on the Social Economy.
  • Sarah Pike, Executive Administrator, Association of Cooperative Educators (ACE).
  • Tanya Gracie, Program Manager, 2012 International Year of the Cooperative, Canadian Cooperative Association (CCA).
  • Michaël Béland, Director of Communications and Programs, Canadian Council of Cooperation and Mutuality (CCCM).
  • Fiona Duguid, Senior Policy and Research Analyst, Cooperatives Secretariat, Government of Canada.
  • Sonia Novkovic (St. Mary’s University), Past President, International Association for the Economics of Participation (IAFEP) and Academic Co-lead for the CURA grant on Measuring the Cooperative Difference.
  • Marie-Joëlle Brassard, Director of Research and Development, Quebec Council of Cooperation and Mutuality (CQCM) and Co-Lead for the CURA grant on Territorial Development and Cooperation.
  • Tom Klein Beernink, Ontario Student Cooperative Association (OSCA).
  • Erin Hancock, Board Member, North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) and coordinator for the CURA grant on Measuring the Cooperative Difference.

TBA, Comité de la relève coopérative du Québec.
Conference Information
For more information on the conference, please visit: www.coopresearch.coop

Sadly, this competes with the US Conference on Workplace Democracy and USFWC Annual meeting in Boston, MA at the same time. It would really be great if there was a way to work together on these conferences. This seems to create a big divide between the academics and practitioners at a time when they need to working together.

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