The Workers' Paradise

A reader just noted that today is Boss’s Day. I posted about it on this site a couple of years ago (http://www.cooperativeconsult.com/blog/?p=99). It is still repugnant, but I am happy to report that my coop has since gotten rid of its “boss”, at least in the singular form of a person. Sadly, we still have too many people to want to be the boss or who have that mentality. A boss is a worker coop only serves as an individual to conspire against. It is antithetical to the cooperative ideal and principles of worker ownership.
We replaced our boss with teams of workers (with varying responsibilities) and it has done wonders. The decisions have actual support because the people implementing them had a real voice in creating them.
Join me on bosses day in hoping for a world without bosses.

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 Entries must be your own original, unpublished work.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

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.

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.

There are some great opportunities for celebrating National Cooperative Month.

• The fist North American Worker Cooperative Conference will be held in Quebec City, Quebec from October 11-15. The cheapest way to get to Canada is to fly to Burlington, VT and then rent a car to drive across the border.
• The NCBA is holding its annual meeting this week. In a rare moment, they have ventured outside of the Beltway and will be in Minneapolis, MN. As a special event, they will be live-streaming a session with ICA Director General Charles Gould and NCBA President and CEO Paul Hazen as they discuss the International Year of the Cooperative. You can watch this on Wednesday, October 5 at 11:00 am CDT by visiting http://s.coop/ncba2011. Perhaps your co-op could set up computer for members and customers to watch?
• My co-operative, Union Cab, will be celebrating the 32nd anniversary of beginning operations on October 29th.

October is a great time of the year to reflect on our movement. This last weekend, a number of cooperative organizations came together in Madison for the first, ever, cooperative trade show. It was really great to be in a room with Madison area coops from every environment (except housing, sadly). It was the brain child of Summit Credit Union and I hope it becomes an annual event. This is something that simply wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago (or even 5 years ago). The cooperative movement is waking up, it seems, and not a moment too soon.

In the never ending effort to advance our movement of worker co-operatives, California has long been at the vanguard. In addition to being home to some of the longest lasting worker co-operatives, the Western Worker Co-operative Conference is one of the oldest co-op networking organizations in the country. Likewise, NoBAWC has long coordinated Bay area co-ops and collectives.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the folks in California are leading the way towards building our movement. Two specific efforts deserve our attention. The first is the Richmond initiative and the second in the effort to enact a law specific for worker co-operatives.

As my friend has posted as JASEcon, Richmond has been working towards building a co-operative economy for a while; however, in the last year, this north bay municipality took the extraordinary step of signing of letter of intent to work with Mondragon and hiring a co-operative coordinator on the city payroll. When I mentioned this to Madison’s Mayor, Paul Soglin, he was surprised as Richmond isn’t San Francisco or Berkeley by a long shot.

The second big effort coming out of CA is the development of a worker co-operative law. This is important as we have special needs that most corporations (and even co-operatives) don’t have. The duality of being an employee and an owner needs special consideration at the legal level. Assembly Bill 1161 that includes legal definitions and protections for workers in multi-stakeholder co-operatives.

This is an important step in that we need to start developing worker co-operatives as a unique business. Equity, profit, even work rules all have a different role in worker co-operatives. More importantly, investment has a different role and the law needs to recognize these differences.

Hopefully, the good work started in Richmond and the California Assembly will spread across the country, but we should all look at what they are doing, learn from actions and move our movement forward.

From October 11-15 in Quebec City, Canada, worker co-operators will be attending two exciting conferences. The first is the Business Succession and Employee Ownership Conference and the second is the first North American Worker Co-operative conference. People can learn more about both conferences at Congres International:

Here are the blurbs:

About this Event
In Canada, nearly 200,000 business owners will retire in the next ten years. This phenomenon will be comparable in the U.S. and Europe.
The unprecedented scale of this phenomenon means that many businesses are at risk of not finding individual buyers — or having only foreign competitors to sell to.
Business transfer to employees using the co-operative model appears increasingly to be a very promising option to maintain and develop locally owned businesses and employment in many places. “

For the first time, members of worker co-operatives from all regions of North America are invited to meet together and share their experiences. This event will bring together members of the US Federation of Worker Co-ops, the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation, and several worker co-op federations in Quebec.

“This Conference will provide an opportunity to:

• Develop expertise by sharing best practices of management and governance with worker co-operators from Quebec, the rest of Canada and the U.S.

• Learn from the experience of worker co-operators from various other countries: Spain, France, Italy, Argentina, who have been invited as guest presenters.
• Show our solidarity in building a caring economy based on ownership and control of co-operative enterprises by their workers.

This continental solidarity among worker co-ops will be manifested publicly at this Conference by two major actions of North American worker co-op federations:

• The creation of a North American association of cooperatives working with our collective voice in international forums for cooperation: “CICOPA-North America”. (CICOPA is the French acronym for the international Worker Co-op Federation, and this will be a sub-regional entity of CICOPA-Americas.)
• The drafting of a joint declaration for 2012, the UN International Year of Co-operatives, which will set the out the public policy platform of the Federations.

These should be two very exciting conferences–I am still trying to figure out a way to get there, but if you have the ability you should go.

My friend (and a MULO Alumnus) sent the following–please follow his advice:

Jim Holperin needs our help… and he needs it now. As you all know, Holperin is the Democratic Senator from Eagle River, one of the Fab 14, who is the most vulnerable Democrat facing recall. It is looking increasingly likely that on July 12, the Democrats will win back the State Senate (likely, not certain… we all have to keep pushing…). But it is also looking increasingly likely that we will lose it again the following month when Holperin’s election comes.

You can imagine what the Koch-crowd will do if we retake the Senate in July: money will come pouring in from all over the country to take it right back. It’s not a lost cause: the District is fairly evenly divided. The keys to victory will be what they always are: money and turnout.

If you’re reading this, you’re a friend of mine. If you’re a friend of mine, you don’t have money like the Koch brothers. But there’s only two Koch brothers, and I have lots of friends, each of whom has lots of friends. We can beat these people if we all do even just a little bit. I’m putting up $50 right now, and will throw a bit more each payday.

Click on the Act Blue link below, and please do what you can. Whether it’s $5 or $500, every little bit helps. Oh, and please… share this link – and, if you like, this appeal – widely.

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/entity/19901?refcode=directory