The Workers' Paradise

June 11, 2012

Sensemaking in Worker Cooperatives

Filed under: Education,Pensimientos — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 12:36 pm

For my theory class, I am currently reading a classic article on sensemaking in organizations: “The Collapse of Sensemaing in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster” by Karl Wieck

The article reviews Norman McLean’s “Young Men and Fire” and theorizes about the breakdown of organization among the 15 smoke jumpers that led to the death of 13 of them.

It struck me as a timely article as many of our co-operatives have started to embrace a new economic environment that fundamentally changes our sense of place in the world. This is especially true in states that have proceeded to follow in the steps of, to use Naomi Klein’s excellent word, “disaster capitalism” or the “shock doctrine.” Just as the firefighters in 1949 found themselves in a situation that no longer made sense with their expectations, the changes to the role of government and its relation to the economy have created a new reality that needs different perspectives. There is a key paragraph in Wieck’s article that I find especially pertinent, it references one of the key assumptions of the smokejumpers that the fire being attacked was a small brush fire that could be easily contained by 10:00 am the next morning–it turned out, due to winds, weather and terrain to be something much bigger:

“The crew’s stuborn belief that it faced a 10:00 fireis a powerful reminder that positive illusions (Taylor, 1989) can kill people. But the more general point is that organizations can be good at decision making and still falter. They falter because of deficient sensemaking. The world of decision making is about strategic rationality. . .Sensemaking is about contextual rationality. . . People in Mann Gulch did not face questions like where should we go, when do we take a stand, or what should our strategy be? Instead, they faced the more basic, the more frightening feeling that their old labels were no longer working. They were outstripping their experience and were not sure either what was up or who they were.”

This cause paralysis, fear, and ultimately very bad decisions by individuals which ended their lives. Our co-operatives are not facing forest fires, however, we are facing a changing economy. Wieck’s lesson is that we need to do more than follow through the rote of strategic planning. We need to engage in collective sensemaking as well. As we get pushed out of our comfort zones, we need to try to re-align our senses.

I think that this is something that worker co-operatives may have an advantage in dealing with. We tend to, as Roy Morrison quotes the Mondragon members, “build the road as we travel.” We have, as a movement, a culture of innovating, making do, and generally trying to negotiate an economy that doesn’t really get us. To do so, however, means resisting the tendency towards conservatism and isomorphism within our resepective industries. “Our co-operatives must primarily serve those who see them as bastions of social justice and not to those that see cooperatives as refuges or safe places for their conservative spirit” ( Don José María Arizmendiaretta, Reflections, 461)

 

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.

August 22, 2011

The Open Door Policy of Worker Co-operatives

Filed under: Pensimientos — Tags: , , , , , — John McNamara @ 7:00 am

The 6th Principle of Co-operatives is called, somewhat reflexively, “Co-operation Among Co-operatives.” I have talked about this in a previous post. Today, I want to focus on it from a different perspective provided to us by the spiritual guide of Mondragon, Father Arizmendiaretta. He wrote: “It is risky to make each co-operative into a closed world.We have to think of the inter-cooperative solidarity as the only solution to other problems of growth and maturity. We must think about a vital space appropriate to our circumstances.” (Reflections, 488)

In difficult economic times, it is tempting to close our doors and focus internally. Sometimes the argument is made that very survival of the co-operative is at stake. This is exactly the wrong time to close doors. It is the most important time to open them. It is only through solidarity that we find our strength as workers. This is true to for the entire labor movement whether they are using the traditional Wagner labor union (in the west) and social labor unions elsewhere, or the collective and cooperative model. We need each other to survive. Don’t think that the people who actually control the economy don’t know this–they engage in their own form of solidarity and destroy ours. They take great pains to convince our fellow workers to act against their class interest.

We need to engage each other more than at the regional, national and international conferences; however, these are important events. These events help us to start talking and formulating the physical structures that we will need to make cooperation among cooperatives more than a marketing tool. Why is that important? Look at the so-called P6 Cooperative Trade Movement. It sounds nice. It sounds co-op. It even uses the .coop internet suffix. But notice how the definition turns the co-operative movement into something else–the way that a product gets a P6 designation isn’t by being produced by a co-operative:

“Any P6 member can nominate products that meet at least 2 of our 3-point criteria:

  1. Small farmer or producer
  2. Locally grown or produced
  3. From a co-operative or non-profit organization”

Under this concept, privately owned farms (and what constitutes a small farmer or producer) or locally grown products  have an equivalence with co-operatives. More importantly, non-profits, which are notoriously undemocratic, have an equal stature with co-operatives. While this may work as a marketing tool for the food co-ops and the coffee roaster (a worker co-op) involved, it unnecessarily waters down the co-operative identity which, in the long run, allows Nestle and other corporations to easily co-opt the movement by creating non-profits to compete (and even join the P6 movement) with bona fide co-operatives. In my community, each and every one of my co-operative’s competitors would qualify despite not being a co-op.

The P6 model works for the consumer co-op world (and those providing it with goods) despite its inherent flaws; however, what should worker co-ops do to promote solidarity amongst ourselves in a way that builds our movement not sow the seeds of our destruction? Here are a few ideas:

  • Join your apex organization: in the United States, it is the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. In Canada, it is the Canadian Worker Co-operative Federation.
  • Get involved in your organization: form work groups, communicate with directors, ask them to speak at your co-operative meetings.
  • Join the Worker Co-operative Federal Credit Union (unchartered). This has an incredible potential for our movement. When a worker co-operative joins, then all of its members may join as well. This could become our Caja Popular Laboral.
  • Shop Worker Co-op: I can tell you that I only buy Worker Co-op Coffee (Just Coffee and Equal Exchange). In Madison, I can buy worker co-op bread and granola, shop at a worker co-op pharmacy (Community Pharmacy), support a worker collective community supported radio station (WORT-FM), buy books from a multi-stakeholder bookstore (Rainbow Bookstore Coop).
  • Join your local network of worker co-operatives or help to create one.
  • Work with the WCFCU and local, regional and national networks to create a solidarity fund. Imagine if the 80 member co-ops of the US Federation committed 10% of their annual surplus to a solidarity fund and another 10% to a development fund as the Mondragon co-operatives do? Our co-ops would be able to navigate the tough times and take advantage of development funds to expand when the market beckons.

The co-operative community sees solidarity at a value. Workers see solidarity as a value, but also as an integral part of building a better world. We don’t support each other because we want to make money or define a difference between us and Whole Foods. We support each other because we are trying to build a better world, because we are engaged in social transformation and because, ultimately, our movement (whether you consider it part of the labor movement or the co-operative movement) is ultimately about the individual humans in our lives and helping each other to survive and expand, not just be cooler capitalists.

June 27, 2011

Worker Co-ops Have a Moral Purpose

Filed under: Pensimientos — John McNamara @ 5:55 am

“There can never be great works without people giving generously and without them sacrificing their selfish appetites” ( Reflections, 134)

When times are good, it is easy to co-operate. When times are bad, co-operatives offer economic lifeboats. Unfortunately, not everyone in the lifeboat really gets co-operation. One of the downsides of the worker co-operative world is that we never seem to have the time to raise people’s consciousness. Thus, we often run the risk of becoming the oppressors that we overthrew.

Note to readers: my two-month sojourn in Halifax ends on International Co-operative Day (July 2nd) and I will be returning to Wisconsin (or what is left of it). I will attempt to get more regular posting done.

“Those who are selfish and those who are individualistic are the fifth column of co-operatives.” (Reflections, 136)

Co-operation is more than simply a means of working without a “boss”, it is an educational movement of the highest order in that it seeks to transform the individual worker from a mere “hand” or tool of the capitalist to a fully realized human being. The path between the two polarities is difficult partially because our society organized to have workers as tools and the wealthy as fully realized humans. This means that we must build the road as we travel. Sometimes, as the quotes above suggests, it seems that we must become saints in order to be co-operative.

We don’t need to join St. Ignatius, however, we do need to be circumspect. We live in a society that is based on greed and the exploitation of other people. Despite any religious upbringing, it is how we have been socialized and how our institutions have been constructed. We aren’t going to change these things overnight. Yet, we must try to make progress. Otherwise, what is the point of this movement?

We need to challenge each other on selfish needs just as we would demand that nobody hoard water in a lifeboat. It means reading the fine print–is the proposal being put forward designed to help everyone in the co-operative or create a system of winners and losers? This is the opposite of what is currently taking place in the world outside of our co-operatives. In my state, Wisconsin, it seems that the rule of the day has been to ransack the government for the good of a few (to even ignore the law). This tide will sink most boats, not raise them. It is very easy for us, as people living in the context of our societies, to model the behavior that we see in our elected officials. We even learn to speak in terms of “business” and “bottom lines” and how important the “budget” must be; but we must go beyond that.

“A healthy society is one in which one lives according to his or her own merits and where it becomes more and more difficult to live at the expense of others.” (Reflections, 443)

We don’t need to be saints, but co-operatives are moral organizations. They are societies (and even called that in the United Kingdom). By our existence we are working to create a better world. For those that aren’t interested in this aspect, there is a whole wide world already built to your desires.

June 13, 2011

It Is Okay to Criticize Co-ops, We Know We Aren’t Perfect

Filed under: Pensimientos — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 7:00 am

In thumbing through Don José María Arizmendiaretta’s book of reflections (Pensamientos), I came across a neat quote regarding the value of criticism and acknowledging that co-operatives do not ensure perfection.

“We do not apologize for shortcomings that may be pointed out to us. We are on the way. We appreciate those who make us take conscience of our defects and also our lack of fidelity to some principles that we have taken as ours. Seeing ourselves as weak and powerless, but not disloyal to the cause of work and social justice, we ask all to help us.”

It isn’t uncommon to hear critics of our co-operatives (especially the consumer owned co-operatives) find some act on our part and cry foul. This charge always puts us on the defensive, but it hurts even more when the attack comes from within our co-operatives.

It usually begins with anger at a certain action and then broadening the meaning of that action to a failure of the co-operative (in terms of its principles) and even a failure of the entire movement as an alternative to the capitalist market economy. It depends on deeming our co-operatives, its leaders, or even its membership as hypocrites. The attack, however, is usually solipsistic at best and disingenuous at worst.

Of course we aren’t going to be perfect! First, we are humans who by our nature and limited knowledge of the world and events cannot know or contain all of the information to make the most perfect decision every time. Of course, the idea of “perfection” is, in itself, a social construction. It is quite honest and possible for members of a co-operative to have a legitimate disagreement over a strategy within the principles of the co-operative movement. They can vehemently disagree and even be diametrically opposed without being “wrong” and both positions may still be within the concept of the co-operative principles.

Secondly, our co-operatives do not exist in a vacuum or in a world in which co-operatives are the only business model. Why I won’t go so far as to argue that we can’t have socialism in only one country (or co-operation in only one workplace), we must recognize that the world is aligned against us. This gets to the interesting choice of Arizmendiaretta’s words in referring to our movement as “weak and powerless.” Of course, we aren’t–within our world. However, as recent events in the United States have shown, the power and strength of a single worker co-operative or even a national federation pales in comparison to a single investment group controlled by two brothers. While we would like to control our destiny as Father Coady would urge us, we really only have the power to strategically play in the Koch Brothers’ world. We can strive for and envision a day when it will be our world, we can scratch out small areas that allow us a certain amount of liberty and self-determination, but ultimately we will spend our energy reacting to the dominant capitalist class that we compete against.

In that struggle, we will make unpopular decisions. Some will be to survive another day, others will be to plant the seeds of revolution for a future not yet born, and others will be caused by the lure, and dominance of the capitalist myth. Like the Sirens calling to Odysseus, this call can be devastating to our co-operatives, however, we have a secret weapon to overcome it.

We criticize–we have open meetings, we have honest discussions. We criticize each other and hopefully we do so from a position of wanting to help our co-operatives succeed, not from egotistical battles of who is more co-operative than whom. By engaging in honest critique, by listening to our harshest critics, we can become stronger and use our values and principles to build an even better economy.

May 24, 2011

Pensiamentos on Co-operative Democracy

Filed under: Pensimientos — John McNamara @ 6:51 am

“Our beloved democracy may degenerate into a dictatorship through the abuse of power of those at the top as well as through the renunciation of power of those at the bottom.” (2.4.099)–Don José María Arizmendiaretta in Reflections

He had already watched this happen to Spain. In this context, Arizmendi speaks of the workplace democracy. Of course, this is a great truism for any society and we must think of our work places as societies. The people at the “top” in a democracy have the temporary use of power because of the permanent power of the people at the “bottom”. Although I don’t care for the “top/bottom” dichotomy, it is important to understand that the leaders are created by the masses. The leaders, in our democracies, do not “lead” as much as they “follow”. They should reflect, accurately as possible, the will of the people.

Of course, this is the point that Arizmendi worries about. The people can easily forsake their power. The power doesn’t go away, but if the workers don’t use it then others will. In a workplace, this might be called the “Agency Dilemma” as a professional managerial class grabs that unused power for their own preservation of status. Arizmendi, who witnessed the ability of fascists to destroy a democracy, knows that the fuel of democracy is constant vigilance and engagement by the people. In the United States today, we have seen the effects of allowing “leaders” to engage in manipulation and deceit to obtain that power–the false promise of jobs translated into union busting, the attack on working class families, women, public education, and a host of other “reforms” designed to enrich the few by depriving the many.

Our co-operatives are societies on a much smaller scale, but we still need to be engaged. There is a “big fish/small pond” effect in worker co-operatives. People socialized in the larger society tend to bring some of the bad lessons with them. Demagoguery is not an alien concept in worker co-operatives, nor is the scapegoating of members or groups of members unheard of in our co-operatives. However, these negative and uncooperative traits only have power when workers fail to use their power engage the cooperative principle of being educated and staying informed.

If we renounce our control of our co-operatives as workers (let it be someone else’s problem), we should not be surprised to learn that someone else will use that power–it may be for the overall good of the co-op or it may not; the point is that we will have little say in the matter. Co-operation is not something that happens one day a year at the annual meeting. It is an ongoing process.

Keep in mind, that I am not arguing that we presume that our leaders are false–my experience is that most people who accept leadership positions in worker co-operatives are truly admirable people. However, a democracy requires engagement. It requires people to debate issues, build engagement, and ensure that the decisions that get made have significant (if not majority) support among the membership. It is better for a board or membership to decide something by one vote margin with a lot of discussion than to have a unanimous vote with little membership input. This isn’t about agreement, it is about engagement.

May 16, 2011

The Dignity of the Person

Filed under: Pensimientos — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 6:19 am

Co-operatives are made up of people, not shareholders. I don’t even like the term “stake holders”, but use it to describe the various groups that have an interest in the success of the co-operative. However, the core unit of society in the co-operative model is the person. This is true regardless of the sector, but has an prominent role in a worker co-operative.

“Justice cannot be practiced where human dignity is ignored.”–Don José María Arizmendiaretta (Reflections, 1.1.003)

Worker co-operatives need to keep this idea front and center. It is not enough to provide ownership to workers. The organization must also promote dignity in the workplace. This might be seen as a natural outcome of worker ownership, but it isn’t. How many of our co-ops have a “rumor mill”? At mine, we refer to it as “the parking lot” (it is literally a parking lot) where the gossip and rumors fly. Are the subjects of rumor and gossip ever truly treated with “dignity”?

It is our duty, Arizmendi suggests, as co-operative members to do more than simply create a new ownership structure, we must also create a new management method that is based on, among other things, human dignity.

While I will avoid getting into a larger discussion of Maslow’s  hierarchy of needs, I will say that I don’t believe that it needs to be a hierarchy. We don’t need to sacrifice dignity for basic survival.

“Human being not only have stomachs or some material needs, but have an ever growing awareness of their dignity” (1.1.002)

While Arizmendi wrote these words under a fascist dictatorship, they resonate today. Even as I type, the Wisconsin legislature seems bent on chipping away at the dignity of the citizenry of Wisconsin, not just at the public sector workers and their families, but the students and the working poor as well. The economics of the Phalange Party (and von Hayek) failed miserably. They had no excuses, Spain was a perfect environment for what would become the Chicago School neo-liberal ideals and it failed. Mondragon grew because of the failure of the dominant paradigm of fascism (or corporatism). Mondragon grew because it offered something more than full stomachs, it offered dignity to the workers and their families. It also offered hope and joy.

Like the Phalangists, the US Republican Party seems to forget that. They have come to believe their own corporatist theories that the modern worker is a conformist who will abide the legitimacy of the corporation, but they will be wrong. The idea that workers can be expected to put aside their humanity for a paycheck is a short-term strategy. It will eventually crumble because its foundations have no strength as they are based only on the promise of wealth, but no true wealth (either financial or social equity).

This leads me to the third quote from Reflections today:

“People die not only from hunger and physical exhaustion, but also from tedium and sadness, and from the lack of hope and joy of life.” (1.1.003)

As worker co-operatives, organizations of people, we have an obligation to ourselves, our membership and our “stakeholders” to offer more than decent pay. We also have an obligation to create a workplace of hope and joy. We have an obligation to create a place where workers, and by extension, their customers, feel dignified as human beings and have the ability to express that humanity, nurture it, express it, and use that energy to create an even better community in the workplace and at home.

This is what the co-operative difference looks like.

May 9, 2011

Reflections of Pensimientos

Filed under: Pensimientos — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 6:24 am

Back at University, my James Joyce professor (an unrepentant Modernist),  argued that the first page of a novel was the most important. If people didn’t read that page and enthusiastically turn the page, then the novel was lost. I’m not sure if I agree—I can think of a number of novels that took some time to suck me in, but once in, created an amazing world. However, his belief has left me with a special attention to what a writer or editor decides should go first.

With that in mind, I begin a lengthy series reflecting on the writings of Don José María Arizemendiaretta, The Basque priest who, in pursuit of the simple goal of providing a decent education to working class children, created an democratic economic movement whose best days are yet to arrive, but has already transformed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of humans.

The editors at Mondragon‘s Otalora Management Training Institute (and home to the Arizmendiaretta museum) chose to begin the collection of his quotations, Pensimientos, or Reflections, with the longest tract in the book. The passage describes the ideal that Arizmendi (to use the Americanized version of his name) aspired towards. It is a noble and worthy goal:

“This priest does not consider the broad terrain of human realities outside his purview when what he does and preaches is simply the nature of and the need for a new spirit of justice and love, capable of becoming a tangible reality, made to measure for humankind, and in response to something beyond personal gain, greed, and narrow selfish benefit. In any case we already know on whose side the blind and powerful forces ordinarily are: the people, the masses, which have been, are and will continue to e the majority, will find that they will have on their side no small measure of justice, no small measure of reason and moral force. However, ‘it is not the lack of power but the lack of knowledge’ that impedes the people from raising themselves. It is through this knowledge that we can deduce the perennial words of the messengers of truth that are still applicable today, although some will say that this knowledge does not put food on the table. Messengers are needed, objective messengers are needed, and the discussion must not be so much who is the messenger but what the message says, since this message must be repeated to each generation.”

Worker co-operatives don’t exist simply to engage the marketplace in a more equitable manner. If that is all of the movement’s accomplishment, then the output seems hardly worth the effort. No, the full effect of the worker co-operative model must also be to change the persons involved. This might mean allowing them to heal from the trauma and stress of the investor controlled world (see the World Health Organization’s report with this pdf)

It also means taking the time and energy to help workers and their families become fully realized human beings. It means creating a fully realized person: someone with the education, the leisure and the ability to fully engage in their community. It means overcoming the cynicism created by the alienation of our globalized economy. Those of us in the worker co-operative movement must help our fellow workers break free of the psychic prison that dampens their humanity and allows capital to maintain a place of greater importance than our communities of people.

This is the reason that Mondragon succeeded. Arizmendiaretta did not approach the people of Mondragon as an experiment or as people who would bring him fame. He approached them as a caring human–as their priest (yes), but also as their friend. I think that this quality is also what draws me to him as well. We need to put our ideas into practice. We need to have a better mix at our conferences between the people studying co-operatives and those actually working in co-operatives. The really great ideas that I hear at CASC and ACE will only bear fruit if they gain an audience among the practitioners.

As someone who straddles the worlds of “practitioner” and “academic” or “participant” and “observer”, I find it refreshing to see theories put into practice. This opening quote is not just an ideal for his priesthood, but for any of us who would build the worker co-operative movement.

This is a beginning of a series discussing the worker co-op movement’s “little brown book” the assembled quotations of Don José María Arizmendiaretta

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