The Workers' Paradise

April 22, 2013

Democracy at Work Network

Filed under: Education,Movement — Tags: , , , , — John McNamara @ 12:14 pm

***Disclosure***

I was recently reelected to DAWN’s Board of Governors and the Training and Certification Committee. I am also a founding member of the organization. The following opinion (pitch, if you will) is all mine, however, and should not be seen as a statement by DAWN or representing DAWN.

***

Last weekend, the third annual spring meeting of the Democracy at Work Network (DAWN) convened along with the certification of its third cohort of Peer Advisers. It was an incredible weekend and we were reminded by our the folks on the Marketing Committee that we need to get the word out.

What is DAWN? 

DAWN is, as it names implies, an organization of people aimed at assisting worker owned businesses in improving their functionality and governance as a democratic workplace. What makes DAWN different from a consulting service or academic pursuit arises from the population of the group. DAWN focuses on Peer Advising. The majority of people in DAWN either work in a worker cooperative or have worked in a workers cooperative within the last five years. This is an essential element. While we do have members who work as professional consultants, DAWN looks to embody the concept of inter-cooperation and solidarity. Peer Advisers don’t need to learn about the dynamics of workers cooperatives since they live those dynamics.

However, this isn’t just people who work in co-op sharing war stories. The certification process ensures that the PA can provide the level of assistance needed. The first year of membership is spent engaging in intensive training through webinars and weekend retreats. while learning about financing, legal structures, strategic planning and a host of other issues, PA apprentices conduct research about coop models, teach each other about those models, and participate in an internship utilizing their host and a mentor for guidance. All of this culminates, if successful,  in becoming a Certified Peer Advisor.

DAWN’s Goal

DAWN ‘s stated goals are to:

  • meet the demand for technical assistance and development advice with high-quality services, and
  • increase worker cooperative technical assistance capacity from inside the movement.

I think that an unstated part of this is to also get our worker cooperatives (over 300 in the United States) to not always rely on a “do-it-yourself” method of development. Too often, in my opinion and experience, co-operatives either ignore development as something too expensive or too corporate or just too complicated. If co-ops do engage in development, then it is usually the result of a small group within the coop driving it and not necessarily part of a strategic vision. At best, everything is successful and the people leading have the knowledge, skills and ability to manage the manage the program and  are around long enough to see it through to fruition. At worst, it creates a series of false starts that further stigmatize coop development or organizational development as expensive, time consuming and not worth the effort. For most cooperatives, I imagine, the reality lies somewhere along the continuum between those extremes with most co-ops just feeling too busy managing operations to deal with the larger picture issues until an issue reaches a boiling point and demands the attention of the group.

Why DAWN Can Help Worker Coops Succeed

Operations tend to be what we are best at as co-operators. I think that this is a nature aspect of worker cooperation. We get the gritty details of getting people cabs, fixing bicycles, running retail operations, and making/roasting coffee. Sometimes the bigger picture of long-term planning, capital planning, organizational culture, governance and accountability gets lost in the mix as we try to keep our customers coming back, pay ourselves and our vendors. Some of these development issues get us outside of our comfort zones and don’t seem to really make a difference, so why spend our members’ hard-earned equity on it?

Worker Co-ops need to create new ways of managing. We aren’t our competitors and don’t want to be. Taking the time (and money) to think and create new ways of managing the collective assets of the cooperative in a manner that strengthens the organization along cooperative values and principles should help make our coops stronger and more resilient to the demands of the market place. It should create added-value for the consumers of our operations. Sometimes, this can be hard to do by ourselves. We may not always have the right mix of knowledge and skills or there may be underlying social issues that prevent moving forward. This is true of any type of business, not just worker coops and is why consultants often get brought into any business.

DAWN offers the ability to efficiently deal with development issues and build structures tailored to the individual cooperative. Outside facilitation can assist the members is seeing their organization from a different perspective, learn from other worker coop models (cross-pollinate if you will) and develop systems and strategies that will help their cooperatives meet missions, core values and be successful. DAWN is a fee-for-service organization. It isn’t cheap, but it does provide value.

DAWN was created to help coops help themselves through a peer assistance program. If you think that your coop needs some outside assistance, please consider DAWN as a resource created specifically for worker cooperatives.

To keep up to date with DAWN check them out on Facebook or Twitter

 

January 28, 2013

The Farmer’s Union, Cooperation, and the Environment

Filed under: Imagine2012,Movement — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 7:00 am

Over the weekend, I had a really wonderful opportunity. I was asked to moderate a panel for the Wisconsin Farmer’s Union 82nd Annual Conference entitled, “Cooperatives – Empowering the Rural Economy… Again.” I also spoke to the Youth Conference presenting the Mondragon Cooperative model. It gave me that chance to also listen to William Nelson of CHS Foundation speak.

This weekend just happened to fall right after I represented my cooperative hosting the Sustainable Business Network quarterly breakfast in Madison with guest speaker from Gundersen Lutheran Health Systems.

The Wisconsin Farmer’s Union, part of the National Farmer’s Union, promotes the slogan “legislation, education, cooperation” and they really do mean all three things. In addition to helping family farmers work for legislation to protect their family farm and promote sustainable farming practices, the Union also operates a Youth movement with and Kamp Kenwood, a cooperative owned and operated summer camp that teaches the principles of co-operatives while also providing a fun summer camp for members.

While it was fun to present Mondragon to a group of people who hadn’t yet heard of the Basque cooperative society, it is more important to share the take-away mirrored Bill Nelson’s message. The next 40 years will likely see a dramatic change in the way that the world produces farmers as the Ogallala Aquifer dries up.With a projected world population of nine billion or greater and significantly less water and land to produce food, the challenge to today’s young farmers will be incredible. It was my point that the challenge to the founders of Mondragon was also great, but the the role of the cooperative allowed them to focus on their values, work together, and find solutions instead of amassing profit. It will be the co-operatives that figure out the solution to climate change, because our focus is on sustainability  not simply amassing profit. Money doesn’t do any good sitting in a bank vault. Like manure, it only works if we spread it around and prevent run-off.

The panel brought three great stories of how cooperatives create sustainability. Fifth Season was the newest of the three coops presented. This is a relatively new model of food coop in the US. Rather than GM dominated consumer coops that cater to the wealthy, it is a multi-stakeholder co-operative that offers membership to each of the six different segments of the food chain: producer, producer groups, processors, distributers, buyers, and workers. Everybody is at the table. They aren’t operating retail outlets, however, most of their buyers have institutional needs, so it is a bit different than the foodie focused consumer coops, but it also caters to working people who can’t really afford shopping at boutique food stores and still want good food. It is a really neat experiment in sustainability and local development in the rural area of Wisconsin. Organic Valley also presented with a focus on how they are working to become even more sustainable  The organic producer coop  has been a leader in sunflower oil technology and has found the means to develop it for either food-grade or bio-fuel. In addition  they have been working the Gundersen Lutheran (which is also a member of Fifth Season) to install two ginormous wind turbines. The energy production gets shared between the two organizations, but Organic Valley’s representatives said it covers almost 90% of their electrical needs! Finally, Cooperative Care’s  Tracy Dudzinski spoke on the important work of providing home care and health care in the rural areas and the powerful nature of cooperatives to transform workers from people who work to live into fully actualized human beings as well as the growing need for home care as the baby boomers age into a large community of single people with limited personal support networks.

The last bit brings me back to my Mondragon talk and one of the things that I wish that I had mentioned at the panel. During the discussion of  the three panelists, I was reminded of a series of short stories by Hamlin Garland entitled Main Travelled Roads . He wrote about the farmers of the Coulee Country of Southeast Wisconsin. How they were preyed upon by eastern bankers, crooked salesmen, and a host of other issues that helped found the Grange and ultimately the Progressive Movement and the Wisconsin Farmer’s Union. I wondered how he would see the farmers of Wisconsin today (I wasn’t sure how many people in the audience got my reference, but I was presuming that everyone who grew up in Wisconsin and is a farmer has read this book–it is a great collection of short stories). More importantly, I wish that I would have amplified Tracy’s comments recognizing how cooperatives, especially worker cooperatives, function to change people. Arizmendiaretta, the spiritual founder of Mondragon, always believed that worker ownership would transform workers into strong and moral community leaders. It has been my experience to see that effect over and over again. It is one of the reasons that I believe that it will be the cooperative movement that manages to deal with climate change. It will take real leadership to build a new sustainable economy. Not leadership in the form of politicians, but leadership in the form of making tough decisions that provide the most benefit to the most people even if that means some short term sacrifice. Politicians are a dime-a-dozen these days, but few are leaders.

It was my pleasure to meet some of the future leaders of Wisconsin in Eau Claire this weekend. Leaders who understand the important role of education and cooperation and will help lead to better legislation. Leaders who are committed to dealing with three of the most important issues of our day: food security, energy and climate change, and an aging population and health care. At the very least, rural Wisconsin seems to be in good hands.

May 21, 2012

The Madison Conference

Filed under: Movement,Society — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 9:40 am

I am surea that I don’t need to tell any of the readers of this blog that it is the International Year of the Co-operative. The United Nations designation has paid tribute to our economic model exactly at the time that the world needs a better economic model: one that allows communities to keep their identity, maintains decent jobs, and builds a sustainable economic structure at the local, national and global level.

To that end, there are a number of conferences this year that will be focusing on these themes. One of the first, and I hope, not the least will be the Madison Cooperative Business Conference.

A Little History

This conference began, in a sense, right here at The Workers’ Paradise. Back in January of 2011, I began discussing the upcoming Mayoral Election. Both major candidates had invoked the idea of cooperatives as an economic model and I hope that this would actually become an issue for two candidates that were almost identical in their approach, philosophy, and support. As that campaign began to gain steam, the Governor of Wisconsin unleased his vision for the economy. This only pushed the idea of cooperation even more. As the candidates began talking to the people of Madison, the word co-operative started to become repeated. One candidate engaged in the call-and-response which is why I urged co-op members to vote for Paul Soglin. Paul won by just 363 votes or about 182 voters (less than the total number of worker co-op members in the City of Madison.

We gave Paul a few months to settle in and then a number of co-operators asked about the conference. The Mayor stepped up and assigned key staff people to it. Despite a difficult budget year, he found matching funds for the conference.

The Madison Cooperative Business Conference 

(June 7, 2012, with a pre-conference seminar on June 6, 2012)

We wanted this conference to be different that most of the other conferences. We wanted to focus our attention on three groups of people: City and Regional Planners who might not see the co-op model as viable for delivering services and solving problems, business owners interested in retiring, and people interested in starting a co-operative to solve a failure in the market. We want people who are new to the co-op model to attend. We want business owners to learn that they can escape capital gains taxes by selling their business to their workers (they get retirement and the legacy of their life’s work continues). We want communities to see how co-operatives might help provide solutions to homelessness, hunger or even provide new fancy destination projects such as a Public Market.  The key note speaker will be Roy Messing from the Ohio Employment Ownership Center out of Kent State. There will also be speakers from Richmond, CA (Terry Baird, assistant to the Mayor in charge of worker coop development) and from the Quebec ( Michel Clement, from Co-operative Development Management). In adiditon to a number of workshops, the conference will end with a plenary discussion about how to move forward and start putting the ideas into action in the Dane County area.

What You Can Do

If you are in Madison, register and attend the conference! It is only $25 for the day (and $25 for the pre-conference seminar with Roy Messing)–$40 for both events. More importantly, if you know someone in the South-Central Wisconsin area who owns an business and is within 10 years of seeking retirement (think of your favorite locally owned company), urge them to attend (or at least send their accountant).

If you are not in Madison, or can’t be during the conference, then please let your friends know and encourage any business owners you know to attend.

Conferences can only do so much and this one has been specifically designed to ignite people who aren’t knowledgable about co-ops. It is designed for people whose kids might not want the family business, but don’t want to see their life’s work disappear when they retire (conversly, for the kids who inherited a business and would rather do something else, but don’t want to lose their parent’s legacy). It is for communities that want to start building a sustainable infrastructure and looking for ways to solve problems without having to depend on diminishing State and Federal assistance.

Unfortunatley, I cannot attend, but I hope that this gets a large turnout and that we will one day be able to look back at this conference as a turning point for Dane County, if not Wisconsin.

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.

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.

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.

October 31, 2011

Welcome, Year of the Coop! #coop

Filed under: Movement — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 10:50 am

Today, marks the official beginning of the United Nations’ International Year of the Cooperative. This took a lot of work on the part of the International Cooperative Association and now it is our responsibility as members of cooperatives to make something of it. It would be a true shame if the only thing to develop from this energy is a thousand Facebook posts and some Youtube videos.

Those of us in the US/Canadian worker cooperative movement need to envision what we want our movement to look like in a year. A great leap forward has already been accomplished with the creation of CICOPA-North America. What will we consider a successful year?

I know that in my cooperative, my personal goal is to get rid of the “boss” position. Currently, I am filling that role as the interim General Manager. I hope that by this time next year, that position has changed in scope or title so that it no longer has the formal power of the boss in our organization. In fact, there are a number of visions of what our cooperative should look like. This year, we took the power to discipline and fire away from the General Manager and create a series of peer councils that handle accountability issues. My hope for this year will be to change the concept of “manager” from a person who makes decisions and can order people to do things to a person who help democratically run teams make decisions and then helps work groups implement those decisions.

Of course, the is the world of minutiae that I find myself immersed in right now–it almost feels like an internal exile from the national and international movement. Still, ours is a movement of small organizations that combine to become something incredible. If the small worlds of our independent coops don’t embrace the spirit and challenge of the International Year of the Cooperative, then what is the point of the energy. It is a year to embrace our values and principles at every level, but most importantly, at the level of our cooperatives.

It is only by making our cooperatives a true difference in the economic world that we can truly be an answer to the needs and desires of those occupying wall street and elsewhere. We do know the answer and we live and work it everyday.

How will we improve our cooperatives? How will we improve our participation with other worker cooperatives? Finally, how will we educate the public, especially the 99%, that worker cooperatives offer a real solution to the economic woes of the world?

October 24, 2011

Speaking of Laws: CA AB1161

Filed under: Movement — Tags: , , , , — John McNamara @ 2:09 pm

In my last year on the board of the US Federation of Worker Coops, I pushed for a 10 year plan that would, among other things, attempt to enact laws specific to worker cooperatives in at least 5  more states than currently have them (I believe that Vermont and Illinois are the only ones that specifically mention worker cooperatives). Naturally, I was very excited to see that the folks in California were on the same wave length.

California Assembly Bill 1161 aims to create a legal entity of the worker cooperative. Currently, worker coops in CA have to organize under the Consumer Cooperative Act which can be a bit cumbersome. I am a bit loathe to comment on the bill, since I live in Wisconsin. However, it does effect the worker cooperative movement and will have an impact as other states consider similar legislation. The good people at NoBAWC have posted a page on the topic and encourage discussion. They have a link to a pdf on a summary of the bill and a link to a pdf version of the actual bill.

Overall, I think that this is a great effort. However, I do wonder at a few things.

Instead of using the definition of worker cooperatives from the CICOPA World Declaration on Worker Cooperatives, it waters that definition down to mean any multi-staker holder cooperative that has a membership class. CICOPA requires that workers comprise more than 50% of the membership and that more than 50% of the workers are members. Under 1161, the non-worker members could outnumber the workers (for instance, if Rainbow opened up a consumer member category).

AB 1161 the statute does provide protections and requires that the worker members have a majority of seats on the board of directors and that the worker membership class has veto power on membership votes within the following five areas:

  1. the dissolution, sale or merger of the cooperative
  2. the disposition of all or a substantial part of the cooperative’s assets not in the ordinary course of business
  3. the filing of a petition in bankruptcy or the entering into an an arrangement among creditors
  4. conversion to a structure other than a cooperative
  5. acquisition of any asset or assets that constitute greater than 25% of the pre-acquisition assets on the cooperative’s balance sheet not in the ordinary course of business.

I understand that this provides protections for the worker members; however, it ignores some basic problems in that workers have a tendency to vote against their interests (see Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama) and the power of capital has a history of corrupting the leaders of workers (see Lane Kirkland, SEIU, and the Teamsters).

Another troubling aspect is that this bill would erase the already generous limit of 15% return on investment. The workers might still have political control of the business, but it is clear that they may not have economic control. What happens with the capitalists funding the worker cooperative decide to tell the workers to jump? Their choice will be to democratically ask how high or dissolve. It reminds me a bit of James Connolly’s excellent essay, “Let Us Free, Ireland!” which I discussed last November on this blog.

I am worried about what this law would allow coop leaders to give up for the investor’s money. This proposal really seems like asking the foxes to help build and manage the hen house. Yes, I realize that this might help get money into economically depressed areas, but if we are only talking about creating decent jobs, we don’t need the cooperative movement to do that. Worker cooperatives need to be about more than a decent paycheck. I would rather see greater incentives for employers to sell to their workers.

I’m not against an investor class, however, I think that this proposal opens the doors way to far. I like Equal Exchange’s model which limits the ROI to 5% and 400 investor members (I think that it is technically 399). What is being proposed in 1161 seems too much like the New Generation coops of Wisconsin and Minnesota, there needs to be more control on capital. It should follow the principle of Mondragon that Capital must subordinate to labor.

AB 1161 is still a work in progress and I imagine that it has a way to go before enactment. I don’t know enough about California politics to comment on its chances. Also, I recognize that California is not Wisconsin and that the number of worker cooperatives far exceeds what exists in Wisconsin. Most worker cooperatives would likely be unitary (essentially a collective) and I imagine that the number of new generation worker coops produced by this bill would not be substantial. However, I would hope that the folks out west find a way to incorporate the CICOPA Declaration and definitions into the language and seriously think about the effect of capital in an organization especially where the ROI is limited by only what the board wants to pay out.

Nevertheless, I am glad to see people starting to think about what we need in terms of legislation to help build the worker cooperative movement. I think that this is a great discussion that we need to start having across the country–what, exactly, is a worker cooperative and when does it quit being one?

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I know that I am probably stepping on some toes with this post, so I would like to remind everyone that you are free to sign up as a contributor (or just send a response).

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