The Workers' Paradise

August 31, 2009

#1 Identity Statement vs. “Rochdale Principles”

Filed under: Governance,Identity Statement Series — Tags: , — John McNamara @ 9:45 am

This is a weekly series on The Workers’ Paradise in 22 parts (or so). A new segment will be posted each Monday. It is not meant to be an exhaustive discussion on the Statement, but to provide a nominal understanding of the Statement on the Cooperative Identity and how it affects Worker Cooperatives.

In 1995, at the 100th anniversary meeting of the International Cooperative Alliance, the delegates met, debated and passed the historic Statement on the Cooperative Identity. It was and remains a historic event of immense proportions in the cooperative movement. The Statement provided for the first time a clear definition of cooperatives along a unifying set of values, ethics and principles. The Statement provides a clear path for cooperatives to follow whether they operate in the United Kingdom, the United States or Argentina and India. The statement covers unites the sectors of the movement. Workers, consumers, producers, along with those in the housing and financial industry operate under the same identity. No other business organization has such an international set of standards.

The global reach of the Statement was the primary point of its creation. In 1988, as the Eastern Warsaw Pact countries foundered during the collapse of the Soviet Union’s empire and of the USSR itself, the cooperative movement found that the misuse of their model in those countries left the cooperatives with a poor public image. ICA President Lars Marcus called upon the cooperative community to rise to this challenge and re-define the cooperative movement for the age of globalization so that cooperatives could regain their advantage and compete. In 1992 at the Tokyo conference led by Sven Ake Book of Sweden the first major work began.

But before I get too far into those discussions, it should be noted that the creation of the Statement was not the first effort to define the movement. The actions of 1995 followed a pattern of revisiting the Cooperative Identity that has occurred several times since the founding of The Rochdale Society of Pioneers in 1843. Until 1995, the statement was known simply as The Rochdale Principles in appreciation of the Pioneer’s attempt to establish the rules of their fledgling cooperative. The Principles have been re-written, amended, and debated with each new generation of cooperative leaders. As the times have changed, the principles have grown to express the changes in society. In the last century, the principles were amended in 1937 and again in 1966 before the final undertaking in 1988-1995. However, as Ian MacPherson has commented, the principles did not “offer any understanding of their intellectual or philosophical roots.” This is important because the cooperative incredible suffered damage during the Cold War of 1945-1988 as governments across the world used the cooperative model for their own political ends. As the command economies fell apart in the late 1980 and early ‘90’s this muddled view of coops created a clear danger for cooperatives as many saw the commanding heights of the economy being left exposed only to the views of the neo-liberals without the counter-weight of either Keynesian theory or Command Economy. Cooperatives were at risk of being swept aside with Communism and Keynesianism into the ash bin of history.

The Statement has three distinct parts: a definition, values, and principles. While the principles are known to most, the other two play a key role in the creation of the modern cooperative movement. The key idea that links all three parts together is democracy. It is mentioned through the three parts which is both ironic and symbolic of the roots of the movement. It is ironic since the original principles or “rules” of Rochdale do not mention democracy at all. It is symbolic in that the Pioneers who founded Rochdale were leaders in the Universal Suffrage Movement.

The Statement is a living document. It is not intended to sit idly on a wall in an office (although I have it positioned directly above my computer). It is meant to energize our policies, procedures, and strategic plans. It should be seen a catalyst for our cooperatives. Dr. MacPherson argues, “if the International Movement is to meet its potential, it will only be done if co-operaters, each and every one of us, continually strive to make our co-operatives more effective.” That is precisely why I keep the Statement close. With each decision, I consider how that decision might be influenced by or conform to the Identity. My cooperative adopted a “social note” to accompany the “fiscal note” in policies sent for Board approval. Essentially, the Board seeks the fiscal note to clearly spell out the financial implications on their decisions. The social note explains the implications of the proposal on our identity as a cooperative. If the social note cannot connect the policy to the Identity Statement and our core values, then maybe it should not be enacted. To me, that is one way of making the Statement a living thing with the power to shape our cooperative.

For all cooperatives, the identity statement provides a “true north” when there is a discussion or argument over the direction of the cooperative. In addition to the principles, the statement gives coops that sense of ethics and values that, quite frankly, sometimes fails to be part of the discussion. For worker coops which, due to the nature of the sector, have a tendency to navel gaze, the statement helps pull them into the larger world by arguing for a place, if not at the table, then in the debate for the other stakeholders of the cooperative (the consumers and the community).

In today’s economy, worker cooperatives are needed more than ever. In the 15 years since the ICA meeting to codify the Statement, globalization has run amok destroying societies and economies to the point that even the United States was cannibalized to maintain the unrealistic and unethical profiteering of the globalized capitalists. The statement lives and speaks to us today. To make our cooperatives stronger and better able to compete and survive, we need to embrace our identity.

Sources:

MacPherson, Ian            (1996) Co-operative Principles, ICA Review 1995 (pdf)

For more extensive reading on the Statement on the Cooperative Identity, please visit the International Cooperative Information Centre through the UW Center for Cooperative’s website.

Next Week: The Definition of a Cooperative

August 26, 2009

Union Cab–Thirty Years Strong

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — John McNamara @ 8:18 am

This is my home cooperative. I’ve been a member for 21 years (November 7th). I’ve been there so long, that I been through some of the same arguments about 3-5 times!

Madison’s lefty newspaper, The Capital Times, just did a feature story on us:

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/463324

I’m not generally one for using this space as promotion, but it is a very good article and pulls in a lot of voices from our cooperative and even the larger movement.

August 22, 2009

Health care co-ops

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bernard @ 12:53 pm

All of us who have some connection to the co-op community have been scrambling to respond to the current national discussion about health care plans. As the so-called public option slips from the White House agenda and the notion of a “co-op plan” seems to be gaining ground our response is all the more necessary.

Some weeks ago I wrote a short review of co-op health care as a grassroots endeavor in Canada and Japan.

The main point to keep in mind about this discussion revolves around definitions. Or in other words – what are we talking about. The current national discussion focuses on insurance schemes. If all that we do is tweak insurance coverage, even as co-ops (or mutuals as the insurance industry refers to them), we are talking nonsense and the left Democratic critique holds – the co-ops will not have leverage to lower costs.

If however we are talking about doctors and consumers organizing their own health care co-ops – with government subsidizing membership for those who cannot afford membership, then we are on the path to a real alternative to privatized health care.

Recently an old associate of Obama from Chicago, John K. Wilson, wrote a defense of the co-op insurance scheme. It is worthwhile reading it to understand how someone who would be called a defender of the co-op sector, and who appears to be politically savvy, can be so confused.

Here is the concluding paragraph from John’s blog, obamapolitics.com – “In Defense of Co-ops”

Progressives have been given a tremendous opportunity
here. The right-wing and the insurance industry has (sic)
concentrated all of their opposition to health care
reform against the idea of a government-run insurance
plan. Utilizing a co-op undermines all of their efforts
while achieving virtually the same (and perhaps even
better) results as a public plan.

There is a BIG assumption here that the co-op insurance plan will compete successfully with the monopolistic insurance. John’s plan presumes one –big national co-op. It is difficult for me to believe that the insurance companies and their lackeys in Washington will go for that. So what follows I question:

The Blue Dog Democrats have only criticized a public plan,
while largely embracing the idea of a co-op. This means that
the exact details of a co-op plan can be moved in a
progressive direction without compromising any votes.
It will be almost impossible for any Blue Dog (and even
some moderate Republicans) to vote against a solid,
progressive co-op plan for health care reform.

John K. Wilson is the author of President Barack
Obama: A More Perfect Union

The entire blog, as I said, is worth reading, as is NCBA’s responses to questions from Senator Rockefeller.

-bernard

August 19, 2009

Democracy–practice makes perfect?

Filed under: Governance — Tags: , — John McNamara @ 7:51 pm

It is election season for a couple of cooperatives that have me as a member*. One is a worker coop and one is a consumer coop. In both, the main aspect of democracy is voting for the board of directors. this seems to be the one time of the year when the membership acts as a group and makes its will known. Our process seems very similar to the democracy practiced in our towns and on the national level. Once every couple of years we have a “meeting” of sorts and cast our vote for Mayor, Representative, Governor and President. Then we get  back on with our life (and maybe even kvetch about the people that we elected).

This seems to me a rather weak form of democracy. In my work with St. Mary’s University, I have been writing about measuring democracy (and other coop principles) in worker cooperatives. In everyone of our discussions about membership, the incidence of voting seems to be a minor or unimportant issue.  Instead, the measurement of democracy in a cooperative centers on worker development, communication and feedback systems, education of the membership about the business and the cooperative model, transparency, a humane and safe workplace, and the level of mutual respect between the internal stakeholders (managers, leaders, members, employees, insert-a-label-here, etc.).

Elections, I think, represent the worst form of democracy. It really works against building communities by creating winners and losers. At its worst, it creates cults of personality while repressing real issues that face the cooperative. This summer we have witnessed how people act when they feel that they have lost. Whatever you think of the angry mobs appearing at town halls (I don’t quite care if they are grass root or astroturf) the energy isn’t too far from the mobs in Seattle several years ago chanting the slogan “This is what democracy looks like!” Neither groups were building a lot of community or true democracy. In Seattle, at least, other groups were trying to engage in something other than shouting and building coalitions to oppose the forces of globalized capital. I can attest to having seen a few membership meetings in my 21 years as a coop member reach those same levels of frustration, so I know that coops aren’t immune to the problems of electoral democracy.

The solution, of course, is participation, transparency and building safe areas of communication. This isn’t easy though as our society seems determined to act differently and create a paradigm of democracy that is the opposite of these qualities. All we can do is practice what we preach. Practice making democracy a living thing that expresses itself each day in the work place. This might create some difficult and even heated conversations at first, but practice make perfect and eventually it might even seem quaint and odd to take a vote of the membership to find out what they think.

*As a disclosure, I got my butt handed to me last night coming in 12th out of 13th at the consumer coop–ouch!

August 18, 2009

Greetings from Bernard

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: — Bernard @ 9:48 am

Thank you John for the invitation to join you in The Workers’ Paradise. It has been my intention to journey there since I was awakened to the possibility in the 60′s!

It seems appropriate for me to introduce myself. I am the retired Sales Manager of Inkworks Press (Berkeley,CA), where I was a member since 1991. I continue to be active in the cooperative movement by working with the JASecon group organizing the upcoming Grassroots Economy Festival. JASecon is composed of NoBAWC (www.nobawc.org) members and others active in non-profits and volunteer groups who wish to see the many projects that most folks consider social programs re-conceptualized as economic initiatives.

To learn more about what that’s all about please visit our website/wiki: www.jasecon.org

Our festival is scheduled for September 26th in Oakland, CA. I will follow this post with a longer one soon giving some background information.

Glad to participate in expanding the discussion of co-ops as a democratic alternative to the oppressive and ethically challenged economic system we currently endure. Thanks John!

August 17, 2009

The past, present and future of The Workers’ Paradise

Filed under: Site News — John McNamara @ 2:04 pm

I started this blog in 2006. My hope was to start a national discussion on the worker cooperative movement. The US Federation had just come into existence and was gearing up for the New York meeting to elect the permanent board of directors. The midwest coops (and Madison in particular) were starting to stir and wake. It seemed like a good time to try to broaden our debates beyond the workercoop listserv.

Over that time, some have piped in and made comments on posts–I started my journey through St. Mary’s and made the Hadj to the Mondragon Experience. I have tried to chronicle my journey and bring issues that I see every day as a cooperator to the fore. In that time, I had no real idea of how many readers were out there. With the exception of a few comments (and people at conferences introducing themselves as a reader) it has often seemed like a way for me to get thoughts out of my head rather than a discussion. I finally took the plunge and moved the blog from the diary like Livejournal to my own web site. This has allowed me to “see” who is reading and much, much more.

Calling All Writers!

Starting today, I am asking people interested in writing about worker coops to join me. If you scroll down the right hand column, you will see a link to register. simply sign up and you will be a “subscriber” then send me an email and ask to be an author.

Here is all that I ask:

  • No personal attacks on individuals or attacks on specific coops (if their is an ethical issue, please disguise the coop or people involved and make it hypothetical). You can, however, criticize public figures such as elected politicians.
  • Keep the subject and body related to workplace democracy, worker cooperatives, collectives and participatory democratic workplaces.
  • Be willing to respond to comments posted on the site (especially if it is your article mentioned in the comment).

Bernard has already signed on. I hope that we can get a few others. You can post daily if you would like or just once or twice a year. I hope that we can take this to a new level and develop a great place for worker cooperators to discuss the issues facing our cooperatives and our movement.

The Identity Statement Series

Sometimes, I realize, I go too long between posts. I am going to try to change that. Starting August 31, I am beginning a series of posts. The first series will be on the Cooperative Identity. Each Monday, I will a discussion about the values, ethics and principles of the cooperative Identity. It will start with the definition and conclude with proposals for additions and changes to the Identity statement. I will incorporate the USDA “user principles” as well as Mondragon’s principles (the three principles in addition to the ICA’s identity will receive their own post).

I expect this to be a 20-22 week series. Each discussion will include a brief history of the development of that part of the identity (the first will be a general discussion of why we have an identity statement). I will also discuss the debate over the different parts and then how it relates to worker cooperatives, collectives, and democratic LLCs.

I hope you join me in this series. After this one is done, I will come up with a series on Human Resources in worker coops. If you would like to send ideas for other series, drop me a line. If you want to write a series, sign-up and drop me a note.

August 11, 2009

Green Worker Coops Academy News

Filed under: Education — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 3:43 pm

In my last post, I was remiss in failing to highlight  the efforts being made to bridge the education gap in the United States. In addition to the Peer Technical Assistance Network through the US Federation’s Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), the really cool and wonderful people in the Bronx have been hard at work creating institutions of social transformation!

We need more organizations like Green Worker Cooperatives throughout the country.

The following is the most recent press release sent out  by Sonia Pichardo in celebration of their academy graduates:

South Bronx, July 20, 2009- Green Worker Cooperatives Co-op Academy Graduates Create Green Businesses

Green Worker Cooperatives is proud to announce our Co-op Academy graduates, Eddie Charles, Don Butterfield, Chris Michaels, William Cerf, Joel Frank, Janco Damas, Jerry Kahn, and Jerome Villanueva.

Green Worker Cooperatives is a local, green, and democratic worker co-op business incubator. Its goal is to create jobs and keep Bronx communities clean for the people who live in them. The Green Worker Co- op Academy is a program that ran for 16 weeks. This intensive business program has taught participants how to develop South Bronx based environmentally-friendly businesses. Students learned about issues dealing with the most beneficial ways to run a worker co-op. In addition, the participants were taught how to prepare a real world business plan. Graduate Jerome Villanueva said, “ As a worker-owner you are hands on, you help out and you get dirty, here the community will actually see the owner.”

The graduates of the most recent Co-op Academy class have already started expanding their ideas into reality. Aquatecture and La Obrera are two worker co-ops currently in the incubation stage. Chris Michaels and William Cerf have begun steps to launch their 24/7 green diner in the South Bronx. Don Butterfield, Jerry Kahn and Eddie Charles are the founders of Aquatecture, a worker-coop to introduce solar energy and renewable energy in the Bronx. Jerome Villanueva, Janco Damas, and Joel Frank are the new transitioning worker owners at ReBuilders Source.

Rebuilders Source is a re-use store that takes in donated used or new building materials and sells those materials for below retail price. Rebuilders Source latest transitioning member, Janco Damas states, “We need to encourage responsible disposal of all these materials.” This is the first worker-owned building material center in the world. It is a viable alternative for contractors and homeowners from putting perfectly good building materials into the landfill.

Registration for the Fall 2009 Coop Academy class can be done if you attend an open house at 461 Timpson Place in Bronx NY on August 22nd. Visit www.greeenworker.coop. to register to attend the open house or to view videos of our graduates.

GREEN WORKER COOPERATIVES is a South Bronx-based organization dedicated to incubating worker-owned and environmentally friendly cooperatives in the South Bronx. Our approach is a response to high unemployment and decades of environmental racism. We don’t have the luxury to wait for new alternatives. That’s why we’re creating them. We believe that in order to address our environmental and economic problems we need new ways to earn a living that don’t require polluting the earth or exploiting human labor.

August 10, 2009

Education Matters in Worker Coops

Filed under: Education,Human Relations — John McNamara @ 1:57 pm

A friend and colleague of mine recently posted a letter to several people about troubles in a particular worker coop. I won’t name the people involved for obvious reasons (and if you comment on this, I will insist that your comments don’t mention it either).  My friend posed an interesting question and one that should receive some debate by coop developers* and organizers.

Do worker coops require a critical mass of college-educated members to succeed? Are high school/GED blue-collar workers too ignorant to escape the culture surrounding their workplace to build a better workplace? Will they simply translate their bad habits to the coop and bring it down?

I don’t know if we have ever done a survey of the worker coops in the US to determine the level of education, but it might be worthwhile.

The foundation of the worker cooperative movement in Mondragon was education. Don José began his work by creating a school for the children of Mondragon’s workers when the factory owners refused to let them in their schools. From that basic concept arose ULGOR and then Mondragon as we know it today. Mondragon continued that tradition by creating a k-12 and University system that serves the next generation and continues to make education the foundation of the modern cooperative movement. Workers who are unemployed in the Mondragon system are encouraged to take classes at the University of Mondragon to improve themselves.

We don’t do that in the US. We aren’t that connected, we don’t have the money, we are too small. As a result, we take workers as they are and try to teach the cooperative principles and concepts. At the smaller cooperative/collectives, this is relatively easy as the shared vision is stronger. At larger coops with hundreds of members or at those with three or more shifts, it can be difficult. Add in a dispersed workforce (such as cab driving, home care, and cleaning) and developing a coop culture to replace the capitalist culture can be difficult.

It isn’t that workers are stupid and perhaps even the word ignorant is incorrect as well. The dominant culture teaches us to compete, not cooperate. We are taught from the moment we enter the world in kindergarten that some people are better than others (I won’t even get into sibling rivalry) and that competition is not only good but that selfishness is a good quality (see Adam Smith and Ayn Rand). In college, we aren’t taught to challenge that, but we are taught to think critically. It isn’t that people won’t learn to think critically out of college (or that those in college will learn), but as people become more educated they do get exposed to cooperation and to learning how cooperation allows people to succeed easier in a group than alone.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that there is an anti-intellectual vibe in worker coops. The “bean counters” and management in the capitalist organizations do engage in a antagonistic relationship with the labor force. It is easy to build solidarity among a work force by creating the “other” of the college educated middle manager who doesn’t really work like the blue collar crowd who earn every penny or their pay and more.

In all of this, what role should education play in a worker cooperative. Can a group of working class people with a high school education create a democratic society and escape the dominate culture or do they need educated people to help lead them?

This sounds very elitist, but it is a legitimate question. Mondragon argues that workers must be educated to be owners before they can take ownership. In their new plan to convert a for-profit grocery store into a worker coop store, they estimate that it will take five years of education to develop the critical mass of an ownership mentality among the workforce for the transition to succeed. I don’t think that any of us would expect a worker coop to succeed by simply selling the workers a membership share and letting it occur naturally.

So how should organizers address this issue? How do we overcome the elitism of the educated (real or perceived)? Saul Alinsky argued in Rules for Radicals that the organizer should always be in the background and help people come up with their own ideas (which are those of the organizer). What sort of system could we create to help incubate and develop people in worker coops that don’t have access to well educated?

In my Human Resource class, I suggested that part of the role of a cooperative, as an agent of social transformation, should be to develop workers. HR in a capitalist business tends to develop workers by “moving them up or moving them out”. The traditional HR approach seems to make workers as efficient and effective as possible as workers. Worker development in a worker coop, should be to develop the human being and help them reach their potential as a human being. To this end, I think that we should consider a maturity curve of the cooperative worker. People might enter into the coop at different points of the curve, but the coop should establish institutions to move people along the curve (I have this in a nice table, but can’t figure out how to present it here):

  • Stage
  • Concept
  • Comments
  • Initial
    o    “You’re not the boss of me”
    •    Worker can’t be told what to do because there are “no bosses”
  • First Understanding
    o    “Win-Loss”
    •   Coalition building around self-interests against other coalitions (pro-worker vs. pro-management)
  • Common Good
    o Consensus
    • The success of the cooperative helps all workers.
  • Cooperative
    o    Solidarity
    •   Sees success of cooperatives as a means to support own cooperative.
  • Community
    o    “The cooperative is a microcosm of the community as a whole”
    • Sees cooperative as part of larger community
  • Model
    o    “Be the Change You Want to See in the World”
    •   Sees the community as a global environment. The actions of the cooperative interact on a large scale. The cooperative creates a model for others.

Worker Cooperatives are more than simple economic engines. They are, and should be, agents of social transformation. We need to recognize that a growing movement has to extend beyond those that have already figured out coops or opted out of the dominant paradigm of capitalism and self-interest. We need to teach people about mutual self-interest and how to be cooperative.

I think that my friend who asked the question was feeling extremely frustrated. Working people can create coops and democratic societies without a college education. However, they must of a cooperative education and this has to be institutionalized in our coops, our organizers, and our networks.

*(rant)I actually hate the term “coop developers”. I find it classist. It suggest community organizing which I tend to see as a top-down method of feel-good liberals who want to help the poor plug into the machine, not question the machine itself. Saul Alinsky called himself an organizer and I much prefer that term especially for worker coops as it evokes the labor organizers and that is really what we are doing. That a strong community develops from a well organized workforce is one of the benefits, but the focus should be on labor organizing and challenging the status quo. (/rant)

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