The Workers' Paradise

January 25, 2011

Worker Co-ops a Campaign Topic? Let’s Hope!

Filed under: The Cleveland Model — Tags: , , , , — John McNamara @ 7:30 pm

In Madison, odd years mark the municipal and county elections or non-partisan seats. These seats are called “non-partisan” because the candidates do not have ballot status based on party affiliation (every race, in my opinion, should be conducted this way). This allows the electorate to choose the person that they want rather than get stuck on party definitions.

This year in Madison, the spring elections will include the entire 20-member City Council, the Mayor and the County Executive. It offers a great opportunity for worker co-ops to put their issues forward. Normally, the chances of any candidate discussing our movement would be remote, but this year a hot Mayoral race created a neat opportunity.

The current Mayor of Madison, David Cieslewicz is running for re-election against a former Mayor of Madison, Paul Soglin. They ran against each other in 2003 when Cieslewicz bested Soglin (who has the record of the longest serving Mayor of Madison) by about 2-3% points. This time, the race will likely be even closer as many former allies of the incumbent Mayor have already openly supported Soglin and some of Soglin’s former supporters now support Cieslewicz.

I wasn’t planning to write much about this until I saw today’s entries in the blog war for the election. To be fair, The Mayor’s blog is paid for by tax dollars (one of the benefits of incumbency is that the tax payers pay for part of the campaign).

Yesterday, Soglin reported his answers to former Alder Brenda Konkel request for “three things that would change” if he were Mayor. Today, Cieslewicz wrote an essay about his ideas on the environment and building a sustainable economy.

Soglin talked about his Park St. plan to revitalize an area of the city that has been neglected for as long as I have lived in Madison (and not so coincidentally the home to the oldest African-American neighborhood as well as a sizable number of Madison’s 6% of non-European descended residents). Cieslewicz raised the idea of importing the Evergreen Model to Madison.

This all could make for a great opportunity for worker co-ops.

There are a lot of questions. The Park T plan is heavy on government agencies, non-profits and light on co-ops (although it does mention the C-TEAM concept of a worker co-op temp agency). The Cleveland Model has a lot of gas due to the previous industrial history of Cleveland and its former stature as one of the top-five largest cites in the United States. There is old money in Cleveland sitting idle–it is to economic development what black earth is to farmers. Madison simply doesn’t have something like the Cleveland Institute, but it does have the University of Wisconsin and the City of Madison as well as a new Governor who wants to create 250,000 jobs before 2012 election.

I still don’t have a lot of hope. From reading Cieslewicz blog, I didn’t get the sense that he really understood the power of worker co-ops in the Cleveland Model (it is essential and it was the Magnus Opus of the recently departed John Logue who devoted his life to worker ownership and democratic workplaces). Soglin’s Park T plan seems very Social Worker heavy and not necessarily worker friendly .

However, the synergy of these ideas is exciting and hopefully this tiny ember of an idea can blossom into a bonafide campaign discussion. We can only hope. Madison has a growing movement of worker co-ops. There are about 9-12 democratic workplaces that I can name off the top of my head and it seems that each year another one pops up. We have a long way to go to match San Francisco or Winnipeg for the title of most worker co-ops per capita (Winnipeg apparently owns it). but our movement should be seen as a means for the next Mayor of Madison to build a sustainable economy and they need to talk about it in the campaign.

For those readers living in Madison, attend the debates, send them emails, and ask them about how worker co-ops fit into their plan.

I’m excited, but will be officially uncommitted until I see how their development plans incorporate worker co-operatives.

June 28, 2010

The Democracy at Work Conference

Filed under: Movement — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 2:18 pm

I took last week off due to a couple of things. The most important of which involved my wife and I becoming “Domestic Partners” in Dane County. Five years ago, we married ourselves in a handfasting ceremony at one of the area’s First Nations* “mounds”. We decided to seek legal status for some personal reason, but it was also a fun experience. This week, I was going to continue the discussion about how co-operatives should treat their workers. However, three events have caused me to delay it. The first involves my co-operative, Union Cab, which will be having two informal membership meetings this week. The first involves dealing with frustrations about bureaucracy and “management’s punitive practices”** among other angst driven issues. The second involves my co-operative’s attempt at creating solutions for dealing with our current “smokey hut” where people currently enjoy their smokey treats but which will likely be illegal when Wisconsin’s smoking ban goes into effect on July 5th. The former has been called by a couple of stewards, the latter by the General Manager.

The last reason is that a couple of key deadlines will be upon us. As President of the US Federation of Worker Co-operatives, I find it necessary, even obligatory, to push our annual conference. The Apex organization of worker co-operatives in the United States will be holding its annual meeting and biannual conference in Berkeley, CA from August 6-8.

The deadline for a discounted registration is June 30, 2010.

The deadline for registration is July 5, 2010–you can still attend after this date, but we may not be able to count you in on the dinner and meals. REGISTER TODAY!

With the theme, “The Work We Do Is The Solution” hundreds of worker cooperative members and cooperative developers will meet at the University of California—Berkeley from August 6-8, 2010 to share information, strategies and tactics to make their cooperatives stronger as well as to help create new worker cooperatives. The US Federation of Worker Cooperatives sponsors the conference and holds its annual meeting.

Texas Populist Jim Hightower will be the keynote speaker. Other featured speakers include the Evergreen Cooperative project from Cleveland (featured in TIME and The Economist as an innovative economic development strategy), the Toxic Soil Busters youth cooperative from Worcester, MA which has city contracts to do lead remediation, and representatives from EdVisions, which is changing the face of public education by developing teacher-run small charter schools across the country.

USFWC Executive Director Melissa Hoover emphasized the theme of the conference, noting that, “Worker cooperatives can be economic engines that generate the surplus we need to tackle the big problems. They can create jobs that offer opportunities for meaningful personal and professional growth.   They can build community power and shared wealth.  They can choose to conduct business in a restorative and sustainable way. They can create a powerful values-based and principled framework for making decisions about work, industry, and the economy.”

The conference will be held at the Clark Kerr Conference Center. The 2010 Conference may be one of the most important meetings of the decade for those interested in creating a more sustainable economy.

The USFWC has created a nation-wide Peer Advisor Network to assist member cooperatives and start-ups with guidance from people working in worker cooperatives. Along with new capitalization efforts underway, there has never been a better time in the United States to start a worker cooperative. We have created a strong support structure for fledging cooperatives as well as existing cooperatives who may need a hand up.

We have worked hard over the last four years (since the NYC conference) to create a vibrant national movement. We currently sit on the edge of success. This is our moment to surge forward. If you read this blog with any regularity, we need you in Berkeley. We need you in the movement. The time for worker co-operaters and those that believe that our economy should mirror our values need to act today.

See you in Berkeley!

April 5, 2010

Comments About Union Cab’s Bonus Segment in Michael Moore’s Movie

Filed under: Society — Tags: , , , , — Fred Schepartz @ 6:23 pm

In Michael Moore’s latest film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” his basic point is that Capitalism is inherently evil. He cites various examples of antidotes to Capitalism, including worker cooperatives. Union Cab, where I’ve worked for 22 years, was one of three worker cooperatives Moore’s film crew spent time with last spring. We didn’t make it into the theatrical cut, but we are included in the bonus features on the DVD that came out last week.

It was gratifying to see my workplace portrayed as a force was positive change in our society. Basically, Moore is saying that Union Cab is everything that is good and wholesome, a workplace that puts people before profits, that is democratic, that sees the community as something to serve, not something to exploit and mine for profit.

More importantly, Moore accurately portrays Union Cab as one of many entities seeking to change society through economic means. There is a zeitgeist regarding worker cooperatives right now, and Moore is out there on the forefront. Amazingly, a great deal has happened in the worker cooperative movement since he started filming last year. In Cleveland, the first of the Evergreen Cooperative‘s opened for business. They are just beginning, but this burgeoning network of cooperatives has been highly touted as “The Cleveland Model.” (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/alperowitz_et_al)

And then last fall, it was announced that United Steelworkers had formed a collaboration with Spanish super cooperative Mondragon to create manufacturing worker cooperatives here in the United States based on the Mondragon model in Spain. (http://www.usw.org/media_center/releases_advisories?id=0234)

One thing I particularly liked is that the bonus features includes an interview with Tom Webb. Webb is on faculty at St. Mary’s University in Canada. St. Mary’s offers a masters program in cooperative studies. In fact, my best friend and fellow Union Cabbie, John McNamara, is graduating from the program this spring. (John set up the interview and the whole visit with Union Cab, but when the time came for the visit, John was out of town visiting family.) The interview is quite useful in terms of putting these various syndicalist elements into perspective and realizing it is all part of a movement, albeit a movement that may or may not realize that it actually exists as a movement.

As far as how Union Cab is portrayed, for the most part I was pleased. There was a great deal of trepidation and anxiety in anticipation of the release of the DVD. I had heard that a couple of our members who were interviewed felt like they were being treated in a bit of a confrontational manner. Our General Manager, Karl Schulte, was a bit upset. He was asked about how much he was paid compared to the lowest paid employee—the ratio is about three or four to one compared to 300 to one for the average corporate CEO. In response to Karl’s answer, the interviewer barked, “What are you, a commie, a hippie?” Rebecca Kemble, the other Union Cab member who drove them around, also said she felt they got a bit confrontational with her as well, hence her being a bit defensive when she says on camera, “I don’t think we have any Communists working here,” when she talks about the diversity of our membership, with some Democrats, some Republicans, as well as socialists and anarchists.

While I felt like I was treated with the utmost respect by Basel Hamden and his crew, my nose was certainly bent out of joint by a comment Moore made during a couple interviews when the theatrical cut was released. He said he liked Isthmus Engineering because they all “look like a bunch of Republicans.” He said that kind of cooperative interested him more than some “hippie-dippy food coop.”

But now that many of us have seen our segment on the DVD, I can say that our fears were unfounded. For the most part, it’s just us, speaking for ourselves, and I have to say we do a good job. The segment comes off in a very positive manner.

After a nearly perfect imitation of the opening shots of “Taxi Driver” with me channeling Travis Bickle (actually, it’s not Bickle but former Union Cab driver Steve Fleischman who used the line to shut up some drunk Young Republicans the night Tommy Thompson was elected governor in 1986. John McNamara told me this story.), I talk about seniority pay increases. Rebecca talks about earning roughly $18-27 an hour on a good Saturday night. She also has a nice line about how Union Cab counts among its ranks many of the “walking wounded from corporate America.” Karl, when asked about how much he’s paid, comments that he doesn’t understand how somebody would want more. He’s able to put food on the table. Isn’t that enough?

Now if I were to quibble, I would have to say that I wish there was more in the way of nuts and bolts details to the specifics about what makes Union Cab a special place to work. I get into that some with my description of our institutionalized system of seniority pay increases, a percentage point for every 2500 hours one works. That’s nice, but I wish Moore would have included the other things I said about our structure, that we have a board of directors elected from the membership by the membership, that we do have a management structure, but it is counter-balanced to protect our members from abuse. We give managers the authority to do their jobs, but they are supervised by the board, so they work for us. We have the Worker’s Council where any member can appeal discipline. We have committees that anyone can join that write policy, which may be eventually approved by the board.

I believe all of this is very important. Touchy-feel words don’t make us what we are. It is the structure of our organization and the various entities without our organization along with the energy of our members that makes us special. That is exactly how we are able to provide jobs at a living wage in a democratic and humane work environment.

In our segment, I’m shown for 30 seconds talking about Union Cab. I wish I had been given more time because there’s so much more I said that I wanted people to hear. Also, and forgive me for sounding self-centered and self-serving, I was rather disappointed that Moore didn’t allow me to plug my novel, “Vampire Cabbie.” Frankly, I was surprised that Moore didn’t include any mention of my book. The idea of a cab driver who drives at night who has published a book about a vampire cab driver, that struck me as the sort of thing that would attract Moore like a moth to a flame. If anything, I was worried that Moore might make me look some kind of kook. But, nooooo! No plug! No love!

All kidding aside, what particularly disappointed me about that omission was that while talking about my book, I also talked about how Union Cab attracts and nurtures various artistic types. Within a year of the publication of “Vampire Cabbie,” two of my fellow drivers published books. Last year we had a successful Union Cab art show. There’s always several musicians driving at Union at any given time. In fact, earlier this year, a second Union Cab music CD was released.

As I said to the camera (and to local reporters Doug Moe and Rob Thomas in interviews this week, neither of whom felt the need to quote me on this point), Union Cab does a great job of nurturing artistic types because, first of all, we pay a living wage, which means you don’t have to work a ton of hours to get by, so you have time to devote to your art. Second, Union Cab is not the kind of workplace that sucks out your soul, so that when you’re not working, you still have enough gas in the tank to pursue your artistic endeavors.

Still, all that said, it was an honor to be in a Michael Moore film, even if it was just the bonus features on the DVD. While I felt a bit disappointed by some aspects of the segment, it was a strong, positive portrayal of a worker cooperative that is, in it’s own way, an important part of a bigger movement.

There is one last point I do need to make. I have to take exception with Rebecca’s comment that “we don’t have any Communists working here.” Actually, we do. I know for a fact that we have at least one, and he’d be a bit pissed to hear that comment. Rebecca seems a bit defensive when she makes that remark. I want to be clear that we’ve always had Communists working at Union Cab, and they have, at various times, played an important role and taken leadership positions, but not for power, not because the Central Committee told them to, but because they chose to sacrifice their time for the common good.

Look for us on page two of the bonus features. Our segment is titled, “You Talkin’ To Me? Commie Taxi Drivers in Wisconsin.”

March 22, 2010

CICOPA: The Basic Characteristics of a Worker Co-operative

Filed under: Movement,World Declaration — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 1:47 pm

There are six basic characteristics of worker co-operatives in the CICOPA World Declaration of Worker Co-operatives:

  1. Creating and maintaining sustainable jobs, improving the quality of life for their members, creating dignity in human work, democratic self-management, and promoting community and local development.
  2. Free and voluntary membership
  3. The majority of workers in a worker co-operative should be members of the co-operative and the majority of a co-op’s members should be workers.
  4. The nature of the relationship with the co-operative is different from that of wage-based labor or independent contractors.
  5. The control and management of the enterprise is democratic, agreed upon and accepted by its members.
  6. Worker Co-operatives are autonomous and independent in terms of government and third party control as well as in the control of the means of production.

My co-operative, Union Cab, expresses the first characteristic in its mission statement: “To create jobs at a living wage or better in a safe, humane, and democratic environment by providing quality transportation to the greater Madison area.” I think that is a great summary of the first characteristic. This speaks to the core difference between worker co-operatives and other types of co-operatives. Our worker co-operatives exist to elevate the worker as a human being and to provide them the security and rights that they deserve as human beings. If a worker co-op isn’t engaged with this thought in mind, then it might as well be an US style ESOP or have a traditional ownership with a labor union representation. While we might joke about, there shouldn’t be self-exploitation in any worker co-operative.

The second and third characteristics bring up a serious challenge for modern worker co-operatives. I think that some worker co-ops misinterpret the “voluntary and open” clause. This isn’t to allow people to “choose” whether or not to accept their responsibility as an owner, it is to ensure that the co-operative doesn’t discriminate against visible minorities or create an enclave of “the right type of people”. It urges co-operatives to welcome all people and to create a co-operative that looks like their communities. I think that there is a danger in allowing a class of worker to exist in a worker co-operative who does not (through their choice or that of the co-operative) have a path that will lead to membership. Part of that danger is that the number of worker-owners will fall below 50%. In my mind, at that point, the worker co-operative ceases to be a “worker” co-operative and becomes an “employer” co-operative. This may create two classes of workers—those who are owners and those who are employees. Ultimately, I think that this will create different expectations for the groups. In addition, the workers need a controlling voice even if they allow other stakeholders.

The fourth characteristic brings up another point that I think is vital. Those of us engaged in a worker co-operative are a unique type of worker. We aren’t (and shouldn’t be) independent contractors and we aren’t wage workers. We need to quit thinking in that dichotomy even if the law doesn’t recognize us. If I had unlimited money and time, I would make the creation of a third worker, the worker-owner are legal reality. We need our own set of labor laws that recognize our control over the means of production.  This has many applications from labor standards to taxation. The US government’s rule show how bizarre the discussion is. They recognize a “partnership” of owners as long as each owner owns at least 2% equity. This means that the government recognizes a “partnership” of 50 people, but not 51. That is ridiculous. They need to recognize that organizations wherein the workers have “one person, one vote” are partners—are owners. This doesn’t mean that worker co-operatives should be free to self-exploit, but they should have more latitude to set their own rules and the tax laws should recognize that equity and profits work differently in a worker co-operative.

The last two characteristics speak to ensuring that worker co-operatives are not false fronts put up for other means. The membership must agree to the governance structure. If there is hierarchy, it needs to have control by the workers. Workers must have the ability to change their structure whenever they agree to do so. Lastly, just as all co-operatives must be independent, worker co-operative must work even harder at this. As a movement, we cannot tolerate pseudo-co-operatives masquerading as democracies when they are really controlled by government organization and politicians or as a means to defeat labor movements in emerging countries. Worker co-operatives should only be subsidiaries of a larger worker co-operative—and then, in a federated style similar to what Mondragon or the Italians follow.

The Basic Characteristics seem simple enough. However, there are many self-described “worker co-operatives” that do not meet them. These characteristics prevent the worker co-operative movement from being co-opted by multinationals seeking to enjoy good public relations while undercutting labor movements in emerging nations (or in developed nations for that matter. It instructs new worker co-op models such as The Cleveland Model in the way that a worker co-operative needs to be developed to ensure that the workers don’t become the well kept pets of social workers. It provides a check on existing worker co-operatives who need to grow and worry about the effect of difference types of workers entering their co-operative. There is no international or federal law defining worker co-ops in the US, Canada or the UK (although there should be), so it is up to those of us in the movement to hold each other up to these standards.

Next Week: Internal Functioning Rules of Worker Co-operatives

February 23, 2010

Capital? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Capital

Filed under: Movement,The Cleveland Model — Tags: , , — Fred Schepartz @ 12:17 pm

Publisher’s Note: this is the second of hopefully several articles about the Cleveland Model Fred Schpartz. Fred publishes Mobius: A Journal of Social Change publisher is a member of Union Cab of Madison Co-operative and authored Vampire Cabbie.

Labor, properly organized, accompanied by sufficient community support equals capital. That is the lesson of the Cleveland Model.

Cleveland, like many Rust Belt cities, is an economic disaster area. Its population has dropped to less than half of what it was in 1950. Glenville, the Cleveland neighborhood where worker-owned Evergreen Cooperative Laundry is based, has a median annual income of roughly $18,000. Yet, in the depths of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, something amazing has happened.

Last year, Evergreen Cooperatives was born. Spearheaded by the private, non-profit Cleveland Foundation, grants and loans were secured allowing for the creation of the Evergreen Cooperative Development Fund with the purpose of creating worker-owned cooperatives, starting in the Glenville neighborhood, thus taking advantage of the presence of a university, a hospital and a large medical clinic in the neighborhood and the subsequent demand for a variety of services that previously had been provided by non-local businesses.

Last year, Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Ohio Cooperative Solar were born. Aside from being worker cooperatives, both businesses are significantly green. Green City Growers, an urban hydroponics greenhouse and Neighborhood Voice, a community newspaper will open their doors later this year.

Taking a cue from Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in the Basque region of Spain, each Evergreen cooperative is obligated to pay 10 percent of pre-tax profits into a cooperative development fund.

The Cleveland Model is a significant development given the devastation wrought by capital abandonment, not just in Cleveland, but all throughout the Rust Belt. Capital abandoned the inner city in favor of the suburbs. Capital abandoned the north in favor of the Right To Work south and west. And when the imposition of neo liberalism in developing nations allowed capital to sidestep local labor and environmental laws and regulations, capital abandoned the United States.

During the current recession, we’ve seen a different variety of capital abandonment. Fearful of financial instability, capital hoards its resources. The financial sector won’t loan money to businesses. The Obama Administration is desperate to launch a new green economy, but capital is unwilling to risk their resources on a new, unproven economic sector.

This points out a significant advantage of the sustainability model versus the profit model. The reluctance of capital to venture into untested waters is understandable, given the financial risk. Obviously, a cooperative wants to turn a profit, but the cooperative is not out to maximize profits. Its board of directors does not demand tribute. There is no CEO demanding an eight or nine figure salary. In addition, risk is spread among more people in a cooperative, so cooperatives are willing to go where capital fears to tread.

Obviously, it takes money to start a worker-owned cooperative business. In the case of the Cleveland Model, this was accomplished through community support, with funding coming from area foundations, locally owned banks and municipal government, along with some federal grants.

When capital abandons a place, the solution is that labor can become capital, if properly organized and with sufficient community support. And given that capital has abandoned a great deal of this country, the Cleveland Model is a solution for Anywhere, USA. We as a nation need not be held hostage by capital.

Workers need to march back to the shuttered factories where they used to work and decide they will resume building goods in those darkened plants. And that effort needs to be supported by the community and by local, state and federal government. The Obama Administration must lead the way by allocating economic stimulus money for the formation of worker-owned cooperatives. Imagine the impact of one billion dollars provided as seed money for worker cooperatives. That’s a little more than one tenth of one percent of the total amount of money allocated for the stimulus. This would be money well spent. Not only would it get people back to work relatively quickly, but it would provide a conduit for long-term economic growth.

Lest I paint too rosy a picture, I should mention that I have heard a critique of the Cleveland Model that it is top down and thus paternalistic. I believe that criticism is fair. I have not visited any of the Evergreen Cooperatives, so I cannot say this with utmost certainty, but it appears that the management and leadership structure is superimposed upon these cooperatives rather than grown organically from the membership. My sense is that the Cleveland Foundation et al probably believes professional leadership is necessary, at least in the beginning, for these cooperatives to survive, that it was absolutely necessary for hired-gun technocrats to be brought in to run things.

While The Nation absolutely gushed about the effort it took to organize these cooperatives and how green these businesses are, there was not a word about what it’s actually like to work in any of these places.

Are these workplaces democratic? Is it a humane work environment? Are workers paid a living wage?

A worker’s cooperative that does not have these things is not much of a cooperative. At Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, there is the hope that workers can accumulate upwards of $65,000 in retained equity within 10 years. This is an admirable goal, but is it realistic or is it pie in the sky? And to achieve that goal, are worker’s paid a substandard wage? I don’t know.

For the Cleveland Model to succeed in a meaningful way, each worker’s cooperative must have self-rule and self-determination. It is imperative that management provides training opportunities so the workers can learn how to run their own business because when it’s all said and done, it’s their business, and no one will know how to run it better than them.

I do sincerely hope a form of the Cleveland Model can be implemented on a national scale. Capital has abdicated its responsibility to the citizens of this country. The Cleveland Model teaches us that together, we can live without capital by essentially generating it ourselves.

A tsunami of new cooperatives could create thousands upon thousands of new jobs and could get America back in the business of building good that the rest of the world wants to buy.

But to make this a truly worthwhile endeavor, the cooperative movement has to be proactive in its efforts to train and organize those who might form these future cooperatives, so these future cooperative members can be best equipped to organize themselves.

February 18, 2010

The Cleveland Model–Take One

Filed under: Movement,The Cleveland Model — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 7:00 am

Recently, The Nation sent out a broadcast with an article about the emerging worker cooperatives of Cleveland asking those of us in the bog-o-sphere to comment. As someone who has been an active member of a worker co-operative for over 20 years and involvement in the national and international movement for the last 4 years, I definitely have some ideas.

The folks are really doing this right. I spoke with one of the organizers of Evergreen Laundry a few years ago. They lined up the customers as part of the planning stage. The idea wasn’t to struggle as so many worker co-ops do in the beginning, but to start-up with a strong source of work (this was touch and go, but it appears that Case Western and other institutions will be sending their laundry to Evergreen). Second, the Mondragon style commitment to return 10% of surplus (the article calls it ‘pre-tax profits’) to a development fund. Third, I like the commitment expected from the workers that may require a long-term buy-in—I think that low-cost buy-ins have a tendency to devalue the membership or ownership aspect of the experience.

I’m a bit stunned at the amount of capital amassed. One of the well identified stumbling blocks for worker co-operative development in the United States has been the lack of access to capital. I realize that there are a number of groups, involved, I would like to know where  the $5 million came from and what strings are attached to it. I’m not casting aspertions, but I just have to assume that these organizations that ponied up the start-up cash expect to getting something out of the project and won’t want it to fail. A look at their website suggests that all three of the start-up co-operatives have the same group of customers (Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Case Western Reserve, City of Cleveland, and Housing Network). This project is a great example of what can happen when different organizations working around economic justice, worker rights and sustainable communities break down the “silos”. I do hope that other communities learn from the Cleveland model especially Milwaukee and Madison (sadly, Madison’s current Economic Director doesn’t really seem to know much about that subject other than the standard refrain that government should get out of the way).

This does turn the traditional model on its head in that this was a top-down organizing effort. This likely helped with fund-raising as established rain-makers were able to tap into professional relationships where a gaggle of workers would likely be turned away with a shrug. I’m not so sure how I feel about that. I’m happy to see the effort up and running, but I wonder how much of the paternalism associated with a  top-down organizing effort will interfere with the transition to a true worker democracy in which the workers may make decisions that the founders fundamentally disagree with. I can see a dynamic where there could be a difficult (even fatal) transition in generational succession. This may be exacerbated by the management being chosen from a management class that may not really have anything in common with the workers. Will future managers be developed within the organization or sought within the existing worker co-operative movement?

Another issue with the top-down model involves labor relations during the start-up phase. Who will decide who gets off of probation and becomes a member before there are members? Will there be an appeal process? How will disputes get resolved without ownership or a labor union? They are creating good paying jobs (although the article didn’t really mention expected pay and benefits) in a very depressed area. I imagine a lot of people are looking forward to the work and see the ownership part as an abstraction. Working is a worker co-operative is not for everybody (at least not without a lot of therapy and training). We don’t refer to the Yellow Family at Union Cab for nothing, the relationships are very personal and very difficult to walk away from when times get tough. The intimacy of the work relationships due to ownership can make the disputes powerful and difficult to manage. Not everybody is ready for that or can deal with it.

This brings up my other concern: how will these co-operatives interact with the co-operative movement? A similar co-operative is Co-operative Home Care Associates of New York that generally doesn’t interact with the larger movement despite being the largest worker co-operative in the country. Will the Cleveland Model co-operatives join the US Federation of Worker Co-operatives? Will they subscribe to the CICOPA World Declaration of Worker Co-operatives? Will they subscribe to the Statement on Co-operative Identity?

I raise the last question because it seems that there is a trend to see co-operatives and worker co-operatives as an extension of the not-for-profit model of community development. We’re not. The growth of social workers creating co-ops is, I think, a danger for US co-operatives as they become more identified with a movement that tends to enable the worst aspects of capitalism. The rise of Policy Governance Model among consumer co-operatives is, in my opinion, a travesty that has allowed small cabals of managers and directors to create fiefdoms and barriers to expressing the user principles as well as the values of co-operatives. I would hate to see that cancer emerge into the worker co-operative world.

Finally, I have a small bone to pick. The authors make this comment, “These are not your traditional small-scale co-ops.” <COUGH, COUGH!> Union Cab with 230 members, Rainbow Grocery approaching 250 members, CHCA with over 1,000 members have been “traditional “ co-operatives for over 25 years. Granted the common stereotype is 5-10 member organizations, but the Cheeseboard and Arizmendi co-operatives all have over 30 members. The Cleveland co-ops are only looking at around 50 jobs per co-operative (according to The Economist). What makes these co-ops Mondragonish is the funding and mutual support mechanism, not the size of the organization.

I think that the Cleveland Model is an exciting development in the worker co-operative movement. However, it is one aspect. Our movement has been active for decades if not centuries. I am glad to see journals such as The Nation finally discover the co-operative model, although they probably could have covered the Democracy at Work Conferences (2006 in New York City and 2008 in New Orleans, and the 2010 conference in San Francisco). Perhaps they could ask their colleagues over as Dollars and Sense for tips on covering worker co-operatives.

To me, the best thing about the Cleveland Model is that it promises to open up some serious capital for worker co-operative development. It will still need to be determined how the strings attached to that capital work. It will also need to be seen if a top-down organizing model works to create a truly democratic work place and governance model or becomes another version of ESOP. Finally, after all the news of 2009, it is nice to be in a movement that isn’t entirely invisible any more.

We can, however, definitely agree that CLEVELAND ROCKS!

February 16, 2010

Coming Soon-A Group Discussion (I hope)

Filed under: Movement,Site News,The Cleveland Model — Tags: — John McNamara @ 7:10 am

The March 1 edition of The Nation has an article on the growing industrial worker cooperative movement. I use the word “industrial” to differentiate it from the worker cooperative movement in the United States that has flourished over the last 30-40 years. This group is big (even by Rainbow and Union Cab standards). It is very traditional blue collar (laundry, construction, etc).

I have asked the folks who are on this site as authors to post their reactions to the article. This is because The Nation wants this to go viral. They sent out the following email:

“Afternoon,

I’m Ben Wyskida, Publicity Director for The Nation magazine. We have a major feature this week from Gar Alperovitz & Ted Howard (of the Democracy Collaborative and Community-wealth.org) and Thad Williamson  that they wanted me to share with you. We hope you’ll read the article, blog, tweet, email, post and pass on to your colleagues. Hardcopies are available as well. Here is the piece:

The Cleveland Model
GAR ALPEROVITZ, TED HOWARD &THAD WILLIAMSON : Thoroughly green and worker-owned, co-ops are a vibrant response to economic distress.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100301/alperowitz_et_al

The article features the work of five different organizations in Cleveland, and explains how their approach could be a potent model of sustainable economic development for cities across the country.

Thanks so much,

Ben

–
Ben Wyskida
Publicity Director
The Nation ”

If you aren’t on the list, we still want to hear your views. Send me a note on your ideas and I will publish them. Email me: johnmac<at>tds.net.

I hope to see the posts up soon. So far, only one of the other writers for this blog have committed (and even then only mildly so), I but I promise to have something up by the end of the week and I hope that the them will carry on through the end of February.

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