The Workers' Paradise

June 14, 2010

Consumer Co-ops and Workers

Filed under: Human Relations,Worker Rights — Tags: — John McNamara @ 11:14 am

The role of workers in a consumer co-operative (and how the co-op interacts with them) has as many variations as one would expect for a community based economic movement. Some co-operatives (thought not many I expect in today’s world) bar workers from being members. Some may allow membership but not board representation, or may limit their board actions to only those of “member” but not worker (as if people can split themselves in that way).Others might allow workers (who are members) to exist without restraint.

One could certainly take the view that the co-operative exists for its members and to benefit its members through access to the commodity goods and services that the members want at prices that they can sustain. In this respect, the employee relations in a consumer co-operative may be no different (nor should they be) than any other enterprise operating in the same marketplace. However, I think that is a mistake (and I imagine that most consumer co-op people see it as wrong as well). The Co-operative Paradigm requires something different. It requires that co-operatives be leaders in their community. In the case of consumer co-operatives, how they treat their workers has a lot to do with how the community sees them. After all, it seems a bit wrong to sell “fair trade” coffee in a store that pays less than the area’s living wage to its own workers.

How do consumer co-operatives work to minimize the exploitation of the workers?

I think that the key method must involve viewing the co-op’s workers as key stakeholders in the enterprise whether or not they are actual members. This means seeing as more than “human resources”; it means seeing them as fully developed humans and partners in the co-operative’s mission. By embracing the workers as partners, it should lead to a revisioning of the relationship (which may lead to a multi-stakeholder model such as Mondragon’s wildly successful Eroski chain of supermarkets and retail outlets).

This doesn’t mean allowing one or two seats on the board to be held by workers as long as they promise to vote against their interests as workers.

I would suggest (short of becoming a multi-stakeholder) that it may mean encouraging unionization of the workforce. With a labor union, the workers would be able to speak with a single voice just as the membership speaks through the voice of the board of directors. It would help to create a better power balance in the workplace. Of course, labor unions cannot be imposed on a workforce, they need to be invited in by the workers, not the managers. This takes a perceived need (and, to be frank, many workers in the service and retail industry have been ignored by labor unions for so long, they may not even see them as an option any more).

Even without a labor union, consumer co-ops can do other things. One consumer co-op in my area has created an employee advisory board to provide assistance on policy development to the General Manager. Another means would be to create a truly independent appeals process for discipline and dispute resolution. Co-ops could even create semi-autonomous work teams that would flatten out hierarchy by repowering workers to control their work lives within the policies of the board (interestingly, Whole Foods does create teams and took this idea from the Austin food co-ops).

Ultimately, the power relationships within the co-operative need to be understood and equalized. The relation between consumers and workers should be one of co-existence not dominance by the consumers. Consumer co-ops completely fail when they simply mirror their competitors in structure and think that they are doing it right. It is kind of like watching children sneak into the grown-up table at Thanksgiving. No matter how good their manners, they are still playing “grown-up”.

Co-ops require more management (and more experienced management) than a traditional business. For one, the stakeholder issues get more muddled. Two, in addition to the normal market pressures, the democratic structure must also be addressed. Finally, the management of people has to be done in the same spirit of the co-operative values and principles as everything else. As I referred to earlier, it is the height of hypocrisy to promote Fair Trade for distant farmers and treat the workers in the store as wage slaves. The workers in a consumer co-operative do not exist as resources but as stakeholders and partners in the co-operative.

April 5, 2010

CICOPA: Relations with the Co-operative Movement

Filed under: Movement,World Declaration — Tags: , — John McNamara @ 4:29 pm

The remaining sections of the World Declaration on Worker Cooperatives focus on the rest of the world and suggest how they and worker cooperatives should interact. The first of these include six “invitations” for the cooperative movement to consider.

The declaration suggests that the development of worker cooperatives should be a priority for the rest of the movement. The international coop movement should help finance worker cooperatives through strategic alliances and the development of capital funds. They should also help develop laws that protect worker cooperatives. Last, but not least, every cooperative should integrate the wage-earning workers of their coops into worker-members.

It is the last one that I find the most interesting and exciting. I believe that the primary stakeholder of every co-operative is the worker. I would go further and say the primary stakeholder of any business is the worker. If a consumer cooperative shuts its door, the consumers can move on to the next store on the street. They may have to learn a new floor layout (and might have to re-fight old battles to get their favorite items), but  they can still consume uninterrupted. Farmers will still be able to get to market and purchase seeds. The workers, however, lose their jobs. They may not be able to find a job immediately. They could end up being evicted from their homes, losing their healthcare, and any number of things. With the once exception of housing co-ops, the closing of a co-operative would be most devastating on the workers serving that co-operative.

I think that the worker cooperative should also reciprocate where possible. I don’t think that worker co-ops should immediately throw open the membership rolls and allow consumers to join en masse. When developing, however, organizers should consider multi-stakeholder models as Black Star Co-op in Austin, the Rainbow Bookstore Coop in Madison and People’s Food Co-op in Portland. Existing worker co-operatives should find methods of creating a sense of solidarity with the consumer. After all, the consumer plays a very important role in every worker co-operative.

The co-operative movement gets caught in its sectors, at times, but the movement, as Don Jose is social one. It doesn’t exist in sections, but in people. One could argue, as the Fabians did, that membership should exist on the commonality of people (we all consume); however, it seems more appropriate to create membership on the basis of the stake that we have in the enterprise. I’ve found it pure folly when some consumer co-op decides to allow the workers (who are also member) the pleasure to serve on their board but only if they ignore their interests as workers. How inhumane and patronizing! As if the workers don’t have a vested interest in the success of the co-operative that pays their rent/mortgage and puts food on their table.

We all need allies as we work to create a better world. Just as worker co-ops should recognize that their customers will be their best allies, so should the other co-ops recognize that the workers are their strongest and most loyal stakeholder group (sometimes even more loyal than their membership).

March 1, 2010

#25: The Internationalist Nature of Co-operatives

Filed under: Identity Statement Series,Movement — Tags: , , , , — John McNamara @ 2:00 pm

Over the last 6 months,  I have been working my way through the Statement on the Co-operative Identity that the International Co-operative Alliance adopted at the 1995 meeting which also commemorated its first century of service. This statement solidified the Rochdale Principles as well as adding a list of values and ethics. In part, this was done to assure countries emerging into the world after decades of the Cold War, that co-operatives were not co-opted. That co-operatives that they experienced behind the Iron Curtain or as part of an attempt to shore up a rulers power in an emerging nation were not a true representative of the co-operative model. The Identity Statement also was a challenge to the western co-operatives as well. It was, and remains, a challenge to not rest of the laurels of the past, but to constantly struggle to improve our co-operatives and credit unions. The ICA created a true touchstone by which every co-operative and credit union in the world could be measured. That 1995 meeting may be the most significant moment in the movement’s 167 year history.

Dr. Ian MacPherson made these salient points in his background paper to the Identity Statement:

“It was a task much more difficult than the delegates of a hundred years ago knew. Overcoming the differences created by national perspectives and histories, coping with the ideological cleavages that swept the world in the Twentieth Century, recognising the biases each of us possesses, understanding empathetically the nature of co-operative experiences in non-European societies has not been easily accomplished. In the important book she prepared for Congress, Rita Rhodes has explained the deep tensions that made progress in creating a strong international Movement for most of the Twentieth Century difficult to achieve. It is a story worth pondering as we seek to understand how we can forge even stronger links among co-operative organisations spread around the world.”

In my days college days, we often challenged ourselves to “think globally, act locally”. We needed to recognize that the struggle of people is an international struggle but that we also aren’t saviors for those in other countries. To fix the world, we need to fix our local communities and share our story with the world. The Identity Statement embodies that ethos. As MacPherson notes, the co-operative movement exists as an international movement. The creation of the International Co-operative Alliance in 1895 was to help co-operatives world-wide and to share their stories. When workers in the Argentine factories succeed as running their own plants, they create a better environment for cab drivers in Madison, WI (and vice versa) by showing that workers can manage themselves. When Equal Exchange workers broke the Reagan Quarantine on Nicaragua with Café Nica. they helped farmer/workers the world over know that cold war politics could be defeated by workers and farmers uniting in a common cause.

The Identity Statement is our touchstone as a co-operative and credit union. It is an international document that makes our individual membership in our co-operatives and credit unions an international act of solidarity. Our membership in our organizations and our support for the ICA and the Identity Statement force us to “think globally”. By striving within our co-operatives to bring the Identity Statement to life, to “operationalize” the statement, we act locally. One of my projects over the last couple of years has been assisting in the development of something called the “Co-op Index.” It is a diagnostic tool to measure an individual worker co-operative against the Identity Statement (and the Mondragon principles). Ultimately, it will create a maturity index for worker co-operatives world-wide but in the short run, it will provide worker co-operatives with the information and tools that they need to become stronger co-operatives and create “best practices” for worker co-operatives in particular. It will be a means of improving our workplaces and the world at the same time.

The Identity Statement cannot just hang on the wall. We need to teach it in our co-operatives. We need to connect our actions to it. At my co-operative, we attach a “policy note” to each measure before the board that connects the proposed action to the co-operative’s vision, mission, core values and the Co-op Identity. It is a useful exercise that I think all co-operatives should adopt. The basic premise is that if we cannot explain why the proposal works from the vantage point of the Co-op Identity, then maybe it isn’t a proposal worth adopting.

On a final note, the Identity Statement is not a final document. It is, like the Rochdale Principles that it replaced, a living document. Each generation since 1843 has re-visited the co-operative identity and made adjustments appropriate to their time and place. In 1995, a strong movement existed (but eventually lost) to include a principle of co-operative management that would instruct co-operatives to manage in a different way and to create co-operative management schools. That effort didn’t fail, but continued and my imminent graduation as part of the 4th Cohort in St. Mary’s MMCCU program shows the power of that principle. It may be that the next incarnation of the statement will include management as stronger educational efforts on co-operative management have sprung up throughout the US and Canada to join existing programs at the UK’s Open University, Cooperative College and Spain’s Mondragon Univeristy. (These include the recent creation of an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, the CooperationWorks! Program, the Southern New Hampshire University program and the USFWC’s Peer Assistant Network).**   In addition to educating ourselves to manage from a co-operative framework, there is also a growing effort to expand the ‘concern for community” principle by adding a new principle specific to the protection of the environment.

The Identity Statement will celebrate its 15th anniversary this year. It has changed the dynamics of co-operation; it has given us an international touchstone that tells us that a co-operative in Sapporo, Buenos Aires, Winnipeg, Manchester, Madison, Bilbao, Bologna, Gdansk, Tel Aviv, Kiev, Dar es Salaam and Sydney all act under the same set of principles and values. The co-operative label is a label of trust, honor, and dignity for working men and women.

Next Week: This ends the series on the Identity Statement. I hope that people enjoyed it. I appreciated the comments on this site (and on Facebook where it mirrors). Feel free, as always, to use or redistibute my posts. I intend to keep the Monday entries going. The next series will be on a document that is just as important but little known: CICOPA’s World Declaration on Worker Co-operatives. Thanks for reading.

***Sadly, I have heard a rumor that there is some sectarian attacks on the Canadian programs coming from south of the border. The attack is jingoistic in nature (that the Canadian programs aren’t “american” and therefore not appropriate for US co-operatives. I haven’t had anybody say that to me directly (most likely because I would correct their opinion). It is a shame. Each program offers a means to manage our co-operatives according to the principles. I personally, would love to see the day when a co-operative undergraduate degree and the MMCCU are as ubiquitous in our universities and colleges as the business degree and MBA. We shouldn’t be fighting each other over our turfs, but co-operating to expand the educational opportunities for co-operative managers, directors and members. I chose MMCCU because it fit my life at this moment. In a different scenario, I might have elected for Mondragon, the UK, or SHNU. Had any of these programs been available to me when I was in college (1982), the path that my life took would be amazingly similar and different at the same time! It is my hope that in my lifetime learning of a young co-ed can earning their undergraduate degree in co-operative administration while working at a co-operative becomes a normal expectation and doesn’t require moving to specific part of the world.

November 27, 2006

More on Food Coops

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — John McNamara @ 7:06 pm

One of the major critics of Co-operative grocery stores on The Daily Page in Madison goes by the name of “Dogmeat”. Here is his decision-making process for grocery shopping (he had been accused of being a plant for Whole Foods):

“I’ve been to Whole Foods a grand total of 4 times. I can’t afford to shop there. That’s my only reason for not shopping there, unlike some who boycott Whole Foods because its non-union. I actually prefer to shop at places that are non-union. If a union muscles its way in the door, that means the company wasn’t doing the right thing in the first place. And of course, once a union is in place its number one priority is to protect the power of the union, not the good workers or the companies viability. I really like going to places where bad employees can be fired.”

What more is there to say? Should the co-operative movement really listen to critics who want to exploit workers? Is cheap food the only real goal and screw the community that raised it? As I mentioned in a previous post, the incidence of cancer and the rise of chemical farming and foods are not exclusive of each other. Cheap foods with chemically produced flavors may impress “foodies” but they really don’t do anything for society.

Still, the consumer co-operatives in this country need to get a handle on organics. They need to start develop co-operative farms and systems. Working people can’t afford good food anymore. We really can’t afford to pay $6.89 for 9 oranges. Granted, they are good oranges, last year at this time, they were $3.49. Right now, the organic farming community is planting the seeds for its demise. If only rich people can afford the food, then working people will abandon the co-ops that sell it. In the end, the wealthy like deals just like everyone else. When Wal-Mart develops factory organic farming, they will undercut the co-operative stores. What will be the co-operative difference then?

We need to be the movement that is larger than our companies. Co-operatives need to work together and with their community. Ultimately, they need to provide value–that means quality at affordable prices, with educated, informed and well-trained staff and members. We need to pool our resources. In the US, the co-ops are splintered and seperated by large distances, they need to start building a mass of co-operative stores and re-build the Wholesale Cooperative structure that fell apart in the 1990′s. We can’t stick our noses up and tell people that they should suck up 70¢ oranges. We need to create a strategy that gets the deals into the consumer and worker’s hands without exploiting people. It doesn’t sound easy, but when a capitalist grocery store can undercut a cooperative grocery on a cooperatively produced product, there is something seriously wrong with the movement.

We need to start living the principle of cooperation among co-operatives.

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