The Workers' Paradise

January 26, 2011

A Quick Review of “Solidarity”

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 9:22 pm

Recently, a post from last fall on the Theft of Labor, brought this comment:

“If the intern or the college athlete feels like they are getting an outstanding deal, is it your job to convince them otherwise?”

My spam filter held it up. At first, I thought it was a rather tricky robot trying to get its url posted, but then thought that this was a real person and, even if the poster isn’t, it still raises a good topic. It speaks to the value of solidarity. Why should we tell people how they should go about making a living? Because we share our world and no one acts in a vacuum.

The short answer is “Yes”. How does the college athlete or intern “know” they are getting a good deal? College athletes are barred from having agents to speak for them. Interns, by definition, are outside of a bargaining group. In addition, these are kids who still do most of their banking at the “Mom and Pop Savings and Loan”.

If it is a really good deal, then it won’t be a theft of labor. Getting a 4 year degree at a quality liberal arts college may be worth playing football for four years (especially if the team isn’t a Division I elite school). I certainly wasn’t arguing that we can only be a cash-basis society. I have no problem with bartering and Time Banking.

However, helping the UW or Miami generate hundreds of millions of dollars for a paltry $20 K a year education benefit (especially if one is a star athlete) seems like exploitation to me.

At the root though is that all of this “free” labor waters down the value of work. A lot of the work of interns might be done just as well (and more efficiently) by administrative assistants earning a living wage and benefits who can then send their kids to college.

Major League Baseball runs its own farm system at its own cost. The NBA and NFL use taxpayer funded colleges and universities to prepare their future employees. That doesn’t pass the smell test to me.

By ignoring this, we only continue the race to the bottom. Solidarity is based on the notion that if we stick together, we can improve society for everyone or, as our founding fathers so aptly noted, “if we don’t hang together, we shall surely hang separately.” If I come in an undercut your salary to get your job, then what is to stop someone else from doing that to me?

We are all in this together and finding short term advantages for individuals does not build a sustainable society.

October 5, 2009

#6 Equity (Equality’s Counter-weight)

Filed under: Governance,Identity Statement Series,Worker Rights — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 11:36 am

The first lesson that I received about the concept of equity as a co-operative value occurred at the MMCCU student orientation from Tom Webb. He explained the difference between equality and equity as follows:

[We have delivered the orientation in a perfectly equal manner. Each student received the same information packets, saw the same power point presentations, and heard the same discussion. However, if a student were blind or deaf, the delivery of the orientation would not equitable as not everyone would be able to receive the information.]

Thus, equity is the other side of equality. It is the value that keeps equality from becoming a tyrant in our co-operatives.

The background paper on the Identity makes the following comment:

“Equity refers, first of all, to how members are treated within a co-operative. They should be treated equitably in how they are rewarded for their participation in the co-operative, normally through patronage dividends, allocations to capital reserves in their name or reductions in charges.”

In worker co-operatives, the value of equity must also apply to pay scales, benefits, and work rules. This is especially true in worker co-operatives that organize industrially instead of by trade. For a cab company, the rules and pay might really differ depending on the job (driver, mechanic, call center, billing, etc). In this example, the different types of workers have different expectations for their performance and their duties. For instance, an attendance policy that allows workers to call in for a day off an hour before their shift works if there are a lot of workers, but is an operational failure if the worker calling fills a key position that cannot be easily replaced or covered by existing workers. In this example, the value of equality needs to be balanced by equity to keep the co-operative functional.

We often focus on “equality” to the exclusion of equity. Equity seems like special treatment and anti-egalitarian. However, without equity in the mix, workers may be exposed to a level of exploitation by the majority of the workforce or the organization may find it difficult to meet the operational needs of the organization and the desires of the consumers.

To manage the push and pull between equality and equity, co-operatives should establish a set of core values unique to their organization. These values should be based on the co-operative identity, but also reflect the structure of their co-operative. My co-op created our core values the very same year that ICA adopted the identity statement. Like the ICA, we acknowledge the importance of “openness and honesty”. However we also went into greater detail with the concept of managing growth, membership responsibilities, and worker rights. Our core values do not replace the co-op identity, but add to that identity to create the Union Cab identity within the larger framework. Worker co-ops (and co-ops in general) are the creation of their members. Their identity is part of the larger world of co-ops but must also reflect the unique individuals who join and work.

As and added step, worker co-operatives should establish a code of ethics. The idea should be to recognize that different roles and jobs have different needs (in terms of pay and work rules) and have commonality in the basic approach to work. This can have very different applications. The values and ethics provide the basic approach to the job and allow for the equitable work rules that recognize the different types of work being performed.

An equitable workplace isn’t one that we think about much. Certainly, the Americans with Disabilities Act provides some basis for discussion, but worker co-ops must go beyond the physical disabilities.  Worker co-ops must also consider the different nature of the position. A cashier in a grocery store has very different stress issues than someone in receiving. A phone answerer in a cab company has different issues form both dispatchers and drivers. Addressing these differences has to be part of the discussion when we consider the concept “equal pay for equal work”. Perhaps the correct slogan is “equal pay for equitable work”?

Worker Co-operatives should avoid the false call for “equality”. Equality without Equity is a tyranny of the majority and undermines the worker co-operative identity.

Next Week: Democracy

September 28, 2009

#5 Equality

Filed under: Governance,Identity Statement Series — Tags: , , , , — John McNamara @ 12:34 pm

“Cooperatives,” states the background paper on the Cooperative Identity, ” are based on equality. The basic unit of the Co-operative is the member, who is either a human being or a grouping of human beings. This basis in human personality is one of the main features distinguishing a cooperative from firms controlled in the interests of capital. Members have rights or participation:

  • a right to be informed
  • a right to be heard
  • a right to be involved in a way that is as equal as possible

(sometimes a difficult challenge in large co-operatives or in federations of co-operatives). In fact, concern for achieving and maintaining equality is a continuing challenge for all co-operatives. In the final analysis, it is as much a way of trying to conduct business as it is a simple statement of rules.”

In a worker coop, the concept of equality gets wrapped up into the personalities of the people involved. Favoritism and cults or personality can destroy worker co-operatives precisely because it contradicts the concept of “equality”.  At the same, time equality can be used as a cudgel to beat down any attempt to recognize service or to build the business.

The value of equality in a worker co-operative should inform the leaders’ decisions on how to act. They need to  (whether as a individual or as a group) consider how their treatment of their co-workers and development of policy works to create a level field within the cooperative. It is also the individual members responsibility to strive towards a workplace dedicated to seeing the individual member free from the distractions of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and all of the other groupings of what we now refer to as “protected characteristics”. Worker co-operators must go beyond this, though, and also filter out friendships, animosities and loyalties.

As mentioned in the background paper, co-operatives are made up of humans not dollars. As a result, we have different challenges. We work together in our co-operative and form relationships. Sometimes, these relationships are fantastic (I know people that have met and married in my coop). Sometimes, they are not (I know people who have gotten restraining orders against other members). In either extreme case or the large middle where most of us exist, we need to balance our emotions about the individual relationship with the overall health of the co-operative and the value of equality.

Allowing friendships to influence decisions made (especially if one is a manager in a hierarchical structure) is detrimental to the cooperative, even if the decision is ultimately a good one. To this end, I think that the value of “equality” in a worker co-operative means that we must strive to flatten hierarchical structures whenever possible.

Because pay scales tend to be flat, the issue of equality tends to show up in the form or discipline and accountability.  We also need to develop strong measures of accountability. We need to develop support mechanisms to resolve emotional conflicts and force “old boy style networks” (please insert any preferred term for “boy”) into the open. Having a supportive network of friends is important to anyone’s sense of community, but when it is used to advance a personal agenda or development, then it can be a negative force within a cooperative.

The value of equality plays a strong role in worker co-operatives. A lot of us come to the co-operative movement precisely because we were treated unfairly by the traditional corporate/business model. This makes our expectations high and, in contrast, the anger greater if we feel that we have been wronged and that the value of equality has been ignored or manipulated.

As worker co-operators we must struggle to create a sense of fairness. Not just in hiring practices and the legal concept of equality. Nor just in right of participation as outlined in the background paper. We must create a sense of equality that ensures accountability of the membership to each other in terms of the values of self-help and self-responsibility. These values of the identity statement do not stand alone, but act in unison to build a strong community.

Next Week: Equity: the other side of Equality.

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