The Workers' Paradise

November 16, 2009

#11 Caring for Others

Filed under: Human Relations,Identity Statement Series — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 12:55 pm

This is the last of the ethical values and the last part of the identity statement that was added to the set of familiar “Rochdale Principles” in 1995. As such, it wraps up the concepts that have gone before. It acts as a bookend with the first value of self-help.

We can’t help others if we can’t help ourselves. We can’t be only about ourselves. In thinking about this entry, I couldn’t help but remember the scene from Hair in which a women confronts the father of her child who is otherwise a hip cat trying to change the world:

Cooperatives are a social movement, an economic movement, and an educational movement. As a result, caring for others takes us beyond the social responsibility so easily co-opted by caring capitalist and benevolent dictators. We have to be about caring for each other. This value of caring likely attracted the likes of Don José Arizmendiaretta and Moses Coady and other Christians in Italy and throughout the co-operative world. This sense of community service and support finds itself in the religious movements of  the Abrahamic religions. For more on this topic, check out Andrew McLeod’s book, Holy Coooperation!

For those of us in the secular world, caring for others is just as essential a value as it is for the religiously inclined. It is a human value, after all. The human species can survive on its own, but it flourishes as a community. As such, the need to cooperate is necessary to our survival.

Tom Webb presented the value of Caring for others in this manner:

“Caring implies not just charity but active concern about how to act and create structures so as to enable others to realize their potential and live full and satisfying lives.”

Worker Co-ops have a special mission under this value. We need to create structures in our co-operatives that develop us as human beings and even world citizens. We need to help our members break away from the bad habits of other workplaces that only value the labor of the worker. The “move them up or move them out” aspect of Human Resources (whose very name suggests that the human is simply another asset to be managed) must be replaced with Human Development.

Many workers (at least in the larger worker coops) come to co-operatives without a lot of knowledge about co-ops. They may be seeking a good job in the industry more than a commitment to co-op development. I’ve heard one co-op organizer describe them as post-traumatic stress syndrome victims. A lot of workers have learned the wrong lessons from other workplaces and they need to see that the workplace can be healthy for human  beings. Caring for others means that our policies and work places place the worker’s well being (physical and emotional) at the center of their purpose. This means creating strong resolution process that go beyond simply ending conflict, but transforming the individuals to make them stronger people.

Loyal and happy workers lead to loyal and happy customers. By creating a supportive and nurturing community inside our cooperatives, we create a strong and vibrant business model. Caring for others creates the basis for the co-operative difference in a worker co-operative. Creating strong relationships and human development among our work force allows us to develop life-long relationships with our customers.

Of course, not everyone is able or willing to participate in this sort of environment. It may be that the wrong lessons of how humans treat each other have become so ingrained that the individual can’t overcome them and prosper in a co-operative community. It may be that some people see the co-operative community as “easy to get over” and manipulate others for their personal ends. The value of caring should not imply that co-operators are emotional doormats. The value of caring for others should empower ourselves to step up and confront members who don’t act co-operatively. Mostly, these issues will be resolved through education and development programs. In some cases, however, the only way for the co-op to exhibit “caring for others” will result in asking unco-operative members to leave the community. We can’t pretend that co-operatives can fix everyone—especially in the United States where the co-operative option is such a minor part of the overall economy and workplaces. In this extreme case, caring for others means protecting for the larger community. Of course, even in this sad situation, the people involved should be treated with dignity and respect.

Caring for Others gives guidance to co-operatives on how to create thriving, human based businesses. This ethical value moves co-operatives beyond the concept of social responsibility. By expressing caring for others, co-operatives create a healthy workplace that helps people realize their full potential as human beings.

Next: We start on the familiar principles and will make a few detours along the way to learn about the Mondragon principles as well.

November 2, 2009

#9 Openness

Filed under: Identity Statement Series — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 8:30 am

What does openness mean?

At one level, it is an ethic that relates directly to the first principle of co-operatives (voluntary and open membership).  At another, it suggests a way of being and communicating with each other. Perhaps deeper still, openness suggests transparency in all of our actions within the co-operative.

I think that all of these senses should be part of the co-operative meaning of openness. If members engage in hidden agendas they aren’t being very open. If members engage in hidden vested interests, they aren’t being very open. Finally, and this might be a very tender point, if people engage in hidden relationships (real or imagined), they aren’t being very open.

How far does this go? Is it an obligation of two workers who start a sexual relationship to make that open to their co-workers? Should that be anyone’s business? What about a less complicated friendship?

This isn’t just about individual rights to privacy. In a worker co-op, the relationships can get very complicated. If the friendship or relationship goes bad, it can create a social rift in the organization and reduce or even destroy the social cohesion necessary for an effective co-operative.

A lot of the conflicts around openness can be resolved through the creation of checks and balances on power, on limiting the ability of any one person to be the “decider” on another person’s advancement or discipline, and by creating a culture of equality and equity that would make hidden relationships meaningless. However, it is an issue that needs to be addressed.

I raise this point mainly because of an interesting article in a local business journal, In Business. In an essay, (I forget the author’s name, but will update when I get the chance), an experienced HR consultant suggests that companies should avoid creating any more “protected classes.” Madison, he mentions, has 20 protected characteristics (the standard Federal and State protections against discrimination as well as those unique to Madison such as status as a student, gender identity, criminal record, etc). He suggested that businesses have enough “protected” employees and don’t need to create more through conflict avoidance and favoritism. Creating an open work place means, in part, creating a system in which “what you know” and “how you do it” outweigh “who you drink with.”

Of course, openness isn’t just about personal relationships. It is also about communication between the leaders and the rank-and-file. If the members don’t know a proposal is coming up for a decision until it is too late, that isn’t a very open process and hurts the democratic nature of the co-operative. If the rumor mill is the main source of communication in the co-operative, that isn’t a very open process either.

We get told that we live in an open society, but the level of state secrets is high. We have 24 hour news that doesn’t seem to tell us anything that is really going on. Conspiracy theories get held with the same regard as the rest of the news while the actual activities of corporate America get ignored or lost in the hubbub over ACORN, the latest star scandal, or the weather while the people who have actually engaged in crimes against the nation and corporations who use their money to write the laws get ignored.

We have a lot of culture to work against in creating truly open environments in our co-ops. Part of the debate over privacy is likely because we have so little of it in the world outside our co-ops. Too many people seem to want to use information about ourselves in order to manipulate or attack us. How do we create an ethos of openness inside the co-operative without destroying people’s right to privacy and protect their privacy from those outside the co-operative?

Each co-op will be different, but clearly focusing on the job performance and creating clear rules on behavior will provide a foundation. Flattening that hierarchy so that no one person gets to make decisions about another person should provide a lot. We need to create good communication outlets that provide a safe means for people to discuss issues facing the co-op and present ideas (even if they aren’t popular). Mostly, as members, as individuals, we need to live this value. We need to be willing to stand up in the break room and tell someone that they shouldn’t be gossiping. We need to be willing to tell our friends that they are wrong. We need to defend another member’s right to express their opinion even when disagreeing with it.

As much as I’ve tried no to make this about personal relationships, that tends to be where a lot of worker co-ops hit the skids (and that shouldn’t be surprising as these of people based organizations), but one co-op shows just how powerful and economical openness can be.

Just Coffee decided that they weren’t going to worry about certification through TransFair anymore. The Fairtrade Coffee Roaster is a worker cooperative in Madison, WI.  Here is what they have to say about financial openness:

“A fair economy should be based on total transparency. Way too often when activists and consumers try to find out how companies deal with suppliers and customers, they are hit with tired rhetoric about “trade secrecy” and “sensitive information”.

“We at JC feel like any information about our books and contracts should be out there for our customers and allies to see. That is why you can find our contracts online and why we will eventually have our annual financials available on our site. If you have questions that are not available through our site, please e-mail or call us and we’ll do our best to get you the information that you are seeking.”

They eventually want to create a system on their website that will allow consumers to enter the bar code from their bag of coffee and find out the entire history of those beans (who grew them, how much the seed cost, how much they sold for (and to who), the cost of roasting, shipping, etc). When we toured their last summer, they mentioned how some see their action as a competitive disadvantage, but they see it as an advantage. Let Maxwell House meet our contract, they challenged. The farmers will still win.

So there we have it. Openness needs to be a critical part of our co-operative structure. It is an ethical value that influences our social cohesion, our democracy, and even our financial relationships. Openness requires a lot of trust within the organization. That should make it a perfect fit for a business model based on mutual self-help, self-responsibility, equality, equity, democracy, solidarity.

Next Week: Caring for Others

July 17, 2009

Dispute Resolution

Filed under: Human Relations — Tags: , — John McNamara @ 5:09 pm

This seems to be the Year of Dispute Resolution in worker co-operatives. At least, I seem to be hearing that phrase a lot lately. Part of this might be the course in Human Relations that I took from the St. Mary’s MMCCU program in the Spring. The other might be that the down economy is creating climates in worker co-ops that bring out some problems that had been ignored during the good times.

The Co-operative UK just recently posted a primer for Mediation in Worker Co-ops. I also know of a couple of co-operatives undergoing some significant conflict. One of them probably won’t make it.

It is interesting to me that worker co-operatives don’t always handle conflict very well. I’ve had friends lecture me on the topic. They expect to have bad conflicts where they work because it is corporate America and workers have little rights. They really can’t believe how nasty some of the conflicts can be in a worker co-op.

I don’t think its all that bad, of course. In some cases, the ability to have an open conflict is a benefit in a worker co-operative. The conflict may not look pretty from the outside, but it is happening out in the open and not in the form of beaureaucratic back-stabbing that makes up so much of the humor of the comic strips Dilbert and Retail.

However, we should have a more pro-active way to deal with conflict. A lot of us do, or are at least working towards a progressive and positive model. The process must be formalized as much as possible. Without a formal process, an informal process will take hold. The problem with the informal process is that it naturally aligns itself with the “buddy system”. The in-crowd gets a casual system of dispute resolution and the “out-crowd” has to use whatever formal system exists–which may be the court system.

Efforts such as the one linked to above are great–especially since they are so willing to share with the rest of the co-operative world. Worker co-operatives should be leading the way in conflict transformation. As Don José often commented, worker co-operatives should be about social transformation and education. Workers come into our co-operatives with all of the baggage from their previous employers. Unless we work hard to overcome those biases and behaviors, we will fall into the same old patterns. We can do better.

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