The Workers' Paradise

April 22, 2013

Democracy at Work Network

Filed under: Education,Movement — Tags: , , , , — John McNamara @ 12:14 pm

***Disclosure***

I was recently reelected to DAWN’s Board of Governors and the Training and Certification Committee. I am also a founding member of the organization. The following opinion (pitch, if you will) is all mine, however, and should not be seen as a statement by DAWN or representing DAWN.

***

Last weekend, the third annual spring meeting of the Democracy at Work Network (DAWN) convened along with the certification of its third cohort of Peer Advisers. It was an incredible weekend and we were reminded by our the folks on the Marketing Committee that we need to get the word out.

What is DAWN? 

DAWN is, as it names implies, an organization of people aimed at assisting worker owned businesses in improving their functionality and governance as a democratic workplace. What makes DAWN different from a consulting service or academic pursuit arises from the population of the group. DAWN focuses on Peer Advising. The majority of people in DAWN either work in a worker cooperative or have worked in a workers cooperative within the last five years. This is an essential element. While we do have members who work as professional consultants, DAWN looks to embody the concept of inter-cooperation and solidarity. Peer Advisers don’t need to learn about the dynamics of workers cooperatives since they live those dynamics.

However, this isn’t just people who work in co-op sharing war stories. The certification process ensures that the PA can provide the level of assistance needed. The first year of membership is spent engaging in intensive training through webinars and weekend retreats. while learning about financing, legal structures, strategic planning and a host of other issues, PA apprentices conduct research about coop models, teach each other about those models, and participate in an internship utilizing their host and a mentor for guidance. All of this culminates, if successful,  in becoming a Certified Peer Advisor.

DAWN’s Goal

DAWN ‘s stated goals are to:

  • meet the demand for technical assistance and development advice with high-quality services, and
  • increase worker cooperative technical assistance capacity from inside the movement.

I think that an unstated part of this is to also get our worker cooperatives (over 300 in the United States) to not always rely on a “do-it-yourself” method of development. Too often, in my opinion and experience, co-operatives either ignore development as something too expensive or too corporate or just too complicated. If co-ops do engage in development, then it is usually the result of a small group within the coop driving it and not necessarily part of a strategic vision. At best, everything is successful and the people leading have the knowledge, skills and ability to manage the manage the program and  are around long enough to see it through to fruition. At worst, it creates a series of false starts that further stigmatize coop development or organizational development as expensive, time consuming and not worth the effort. For most cooperatives, I imagine, the reality lies somewhere along the continuum between those extremes with most co-ops just feeling too busy managing operations to deal with the larger picture issues until an issue reaches a boiling point and demands the attention of the group.

Why DAWN Can Help Worker Coops Succeed

Operations tend to be what we are best at as co-operators. I think that this is a nature aspect of worker cooperation. We get the gritty details of getting people cabs, fixing bicycles, running retail operations, and making/roasting coffee. Sometimes the bigger picture of long-term planning, capital planning, organizational culture, governance and accountability gets lost in the mix as we try to keep our customers coming back, pay ourselves and our vendors. Some of these development issues get us outside of our comfort zones and don’t seem to really make a difference, so why spend our members’ hard-earned equity on it?

Worker Co-ops need to create new ways of managing. We aren’t our competitors and don’t want to be. Taking the time (and money) to think and create new ways of managing the collective assets of the cooperative in a manner that strengthens the organization along cooperative values and principles should help make our coops stronger and more resilient to the demands of the market place. It should create added-value for the consumers of our operations. Sometimes, this can be hard to do by ourselves. We may not always have the right mix of knowledge and skills or there may be underlying social issues that prevent moving forward. This is true of any type of business, not just worker coops and is why consultants often get brought into any business.

DAWN offers the ability to efficiently deal with development issues and build structures tailored to the individual cooperative. Outside facilitation can assist the members is seeing their organization from a different perspective, learn from other worker coop models (cross-pollinate if you will) and develop systems and strategies that will help their cooperatives meet missions, core values and be successful. DAWN is a fee-for-service organization. It isn’t cheap, but it does provide value.

DAWN was created to help coops help themselves through a peer assistance program. If you think that your coop needs some outside assistance, please consider DAWN as a resource created specifically for worker cooperatives.

To keep up to date with DAWN check them out on Facebook or Twitter

 

April 16, 2012

Getting Back to Normal?

Filed under: Governance,Management,Movement — Tags: , , — John McNamara @ 10:03 am

I am looking forward to the future! For the last nine months, I have been in the role of General Manager of my co-operative. It has been a very difficult time made more difficult by the ebbs and flows of a business cycle based, in part, on government funded programs and bad weather. This year, the money was mostly ebb with little flow.

The biggest lesson that I am walking away with is the realization that hierarchy in a worker cooperative is dangerous at best. Creating a “boss” and recreating the dynamics of the traditional workplace do not allow a worker cooperative to succeed. It creates a fertile ground for petty political maneuvering around personal agendas instead of open and transparent discussions about the value of cooperation. It causes the workforce to engage in a bizarre form of sibling rivalry in which the GM and the Board play the role of indulgent parents.

I am very happy that our co-op decided to get rid of our GM position and replace it with a council consisting of department leaders and senior workers. We have yet to see how this will work, but we have spent the last nine months practicing. Although I accepted the title of Interim General Manager, I attempted to diffuse as much power as possible to the various work teams. By a previous board decision, discipline and accountability issues had already been turned over to a Behavior Review Council-this made me the first GM without the authority to discipline.

It is an exciting time to be in the worker coop world. New worker coops are starting every day. Older worker coops, like mine, are reinventing themselves, and new energy is coming into the movement from the Steelworkers and Academia. Hopefully, now that my interim period is coming to an end, I can return to chronicling and commenting on the exciting energy that is out there!

I will be in Halifax for two months beginning May Day. I hope to return to my Monday postings, so please start checking. The world really is changing. After 170 years, co-operatives are finally coming into their own and we get to be a part of this incredible transition.

August 24, 2010

The Co-operative Index

Filed under: Education,Governance,Movement — Tags: , , , , — John McNamara @ 8:18 pm

One of the last workshops of the National Worker Co-operative Conference introduced the Co-operative Index to a United States audience. Before going into the details of this tool, it needs to have a bit of the history explained.

In 2005, Johnston Birchall addressed the International Co-operative community. It was the occasion of the the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Statement on the Co-operative Identity. Prof. Birchall called for the community to “operationalize” the statement. In effect, to take the document off of the wall and out from under glass and make it part of the day-to-day decision-making process of our co-operatives. He used a phrase that had already started spreading around the movement: “market the co-operative advantage” or MOCA. However, he also used another phrase: “Managing the co-operative difference.” Birchall argued that we really can’t create a co-operative competitive advantage until we manage our co-operatives differently from our competitors.

In 2003, the St. Mary’s MMCCU program had begun towards this end, but the rest of the co-operative world had yet to really embrace the statement. It needed a push and Birchall gave it one. The folks at St. Mary’s also heard his call. While they were busy improving their Master program, they were also looking for opportunities to highlight the co-op difference and create the competitive advantage.

John Chamard, Sonja Novkovic and Tom Webb discovered a Polish professor of organizational psychology who had developed a method of measuring participatory workplaces with an eye towards helping them to improve themselves. His name is Ryzard Stocki and he created the Open Index as a tool for non-profits to measure themselves against their ideals. It was decided to see if such a tool could be developed for co-operatives and that the best sector to start with was the worker co-op sector. In 2008, the St. Mary’s team brought together a group of Co-op developers from Canada and worker co-op practitioners. I was one of the participants in a weekend long session of developing an “ideal” worker co-operative against which we could measure real world worker co-operatives. It was an exciting, and at times frustrating, process. In the end, we created a framework for a diagnostic tool that worker co-operatives could use that was different than tools such as the SA8000, World Blu Democratic workplace survey, or other such measurements. At the New Orleans meeting of the US Federation of Worker Co-operatives, the Federation membership agreed to support it.

We based our tool on the Identity Statement and the principles of Mondragon that go beyond the identity statement (sovereignty of labor, subordinate nature of capital, payment solidarity, and participatory management). The tool was fine-tuned and then put into the field to test its effectiveness. After the initial attempts were made, the reports were analyzed and the tool was fine tuned. It is now ready for a mass distribution. The workshop was its official exposure to a US audience.

What is the Tool?

The tool is a lengthy survey designed to measure the perceptions of immediate stakeholders in a worker co-operative (separating those who identify as “leaders” with those who identify as “rank-and-file”). It asks questions designed to rate the ability of the cooperative to meet its obligations under the identity statement: Values, Ethics, Principles as well as its organizational ability to meet its members’ needs. It creates an index for the co-operative to measure across time and, eventually, will create an index to measure against other worker co-operatives.

There are two methods of using the tool. It can be used for a very brief snap shot of the “state of the cooperative” or it can be part of a more intensive triangulation of issues facing the cooperative. In either case, it can, and should, help influence strategic planning, education, training, and leadership development. At the national and international level, it can help planner determine workshop needs and membership needs.

The first method is the simplest and cheapest. The co-operative works with someone from St. Mary’s to set up the survey (more information is available from either the US Federation or the Canadian Worker Cooperative Federation). The co-operative participates with a very real goal of 100% participation by its members. The assistant helps produce a report that distills the scores on a maturity index for the different segments: values, organizational, principles, etc.

The more involved method involves have the assistant work with a small committee of the co-operative. this could be the social audit committee or the strategic planning committee. Ideally, it is a committee of members representing the cooperative stakeholders (i.e. not all directors, or all rank-and-file). The survey gets completed as before, but the adviser also helps the committee build a document base to examine how the perceptions of the survey interact with actual policy and practice of the co-operative. This allows the committee to make solid recommendations on structure, operations, and governance as a means of improving the co-operative along the maturity curve.

Ideally, a co-operative might do the full process every three to five years and the short process annually. Obviously, the size and nature of the co-operative will make some differences in the process. However, even smaller co-operatives might find that they have a disconnect between groups within the co-operative.

This tool can help co-ops dig below the surface issues to get at root causes of problems and provide strong solutions. On the other hand, the tool can help co-operatives see where their strengths are and help them learn to share those strengths with other co-operatives.

The initial work on this tool has been so successful and the support for it so enthusiastic that the Canadian Co-operative Association received a substantial grant to design similar tools for the other sectors. The call the overall project “Measuring the Co-operative Difference Research Network”. Hit the link for more details.

With the development of the Democracy at Work Network of peer advisers coming on-line in January and the advent of the Co-op Index Tool, Federation member co-operatives and all worker co-operatives in Canada and the United States will have a powerful means of analyzing their processes, their policies and the functioning of their co-operative as a co-operative. This, in turn, will allow them to not just “manage the co-operative difference” but create a strong competitive advantage for themselves and other worker co-ops. This project is exactly, in my opinion, the sort of thing that the Federation was founded to accomplish. It allows us to bring our considerable brain power together in an act of mutual self-help and solidarity with the goal of creating strong sustainable workplaces and communities.

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.

January 18, 2010

#19 Participatory Management

Filed under: Identity Statement Series — Tags: , , , , , , — John McNamara @ 12:05 pm

The next principle from Mondragon is that of Participatory Management. This seems like a no-brainer for worker co-operatives. What is the point of going through all the work of setting up a worker co-op if the workers don’t actually have a say in how the place is run? They would be better off in a unionized Employee Stock Ownership Program.

I’ll get more into this in a second. First, I want to share the language of the principle from Mondragon (translated, as they all are, of course):

“The Mondragon Cooperative Experience believes that the democratic character of the Cooperative is not limited to membership aspects, but that it also implies the progressive development of self-management and consequently of the participation of members in the sphere of business management which, in turn, requires:

a)     The development of suitable mechanisms and channels for participation.

b)    Freedom of information concerning the development of the basic management variables of the Cooperative.

c)     The practice of methods of consultation and negotiation with worker-members and their social representatives in economic, organisational and labour decisions which concern or affect them.

d)    The systematic application of social and professional training plans for members.

e)     The establishment of internal promotion as the basic means of covering posts with greater professional responsibility.”

(source: The Mondragon Cooperative Experience, by José María Ormaechea, 2000)

Second, I want to parse the word management. We manage our co-operative whether or not we have a person holding a title with the word “manager”. Some co-ops manage collectively, some manage through a hierarchy, but we all manage the same things: assets, liabilities, equity, work performance, customer satisfaction etc. In this, as in most posts, I use the term management and manager in the broad sense.

Participatory management does not mean democracy and democracy does not mean participatory management. I say this because they are often linked together in a synonymous manner. A worker co-operative can have a strict top-down hierarchy that allows little or no member input and still elect its board of directors. Likewise, the concept of participatory workplaces can exist in capitalist organizations.

This principle exposes some dangers to worker co-operatives in that it is this area that the co-operative movement may be co-opted. World Blu has created a list of the “most democratic workplaces” for a couple of years now. While I have nothing against their mission, they misuse the word democracy when they mean participatory management. Only a handful of the companies on their list are co-ops or esops. In other words, they are honoring workplaces as “democratic” when the workers have no control over the governance of the organization. While I think that participatory management is a noble thing for a stock corporation to entertain, it isn’t democracy, it isn’t a right. It can be taken away as soon as the stockholders decide the experiment isn’t making them enough money. While I support World Blu’s efforts to humanize capitalism, I don’t think it will ever succeed on a grand scale but am glad that the workers in those business have a decent place to work.

A worker co-operative should abide by the values and principles of democracy. Participatory management should be another user principle for co-operatives even if it isn’t in the Identity Statement. It is the means by which the workers of the co-operative “use” their co-operative. Just as consumers use the products and services of a consumer co-operatives, workers use their ability to participate in decisions affecting their work life (roughly ¼-1/3 of our lives) as their right of membership.

Mondragon has created an excellent definition of participatory management. It isn’t simply deciding what type chairs to get for the office, it involves a complete involvement of the workforce in the operations and planning of the organization.

Note though, that the principle discusses the creation of “suitable” methods. Decisions have to be made and they have to be made in a way that enhances the organization in terms of serving their customers and succeeding in the market place. A restaurant can’t hold a membership meeting to discuss which person serves which table every time a customer walks in for dinner. A cab company can’t hold a debate about call assignment for each and every order. However, the co-operative can create methods of having these discussions about systems that ensure fairness and those methods should involve a wide range of voices from the membership.

Information has to be available to everyone or how can it truly run as a democracy. This isn’t on a “need-to-know” basis, but on the basis of ownership.

Another key point is that the co-operative needs to create bodies that will assist the worker-members in finding their voice. This might be a peer support program, a traditional stewards’ council, or even a labor union (although that is decidedly not what Mondragon is talking about). The bigger point being that management in a worker co-operative (whether run with a hierarchy or not) needs to establish means for worker’s to have a real voice in the discussion. Depending on the size of the organization (and the work week schedule) this will have different levels of formality. Rainbow Grocery is famous for its collectivist approach while Union CabMondragon models the labor movement through a stewards’ council and committee structure. uses a “social committee” in which elected representatives help provide input to the board and management as well as acting as a watch dog.

The last two points of the principle create an imperative of making participation systemic. As with the Sovereignty of Labour, this principle promotes the belief of internal promotion. The top end positions of a worker co-operative should generally not be hired from the outside of the worker co-operative movement. It is better for worker co-operative to create strong in-house training (and utilize professional development programs such as the Masters of Management: Co-operatives and Credit Unions) to develop the future leaders of the co-operative. One of the problems, in the United States, is that our co-operatives tend to be small and this limits opportunity for workers to advance and develop. It also limits the level of education and training that can be provided. However, we need to think beyond our stand-alone co-operatives. Just as Mondragon is a system of 180 or so co-operatives, we should start thinking of US Worker Cooperatives existing as an economic base.

Ormaechea chose this particular quote from Don José: “Co-operation brings people together in a collective task, but it gives each one responsibility. It is the development of the individual, not against the rest, but with the rest.”

By creating a base of strong management of our co-operatives we build the capacity for the movement to grow. We create the means for our co-operatives to cross-pollinate, to occasionally go outside of our stand-alone co-ops and we also create the means for the rank-and-file members to expand themselves, to develop themselves as people.

Next Week: Payment Solidarity

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

October 12, 2009

#7 Democracy

Filed under: Identity Statement Series — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 12:13 pm

By nature of writing on worker co-operatives, I have touched on the subject of democracy countless times. It is the foundation of co-operation. It is part of the definition, the values and the principles. If we could only use one word to describe co-operation, it would be democracy (which is I think that Michael Moore almost had it right when presented the choice between capitalism and democracy). Of course, the word “democracy” can be co-opted. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman often claimed that capitalism, in its pure form without government intervention, was the purest form of democracy as people could “vote” on every transaction and the power of their vote was equal to their significance to the economy. For that reason alone, co-operators need to understand and defend democracy as a definition, a value and a principle.

The founding pioneers of Rochdale included a large number of Charterists. They were fighting for Universal Suffrage—the vote. They saw co-operation as a backdoor method of achieving property for working people. Once they owned a share of stock, they could argue for the right to vote as an owner of property. They truly believed in the concept of “one man, one vote” and that if everyone had a vote, they would create a shining city on a hill and usher in an era of peace and prosperity.

It didn’t quite work out that way, though. It underestimated the power structure and its ability to manipulate, obfuscate, and control the process. Here is a sad and cynical take on democracy from Ghana:

The movie does make a point: democracy is expensive. The lack of democracy is even more expensive. I often hear members complain of the cost of democracy–it tight economic times, it can be seen as an unnecessary expense–a competitive disadvantage even. That is false logic, however. Democracy pays for itself by creating a loyal and dedicated workforce that has a vested interest in the success of the company. The money spent on committee time, member forum, and meetings easily gets made up by the ability of the co-operative to survive tough economic times without layoffs or even financial losses.  Of course, this film focuses on the electoral democracy, rather than participatory democracy. Electoral democracy is only one aspect of a truly democratic process. I get into this argument quite often in Madison, which is a town dominated by pols. People often see democracy as the right of the people to vote an idea (or person) up or down. I see democracy as the process of creating the idea. It may be that being in Madison causes people to have a negative view of democracy and not see the real democracy that takes place when they can attend a forum and denounce the cost of the forum!

In our co-operatives, we need to be mindful of the democratic functions. For worker co-operatives, this means flattening hierarchy whenever possible. We need to move away from the “Big Man” theory of history and governance and consider, instead, that leaders get created by the movement that created them. If you have a leader who is manipulative and counter-productive, it is likely that the people who elected them gravitate to that type of leadership. The problem is one of culture, not votes.

The question, then, becomes “How do we create a participatory democratic culture?” The answer isn’t that simple. Part of it involves the culture of the organization, the culture of the industry, the region of the of the world, and generation of the workers. It really gets incredibly complicated which is likely the reason for focusing on voting. Voting is simple. Everyone can understand it. Complex ideas distill into simple yes and no questions. Business can move at the speed of business not at the speed of everyone’s comfort level.

This video offers a great perspective:

It is up to us, the members of worker co-operatives to define democracy within our generation, accept that the next generation will want something different, and create an evolutionary culture that honors knowledge, history and change.

As the shibboleth of the co-operative movement, democracy needs advocates and we must accept the role of stewards. We need to develop democratic cultures and processes that honor the individual and the community. Sometimes this will mean supporting the decision our co-operative makes even if we know it is doomed to failure—helping it to succeed against that fear—and being present, without admonition,  to find new solutions if it does. Ultimately, it is about educating our membership and creating a sense of openness that allows members to really control their co-operative free of silent or hidden cliques. For those of us who have been in the movement for a while, we need to remember how it was when we were the new kids with the great ideas that nobody wanted to hear. Democracy means, in part, to have the courage to change the culture and accept the voices of others even if we disagree.

I accidentally wrote on the values out of sequence. Democracy should have been posted prior to equality. The authors of the Identity statement certainly chose the order of the values carefully. Equity follows Equality for a specific reason. Likewise, democracy follows the more individual values of self-help and self-responsibility. As equity is a check on equality, democracy is a check on the individual. This, again, shows the inter-relatedness of the values (and the principles).

Next Week: Solidarity—the last, but not least, of the six values.

October 22, 2006

Should Co-ops Create Multi-nationals?

Filed under: Movement — Tags: , , , — John McNamara @ 6:57 pm

Recently, the membership of Burley Bicycles Cooperative sold their jobs to a private investor ending 28 years of worker democracy for a paltry sum of about $20,000 per member. Burley became immensely popular with Baby Boomers for the creation of their blue and yellow bike trailers perfect for carrying toddlers and/or groceries. In addition to the trailers, Burley also made recumbents, tandems, and high-end road bikes.  They produced everything in the United States which made them one of the last (if not the last) US manufacterer to keep production at home. As Trek and others sought low-wage factories over seas (most notably Asia), Burley stayed the course. During the last three years, they lost money including a whopping $1.5 million last year s reported by the Cooperative Business Journal.

Was it soley the lower production costs of the other companies that did Burley in? Obviously, they were spending money on production that could have been spent on marketing and advertising to increase their share and keep them competitive with other manufacterers. I imagine that the thought of establishing overseas production was anathema to the worker-owners of Burley. Is the lesson to be learned that worker coops can’t compete in a global workplace?

What if Burley had chosen an overseas option? Can worker cooperatives create Multi-National Enterprises without exploiting their fellow workers in the process?

What if the workers of Burley had developed, organized and trained a worker cooperative production facility in Malaysia? They would have been able to partner with them and reduced their production costs which could then be put into marketing and design. The Eugene facility would have been headquarters as well as the “burley design coop” and handled planning and marketing. The asian factory would have been the production co-op. Workers could have been paid a living wage for their area, but split the surplus in a more equitable manner.
It might have meant some big changes for the cooperative, but the net result would have been an expansion of the cooperative movement not a shrinkage. By setting up a cooperative which would still pay a living wage for the region, Burley would still be at a comparative disadvantage over Trek; howev er, they could off-set that by marketing a “fair trade” bicycle and using the cooperative advantage to move product.

Of course, I wasn’t there and hindsight is, well, you know. I am sure that many reasons existed for their demise other that the global bicycle market. When does a coop get lost?

After the conference in NY, I realized that a lot of cooperatives are struggling with growth issues right now. They need to start thinking strategically not operationally. Putting aside slogans and preconceived ideas about business is the first step. Co-opers need to review the history of their movement. The success of Rochdale and the Cooperative Wholesale Society came about in part because they saw the value of shipping in cheap goods from the US and Canada to compete with the retail societies. They grasped the idea of vertical integration and made it theirs.

We need to see the fair trade movement as our movement and its success can be modeled in other industries. I don’t know if my scenario would have kept Burley cooperative or if it would even have worked, but I do know that there are few market sectors where growth can be stifled or the status quo maintainted. The non-coop business world saw the importance of vertical organization created by Rochdale. They have started to see the value of values. We need to start looking at their practices and determining how we can make them work under the cooperative system within our ethics and principles.

We aren’t going to do this alone. We need to start talking to one another. We need to ignore the industry label on our company and focus on the cooperative label. We have a huge amount of unused talent.

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