THE DEMOCRATIC WORKPLACE by Amy Hall https://newint.org/features/2021/10/07/democratic-workplace ’November-December 2021 issue of New Internationalist.
.. around 11.5 million people are members of worker co-operatives across the globe. Worker co-ops can be as small as two members, or as big as tens of thousands, which employs more than 12 per cent of working people worldwide. There are consumer co-ops (like the Co-operative Group in the UK) – producer co-ops or multistakeholder co-ops like New Internationalist, which is run day-to-day by our worker-members, but also has 4,600 reader-owners who can step in if we stray from our values. What all co-ops have in common is a mission to serve their member-owners – workers, customers, producers or the local community.
Of course profit is important for co-ops because with profit you pay the wages and make your enterprise function, but it’s what you do with the profits that makes you different from non-co-op enterprises.’... The birthplace of the modern co-operative movement is widely regarded as Rochdale in the northwest of England where, in 1844, a group of artisans called the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers opened a shop to sell food affordable food to its customer-members...
Co-operatives and capitalism have a chequered relationship; as Muller puts it: ‘We’re trying to operate counter-cultural organizations within capitalism.’ While workers might have better jobs as part of co-operatives, there may not be much scope for co-ops to change much else about society. A worker co-op can refuse to devalue people’s labour based on their job title and offer an alternative way of doing things in a world where jobs are often focused on individual success and institutionalized workplace hierarchies. But co-operatives in themselves are not going to bring about the kind of wider transformative change that their members might want, just by virtue of existing.
Muller, who is part of Radical Routes – a network of UK co-ops for whom social change is an explicit aim – first came to co-operatives through environmental activism: ‘There was a moment when I realized that some co-ops are just an end in themselves and that’s fine. They’re just a nicer way of doing capitalism… in fact that’s what most co-ops are.’
Described by socialist economist Rosa Luxemburg as ‘small units of socialized production within capitalist exchange’, co-operatives are still operating within a capitalist economic system and are subject to the rules of the market.
When other businesses hit financial trouble, bosses and shareholders can shift the risk onto workers, often by laying them off. When a worker co-operative is struggling, the members have to decide for themselves how they’re going to keep the business going (or if they’re going to shut it down). This makes worker co-ops better at preserving jobs during financial crises but does not insulate them from cuts altogether. Workers can also exploit themselves: work without pay, do long hours or forgo any of their employee benefits.
One thing co-operatives can do well is provide some kind of challenge to individualistic organizing. Good communication, effective collective decision-making and an ability to compromise with others are essential. ‘There’s just something about a solidaric way of organizing,’ says Muller. ‘When the shit hits the fan and everybody’s there together, you’re in a position where you still somehow have to meet everybody’s needs. You have to decide together how to get through it and give people the agency to come to their own compromises.