*Obviously this stuff really functions, which is proved by the fact that you, your cousin and your parents already work for leaderless anarchist co-operatives in Berkeley.
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2010-08-03/article/35995?headline=Worker-Co-ops-Descend-on-Berkeley
Worker Co-ops Descend on Berkeley
By John Curl
Tuesday August 03, 2010
A shadow is hanging over America, the shadow of a wrecked economic
system. Tens of millions of unemployed remain despondent about ever
finding a job again, an entire young generation despairing of any hope
for a good life, while corporate market pundits pontificate that our
system creates the best of all societies, and no alternative is
possible. A nationwide group gathering in Berkeley this coming weekend
is putting the lie to the pundits.
The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC), is holding its
biannual conference at the Clark Kerr Center at UC August 6-8, riding an
exhilarating wave of a movement that has swelled to worldwide importance
over the past decade. The United Nations has recognized and encouraged
this growth, and has asked all governments to form a partnership with
the cooperative movement to solve the global problems of unemployment
and poverty, problems that the current economic system is not structured
to solve, and that are poised to engulf the world in disasters of
enormous magnitudes. The UN has declared 2012 the International Year of
Cooperatives.
All around us numerous people search anxiously for a job, while numerous
storefronts and workspaces lie empty. What stands in the way of these
two vast resources coming together to create new businesses and jobs on
a large scale? The dominant economic system controls the resources to
make that happen, but full employment and economic equity were never
goals of the capitalist system. On the other hand, those goals mesh well
with the cooperative movement. However, while numerous unemployed people
would happily take a job as co-owner of a cooperative business, there
are comparatively few cooperative jobs and businesses. At the precise
moment that a great influx of resources is needed, funding sources are
cut back. One focus of the conference is to examine different strategies
for cooperative development, creating mechanisms to organize and finance
the movement, and ultimately to fulfill its mission.
Conference workshops and speakers will also cover many other aspects and
issues of the movement, some geared to the large picture while others
focus on internal problem-solving on the intimate level of the
democratic workplace.
One workshop will focus on development led and funded by cooperatives
themselves. Adam Trott, of the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives (
VAWC), will discuss how that organization is mobilizing co-op resources
in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, to develop new worker
cooperatives, cultivate university curricula related to co-ops,
facilitate cross sector co-op collaboration, and work for a cooperative
economy. Two of their international models are lega of the Emilia
Romagna region of Italy and Mondragon in Basque Spain, which have
thousands of worker co-ops in their systems. The workshop will explore
how cooperative-led development differs from nonprofit- or
government-led development, and why VAWC feels it is key for the growth
of the movement.
Another speaker, Ted Howard, is an architect of the Evergreen
Cooperative Initiative of Cleveland, a nonprofit launched in 2008, with
a mission of stabilizing and revitalizing six low-income neighborhoods
in that city, with 43,000 residents and a median household income of
$18,5000. Their cooperative development strategy leverages a portion of
the annual procurement expenditures of anchor institutions such as local
hospitals and universities, into the surrounding neighborhoods to create
new co-op businesses and jobs. The first two Evergreen cooperatives,
Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Ohio Cooperative Solar, are both
successfully launched, and two more co-op businesses are in their
pipeline for this year. They plan an integrated network of 10
cooperatives with approximately 500 worker-owners, within 3 years.
Last fall the United Steel Workers Union, (USW), North America’s largest
labor union, and Mondragon International, the largest group of worker
cooperatives in the world, announced that they are exploring a
partnership “towards making union co-ops a viable business model that
can create good jobs, empower workers, and support communities in the
United States and Canada." A workshop led by several labor and co-op
leaders will explore this growing partnership between worker
cooperatives and unions as a strategy to create jobs. It will focus on
how labor unions and support groups are creating successful unionized
worker-owned co-ops, providing workers more control of their work and
increasing union membership. A new type of “worker owner” union
membership is being developed, to complement the usual collective
bargaining type of membership, providing worker-owned companies with
resources, and offering unions new members. Gary Holloway of the USW
will give an update on the USW-Mondragon project, and others will report
on projects in Oregon, Oklahoma and Maryland, followed by a discussion
of ways that working people can gain control of local economic development.
A workshop led by Jessica Gordon-Nembhard of ONE DC (a social justice
group which grew out of a neighborhood development corporation in the
Shaw area of Washington, DC), will explore worker co-op solutions in the
“informal economy,” the “grey market,” the spontaneous, underground
economic activities that people do to survive. Many of these activities
operate in ways similar to cooperatives and hold similar values.
Organizing into formal cooperatives has proven beneficial to many of
these groups. The workshop will look at examples of informal collective
activity that transformed into formal cooperatives, gaining
legitimization and community benefits, and explore how the co-op
structure can help women, youth, immigrants, others left out of the
mainstream economy, and all people struggling to survive.
Although no workshop specifically focuses on government relationship to
co-ops, it is sure to be discussed. The Network of Bay Area Worker
Cooperatives (NOBAWC), the local affiliate to USFWC, is currently
proposing a worker cooperative and solidarity economy platform to the
San Francisco Community Congress being held this August. The Community
Congress is aimed at a vast re-envisioning of San Francisco within the
global and regional economy, proposing a deeply new approach to
sustainable community economic development, job creation, and affordable
housing. Most of the cooperative platform is applicable to all the Bay
Area cities. The current draft of the platform includes: “adopt the
worker cooperative model for economic development on an equal basis with
other business models; include worker cooperatives as a viable and
sustainable business model in all relevant city literature; support
worker cooperative incubation and technical assistance; support the
inclusion of worker cooperatives in educational and vocational
curricula; prioritize worker cooperatives as a preferable model of doing
business; prioritize procurement of goods and services from local worker
cooperatives; finance worker cooperatives through a revolving loan fund,
whose capital is provided by city money through a municipal bank;
encourage conversion to the worker cooperative business model as a
viable option; provide assistance for worker buy-outs of struggling
small manufacturing/light industry shops; consider place-based worker
cooperative development as a primary way to rejuvenate a low-income
neighborhood’s economy.”
Cooperatives have a long and deep history in the world and locally,
dating back to Indigenous times, the Gold Rush, the Progressive era, the
Great Depression, the counterculture of the 60s and 70s. Worker
cooperatives are based on the simplest of concepts—mutual aid. But the
cooperative system is unfamiliar to many people, who have spent their
work lives inside the boss-employee wage system and its top-down command
structure, and have little experience working democratically. Does the
worker cooperative system work? It has proven its viability numerous
times in numerous places. With worker co-ops democracy is practiced on a
daily basis, and wealth is pumped back into local economies. Worker
cooperatives are a model and a strategy for empowering people to create
a socially just world. A society with an expansive sector of
democratically-run enterprises is a inspiring concept for an era when
all the old answers have failed, and the world looks for hope to new
visionary solutions.
John Curl is author of For All The People: Uncovering the Hidden History
of Cooperation, Cooperative Movements and Communalism in America.
Oakland: PM Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60486-072-6
