ISSN 1028-2580 print; ISSN 1477-2248 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1028258031000113159

Contemporary Justice Review, 2003, Vol. 6(2), pp. 127–131

COMMENTARY ON “THE ORGANIZATION OF WORKAS A FACTOR IN SOCIAL WELL-BEING”*

FRANK LINDENFELD

Bloomsburg University

The work cooperative as a social institution offers us a radical alternative to transnational market-based workplaces.Models such as the Mondragon coop network in Spain tell us it is possible for people to have their work-life’s cakeand eat it too. The coop movement is part of a movement to transform power-based work arrangements into acooperative commonwealth in which the needs of all are met.

Keywords: Worker cooperative; Workplace democracy; Anti-corporate globalization; Disalienation; Participatorywork; Mutual aid

As Rick Shifley points out in “The Organization of Work as a Factor in Social Well-being,”work is pivotal to the human experience. Good work—work that is empowering andfulfilling—is one of the cornerstones of a happy life and I am referring here to all work,whether done for pay or as volunteer labor, barter, or family subsistence. Worker cooperativessuch as ABC Construction are attractive because they provide opportunities for good work,are based on internal democracy, and promote community. Capitalist corporations, in contrastto worker cooperatives, are alienating in that they deprive most ordinary employees ofcontrol over their own work as well as the fruits of their labor.

Ten basic principles of worker cooperatives can be summarized as follows (Lindenfeld,2001):

1. Democratic ownership and control. All members of the coop share equal ownership, andpolicy decisions are made on the basis of one person, one vote.

2. A balance between profit and member and community welfare. A major goal of coopsis to maximize the number of good jobs.

3. Equitable compensation and job security. When business is slow, coops may reducehours of work or pay rates for all members instead of laying off some of them.

4. All worker-owners share the profits equally or in proportion to hours worked.5. Democratic participation in the management of the business.6. Limited size. Most worker cooperatives are small, to facilitate maximum member

participation in decision making. An optimum upper size limit is probably around150–200 members.

7. Protection of worker rights in larger coops by institutionalization of grievanceprocedures.

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8. Empowerment of members by promoting continuing education, personal growth, andlearning of new job skills.

9. Cooperation among cooperatives, providing mutual aid and collective economic andpolitical strength to spread the cooperative movement.

10. Dedication to social transformation, and solidarity with other progressive movementsand struggles for worker rights and empowerment.

The goals of ABC are similar to those of other worker coops—to create a non-alienatingwork organization that gives members maximum control over their work, provides fair andstable income, and integrates work with other aspects of their lives. Worker cooperativesprovide a setting in which the individual has value not just as a worker but as a whole humanbeing. The members of ABC take pride in their craftsmanship. The worker-owners feel astrong sense of responsibility to do the job right, to attend to details, and to complete theproject within the timetable negotiated with their clients.

Like other worker coops, ABC also emphasizes worker participation in decisions abouttheir work. Most studies of the effects of work organization have demonstrated a fairlyconsistent link between worker participation and both job satisfaction and organizationalproductivity (Levine & Tyson, 1990). Participatory workplaces are more efficient and areable to provide better products and services because they rely on their worker-members’intelligence and initiative.

In addition to being more satisfying and fulfilling places to work, worker coops have anumber of other positive features. Their members tend to work more responsibly becausethey feel that the coop belongs to them. Because coops are based on democraticparticipation—one member, one vote—they generally reduce income inequality. Some,like ABC, have adopted an equal wage scale. Others, following the lead of theMondragon coop network, set limits on pay inequality so that the highest paid manager orprofessional receives no more than several times the compensation of the lowest paid(Whyte & Whyte, 1988). Some coops provide pay based on seniority, while others payextra to those with more dependents. Many, like ABC, allow members to schedule workflexibly.

ABC, with a dozen worker-members, is organized as a collective. In a collective, allmembers usually constitute the group’s governing board, participating as equals in its regularmeetings. Beyond 12–15 members, however, the collective form becomes unwieldy andthere is generally an elected governing board, with delegation of functions to managers orcoordinators and subcommittees. This is sometimes combined with job rotation so a numberof members get to serve as managers or coordinators.

Cooperatives can and do have individuals who are “in charge,” whether as temporary taskcoordinators as in ABC, or as more permanent managers selected by the membership or theorganization’s governing board. Collectives such as ABC often use consensus voting, wherea decision can be held up by the objections of one member. Larger coops usually also strivefor consensus but, if it cannot be achieved, they have some provision for deciding by majorityvote.

I’d like to augment Rick Shifley’s contribution by looking at some issues touched on onlybriefly, alluded to, or omitted in the article.

First, cooperatives can be considered as constituents of a larger movement for socialjustice, participatory democracy, worker empowerment, and against corporate capitalistdomination. The fight against the deterioration of working conditions under capitalism has along history which includes the labor and socialist movements. As socialist and anarchistcritics have pointed out, it is capitalism itself, especially in its contemporary corporate form,that creates unsatisfactory working conditions and employee alienation.

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Many of the 18th-century US worker cooperatives alluded to in the article were createdby striking or locked out workers. And 19th-century Marxist and anarchist critics definedcapitalism as a system of domination of the great mass of the working population by asmall capitalist ruling class. A central theme of the Knights of Labor, a strong US unionmovement that flourished during the latter part of the 19th century, was the creation of anetwork of worker cooperatives.

One contemporary expression of the anti-capitalist spirit is the movement againstcorporate “globalization from above.” In their quest for ever-greater profits, the transna-tional corporations are continually moving their operations to low wage countries—fromthe US to Mexico, and from Mexico to China. In the process, they are destroying theecological balance of the earth, robbing poor nations, undermining and subverting politicaldemocracy, and creating massive fiscal crises and unemployment worldwide.

The corporations are amoral, owe no allegiance to communities or even nations, and intheir quest for maximum short-term profits will lie, cheat, bribe, manipulate, steal, andworse. As only one example, the California-based Unocal corporation profits from slavelabor enforced by the brutal regime in Burma. Contrary to their propaganda, thecorporations do not want market competition. Corporate managers and wealthy capitalistsuse their wealth and power to enrich themselves, steal from the rest of us, and stop atnothing to subvert political democracy. As readers of this journal know, corporate crime ispart of normal business and the bigger the corporation, the more extensive the criminality.The Enron scandal was not a fluke, but typical of the operation of giant transnationalcorporations. There is no way to reform capitalist corporations except by democratizingtheir ownership and control and transforming them in effect into cooperativeorganizations.

Second, it is difficult for individual worker coops to survive in a capitalist environment,though ABC Construction and other cooperative enterprises in this country show it ispossible. Lately, we have seen the development of regional coop organizations such asNOBAWC (pronounced no-boss) in the San Francisco bay area and others in Massachu-setts. Plans are underway to form a national worker coop federation similar to theCanadian Worker Coop Federation (Advancing the Cooperative Movement, 2002). Joiningwith other cooperatives into federations can help individual coops to provide economicbenefits that they could not obtain alone, and can enable them to access capital better andprovide social service benefits to their members. ABC workers have no retirement plan,nor do they have employer-paid medical insurance, benefits that would help enhancemembers’ quality of life. Joining with other coops to form umbrella organizations mightmake it easier for the workers to obtain health insurance, for example, because of thelarger number of workers who would be covered.

One model that comes to mind is LEGA, an umbrella organization of thousands ofworker coops in Italy. Another is the very successful Mondragon cooperative network inthe Basque region of Spain (criticized by some as being too large). The Mondragon coopswere begun by a Catholic priest, Father Jose Arizmendi, in post World War II Spain.Father Arizmendi helped to organize a technical school, five of whose graduates launchedwhat was to become the first industrial worker coop in the Mondragon area. Subsequently,dozens of other cooperatives were created nearby, as well as a workers’ bank serving thecooperative network and its members. Today, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation(MCC) boasts industrial, financial, and retail distribution divisions which together employupwards of 30,000 workers in over 100 member cooperatives. MCC has its own socialsecurity system with health and retirement benefits for all of its worker-members. Thegoals of the MCC include providing secure, good jobs for its members and helping tolaunch new cooperative enterprises. Members of MCC cooperatives share the enterprise

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profits in the form of internal capital accounts payable to workers on their retirement or onleaving their employment after a certain number of years. The LEGA and Mondragoncooperatives are models well worth emulating; we can learn from their achievements aswell as their weaknesses.

Third, a cooperative economy would be based on social solidarity—a minimization ofpay differences—and a guarantee of food, shelter, medical services, and education for allpeople in the society. However, there is no one best model or blueprint for the cooperativeeconomy. In such an alternative economic system there would be many small and mediumsized work organizations producing mainly for local and regional consumption. The marketeconomy would be supplemented by government-provided services, and there would beroom for privately owned small business enterprises. Most goods and services would beproduced by small worker cooperatives like ABC as well as by larger ones. These coopswould be organized into networks, and affiliated with cooperatively organized technicalassistance and financial organizations such as those included in the Mondragon network(MacLeod, 1997).

In contemporary capitalist societies like the US, wealthy capitalists and top corporatemanagers own and control the large corporations. In the US, top government officialscooperate with and help channel public funds to the corporations, especially those that arepart of the so-called military industrial complex (Melman, 2001). The executive branchuses US military power to facilitate global corporate domination. The main drivingprinciples of contemporary capitalism are maximization of short-term profit and of controlfrom above. Except for some of the professional and managerial jobs, most available jobsare underpaid, stressful, alienating, and provide little job security. (Temporary employmentagencies are among the fastest growing industries in the 21st-century US.) The spectre ofunemployment haunts us all, as corporations automate jobs and “globalize,” movingoperations to low-wage countries where sweatshops are the norm.

A better world is possible, however—one based on social justice, economic democracy,equality, and mutual aid. If we are to create a world in which satisfactory, equitably-compensated and empowering work is available to all, we need to build a cooperativeinfrastructure and a broad-based cooperative movement allied with other progressivepolitical movements. A long-range goal of such a movement would be to replace corporatecapitalism with a cooperative commonwealth consisting of networks of worker coops andassociated funding, technical assistance, and educational organizations.

Note

*Thanks to Len Krimerman for his helpful suggestions.

References

Advancing the Cooperative Movement. (2002). Grassroots economic organizing, 55. (November–December). Alsoavailable online at http://www.geo.coop.

Levine, D., Tyson, L. D. (1990). Participation, productivity and the firm’s environment. In A. Blinder (Ed.), Payingfor productivity: A look at the evidence. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute.

Lindenfeld, F. (2001). Worker cooperatives: a democratic alternative to capitalist corporations. In W. DuBois & R.D. Wright (Eds.), Applying sociology: Making a better world. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

MacLeod, G. (1997). From Mondragon to America: Experiments in community economic development. Sydney,Nova Scotia: University College of Cape Breton Press.

Melman, S. (2001). After capitalism: From managerialism to workplace democracy. New York: Alfred A.Knopf.

Whyte, W. F., Whyte, K. K. (1988). Making Mondragon: The growth and dynamics of the Mondragon cooperativecomplex. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

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Biography

Frank Lindenfeld is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Bloomsburg University. One of hismajor interests is in expanding the worker cooperative movement to counter global corporatecapitalism. He is a co-editor of Grassroots Economic Organizing, a bimonthly newsletter,available on the web at http://www.geo.coop.