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Lawmakers group to draft law for workers cooperatives
The Yomiuri Shimbun

A suprapartisan group of lawmakers tasked with drafting a law on workers
cooperatives will be set up on Feb. 20, it has been learned.

Such cooperatives, which are nonprofit entities owned and managed by
member workers to secure living expense for members, are seen as a way
to provide employment opportunities for job-hoppers, the so-called
working poor--who cannot earn subsistence wages despite working the
equivalent of full-time hours--and retired elderly people. The lawmakers
group aims to provide the legal groundwork for the establishment of such
cooperatives.

Currently, workers cooperatives do not officially have legal status and
are usually treated as either nonprofit organizations or private companies.

The co-ops are generally invested and managed by the member workers, and
in many cases the members make an investment of at least 50,000 yen and
work for the groups as employees. Regardless of the amount of investment
made, members are given equal rights and there is no employer-employee
relationship as seen in private firms.

Such co-ops are said to be like workers' versions of consumers
cooperatives and do not rely on public support such as subsidies.

About 30,000 people nationwide work for organizations that resemble
workers co-ops, and the total value of their businesses is said to be
about 30 billion yen per year. They encompass a wide variety of fields,
such as nursing care and social services, support for raising children,
and management and maintenance of commercial buildings.

However, there is no law legislating such co-ops, and therefore many of
the co-ops operate as nonprofit organizations for formality's sake,
limiting the kinds of work they can undertake.

Through such co-ops, young people who cannot find regular jobs in
private firms and retired elderly people can create comfortable working
environments on their own and come to support themselves, prompting some
people to speculate such co-ops could be a new way for job-hoppers and
others to find work.

If workers co-ops acquire corporate status, they would have a stronger
financial basis than NPOs, which rely on contributions, and the co-ops
would likely be able to enter a wider variety of businesses and expand
operations.

The co-ops also are expected to be commissioned administrative services
when local governments privatize them.

The establishment of the nonpartisan group of lawmakers was prompted by
an alliance of citizens for promoting the establishment of a law on
workers co-ops. An increasing number of lawmakers from ruling and
opposition parties, including former Health, Labor and Welfare Minister
and New Komeito member Chikara Sakaguchi, have expressed support of the
idea.

"Europe has laws on the nature of workers cooperatives. And one should
be established as soon as possible in Japan," said Nobuhiro Furumura, a
senior executive of the Japan Workers' Co-operative Union, a core
organization of the citizens alliance.

(Feb. 11, 2008)

--
Dan Clore

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"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
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aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_