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Worker Ownership for the 21st Century?
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Dan Clore
Apr 4, 2012, 5:12:56 PM4/4/12
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167048/worker-ownership-21st-century
Worker Ownership For the 21st Century?
by Laura Flanders
March 27, 2012 - 8:03 AM ET
It may not be the revolution’s dawn, but it’s certainly a glint in the
darkness. On Monday, this country’s largest industrial labor union
teamed up with the world’s largest worker-cooperative to present a plan
that would put people to work in labor-driven enterprises that build
worker power and communities, too.
Titled “Sustainable Jobs, Sustainable Communities: The Union Co-op
Model,” the organizational proposal released at a press conference on
March 26 in Pittsburgh, draws on the fifty-five year experience of the
Basque-based Mondragon worker cooperatives. To quote the document:
“In contrast to a Machiavellian economic system in which the ends
justify any means, the union co-op model embraces the idea that both the
ends and means are equally important, meaning that treating workers well
and with dignity and sustaining communities are just as important as
business growth and profitability.”
It might not sound like big news to members of their local food coop but
it’s revolutionary stuff in the context of industrial production. The
United Steelworkers represents some 1.2 million members; the average
steel plant requires millions of dollars of investment, and there’s
history here when it comes to worker ownership—some of it painful.
Thirty-five years ago, when local steelworkers and a statewide religious
coalition put forward a plan to transfer the Youngstown Sheet and Tube
steel mill to worker and community control, the USW’s attitude was very
different. As recounted by Gar Alperovitz in his (recently updated)
"America Beyond Capitalism:"
“In the late 1970s the union saw worker-ownership as a threat to
organizing, and it opposed efforts by local steelworkers to explore
employee-owned institution-building in cities like Youngstown.”
This Monday, Leo Gerard, forward-thinking president of a very new kind
of international USW, had this to say:
“To survive the boom and bust, bubble-driven economic cycles fueled by
Wall Street, we must look for new ways to create and sustain good jobs
on Main Street…. Worker-ownership can provide the opportunity to figure
out collective alternatives to layoffs, bankruptcies, and closings.”
“The union’s gone through a huge transition,” Alperovitz told me when I
reached him at his office shortly after the press conference. “This is a
real declaration of a new direction for labor.”
It’s been a few years since the USW first became curious about the
Mondragon cooperatives after they had a good experience working with
GAMESA, a co-op friendly Spanish wind turbine outfit that opened up
three plants in Pennsylvania. In 2009, with their Spanish colleagues'
help, Gerard sent a delegation to the Basque region of Spain to
investigate Mondragon, now a $24 billion global operation. Since then,
the USW has worked slowly with Mondragon and the Ohio Employee Ownership
Center (OEOC) a university based coop-outreach center founded by one of
the organizers of the Youngstown initiative, to fine tune the US version
presented Monday.
For the details of the proposal, check out the model for yourself. The
full text of the union co-op model is available at http://www.usw.coop
or http://www.union.coop . The template is intended to be a living
document, write the authors, “subject to continuous revision and
improvement based on user feedback and applied experiences.”
The key elements of the plan are jobs trump profit margins; every worker
has one vote, and worker–owners don't just "own," they are expected to
participate in management. Also, social transformation: “A key part of
the co-op’s mission is to support and invest in their communities by
creating jobs, funding development projects, supporting education, and
providing opportunity."
However the details are applied, the point is to get more experiments up
and running. “The more we can do, the better,” says Alperovitz. “We'll
learn and along the way legitimate the idea.”
There are political implications, says Carl Davidson, national co-chair
of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a
Pittsburgh local, who has studied Mondragon and attended the press
conference Monday. “It’s a radical structural reform that produces not
just a better contract but alters relationships of power.”
In an era of high unemployment, low levels of union membership and
attacks from all sides on the political power of labor, US workers have
less ability than ever to “check” corporate power through mass
mobilization and traditional labor tactics. The worker-ownership model
presents another way to exercise power. If workers can raise sufficient
investment capital and find stable markets they can do better than
“check” corporate power, they can (to use Alperovitz’s word) “displace”
corporations.
At the very least, the USW/Mondragon move puts a new idea on the table.
Will it change the equation the next time the federal government is
bailing out an auto company, for example? What if, instead of pumping
public money into the same-old private enterprise, public money powered
up a new worker-owned operation, run by new rules for different
outcomes? (Labor and community welfare, say, instead of profits to be
skimmed off by top-level shareholders?)
The opening up of that question to serious public dialogue is a major
step, but Monday’s announcement introduced more than a concept. The
organizers also introduced workers involved in a new industrial laundry
they’re calling the Pittsburgh “Clean and Green Laundry Cooperative”
modeled in part on similar projects in Cleveland. Plans are afoot for
union co-ops in Cincinnati, too. The Pittsburgh laundry’s slated to open
in the beginning of June.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167048/worker-ownership-21st-century
Worker Ownership For the 21st Century?
by Laura Flanders
March 27, 2012 - 8:03 AM ET
It may not be the revolution’s dawn, but it’s certainly a glint in the
darkness. On Monday, this country’s largest industrial labor union
teamed up with the world’s largest worker-cooperative to present a plan
that would put people to work in labor-driven enterprises that build
worker power and communities, too.
Titled “Sustainable Jobs, Sustainable Communities: The Union Co-op
Model,” the organizational proposal released at a press conference on
March 26 in Pittsburgh, draws on the fifty-five year experience of the
Basque-based Mondragon worker cooperatives. To quote the document:
“In contrast to a Machiavellian economic system in which the ends
justify any means, the union co-op model embraces the idea that both the
ends and means are equally important, meaning that treating workers well
and with dignity and sustaining communities are just as important as
business growth and profitability.”
It might not sound like big news to members of their local food coop but
it’s revolutionary stuff in the context of industrial production. The
United Steelworkers represents some 1.2 million members; the average
steel plant requires millions of dollars of investment, and there’s
history here when it comes to worker ownership—some of it painful.
Thirty-five years ago, when local steelworkers and a statewide religious
coalition put forward a plan to transfer the Youngstown Sheet and Tube
steel mill to worker and community control, the USW’s attitude was very
different. As recounted by Gar Alperovitz in his (recently updated)
"America Beyond Capitalism:"
“In the late 1970s the union saw worker-ownership as a threat to
organizing, and it opposed efforts by local steelworkers to explore
employee-owned institution-building in cities like Youngstown.”
This Monday, Leo Gerard, forward-thinking president of a very new kind
of international USW, had this to say:
“To survive the boom and bust, bubble-driven economic cycles fueled by
Wall Street, we must look for new ways to create and sustain good jobs
on Main Street…. Worker-ownership can provide the opportunity to figure
out collective alternatives to layoffs, bankruptcies, and closings.”
“The union’s gone through a huge transition,” Alperovitz told me when I
reached him at his office shortly after the press conference. “This is a
real declaration of a new direction for labor.”
It’s been a few years since the USW first became curious about the
Mondragon cooperatives after they had a good experience working with
GAMESA, a co-op friendly Spanish wind turbine outfit that opened up
three plants in Pennsylvania. In 2009, with their Spanish colleagues'
help, Gerard sent a delegation to the Basque region of Spain to
investigate Mondragon, now a $24 billion global operation. Since then,
the USW has worked slowly with Mondragon and the Ohio Employee Ownership
Center (OEOC) a university based coop-outreach center founded by one of
the organizers of the Youngstown initiative, to fine tune the US version
presented Monday.
For the details of the proposal, check out the model for yourself. The
full text of the union co-op model is available at http://www.usw.coop
or http://www.union.coop . The template is intended to be a living
document, write the authors, “subject to continuous revision and
improvement based on user feedback and applied experiences.”
The key elements of the plan are jobs trump profit margins; every worker
has one vote, and worker–owners don't just "own," they are expected to
participate in management. Also, social transformation: “A key part of
the co-op’s mission is to support and invest in their communities by
creating jobs, funding development projects, supporting education, and
providing opportunity."
However the details are applied, the point is to get more experiments up
and running. “The more we can do, the better,” says Alperovitz. “We'll
learn and along the way legitimate the idea.”
There are political implications, says Carl Davidson, national co-chair
of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and a
Pittsburgh local, who has studied Mondragon and attended the press
conference Monday. “It’s a radical structural reform that produces not
just a better contract but alters relationships of power.”
In an era of high unemployment, low levels of union membership and
attacks from all sides on the political power of labor, US workers have
less ability than ever to “check” corporate power through mass
mobilization and traditional labor tactics. The worker-ownership model
presents another way to exercise power. If workers can raise sufficient
investment capital and find stable markets they can do better than
“check” corporate power, they can (to use Alperovitz’s word) “displace”
corporations.
At the very least, the USW/Mondragon move puts a new idea on the table.
Will it change the equation the next time the federal government is
bailing out an auto company, for example? What if, instead of pumping
public money into the same-old private enterprise, public money powered
up a new worker-owned operation, run by new rules for different
outcomes? (Labor and community welfare, say, instead of profits to be
skimmed off by top-level shareholders?)
The opening up of that question to serious public dialogue is a major
step, but Monday’s announcement introduced more than a concept. The
organizers also introduced workers involved in a new industrial laundry
they’re calling the Pittsburgh “Clean and Green Laundry Cooperative”
modeled in part on similar projects in Cleveland. Plans are afoot for
union co-ops in Cincinnati, too. The Pittsburgh laundry’s slated to open
in the beginning of June.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-unspeakable-and-others/6124911
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"From the point of view of the defense of our society,
there only exists one danger -- that workers succeed in
speaking to each other about their condition and their
aspirations _without intermediaries_."
--Censor (Gianfranco Sanguinetti), _The Real Report on
the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy_
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