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> The same is true for any business or corporation. No, coops here survive because of government protection against competition. > The real key factor here is
by ucaetano 9y ago
> The same is true for any business or corporation.
No, coops here survive because of government protection against competition.
> The real key factor here is that coops at least open up the possibility of workers sharing in the profits generated by their labor.
No, they don't. A coop can be of owners, as it is frequently the case in Italy. A coop of small farms, each employing a dozen people, doesn't necessarily bring any benefit to those employees, only to the owners.
And it leaves them vulnerable to competition from outside, which then require even more government protection, hindering trade and economic development.
- wahern 9y agoCorporations can capture government just as much as coops. It depends which is relatively more effective at swaying policy, money or votes. In the U.S. contemporary social and political dynamics make money much more important as voters currently suck at tracking the relationship between their desired outcomes and actual policy. But at other times votes were more important. It depends on the dynamics in Italy. (Or maybe it just depends on the labor system--it's maybe not a coincidence that votes were more powerful in the U.S. when unions were big, and money more powerful when business interests dominated policy. In that sense, you can expect corporations or coops to slowly capture government, regardless.) Though some of the Italian statistics were ambiguous as to whether they included non-worker-owned coops (perhaps even deceptively so!), the main thrust of the article was clearly about worker-owned coops While cooperatives in the United States claim about 130 million memberships, these are by and large within consumer and producer-owned co-ops, not cooperative workplaces. Only around 7,000 people nationwide are part of worker co-ops.
- fallingfrog 9y agoIf the workers and the owners are different people, then is it still a coop?
- hueving 9y agoYes, your view of a co-op is too narrow: http://ncba.coop/what-is-a-coop http://ncba.coop/what-is-a-coop
- fallingfrog 9y agoOk but one of the 7 cooperative principles in that link is "democratic member control", which is exactly what I'm referring to. If you're going to say, oh well not every employee is a "member", well, I don't think you can make the claim that because Coca Cola has employees that might be stockholders, that that makes it a coop.
- walshemj 9y agoYes a producer coop may well employ non members - though in theory a worker coop doesn't John Lewis in th Uk is looked down on by the rest of the worker coops fro employing non members as cleaners
- walshemj 9y agoAll coops are made up of owners its what a coop is. Your talking a producer coop which a lot of the US ones are including one that supplies KFC.