Craving a Little Democracy in Your Workplace?
The hero you didn’t know you had: cooperatives.
Democracy has an interesting history in the United States. We pride ourselves on our ability to vote for our leaders, our laws, and our way of life. Since inception, the experiment that is the United States has brought prosperity to more and more American citizens… but recently, there has been more economic inequality than there was in the 1970s. For a full explanation of this, read my article The Wealth Gap in America: Exploring the Implications of Educational Policy Changes.
In short, corporate executive pay has outpaced the growth of their subordinates BY A LOT since the 1970s and monetary and fiscal policy has aided those at the top more than everyone else. While the rich own most of the world’s financial assets, the FED starts buying assets in times of economic instability, pumping up the prices of assets across the board, and in turn inflating the accounts of the top 20%. Of them, the top 1% of them see the most gains. That’s right, there’s even greater inequality among the top 1%.
So how does this happen? Well, there are an endless amount of issues that are culprit to the systemic economic inequality that we see today. But the one that I want to focus on is the labour market. Specifically, cooperatives.
What is a cooperative?
According to the International Cooperative Alliance (2021), a cooperative is an “autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.”
Cooperatives come in many shapes and sizes, in any industry, all run by their members as a whole. The cooperative runs as a democracy with its members as the proud voters in their organization. Here, workers have a say in who their leaders are. This gives power back to the worker. The co-op worker gets paid more of the companies profit because the people at the top skim less off the top.
According to Michelle Chen of thenation.com (2016), worker cooperatives are more productive than normal companies. Chen found that the goals of cooperatives are more long-term than a traditional company for several reasons. For one, cooperatives tend to aim to support future generations of their cooperative as opposed to trying to satisfy the current quarter. In addition, cooperatives can make good money.
In summary, cooperatives give power back to the worker by increasing democracy, they stimulate the economy and are legitimate market competitors, and work life balance tends to be better. Sounds too good to be true.
You live among them every day, the credit unions, the hardware stores, the electric companies, farms, grocery stores, and the list goes. Cooperatives could be a revolutionary way for the growing lower class and shrinking middle class to take back control of their labour, their wages, and the majority of their adult waking hours.
Most of us work through our lives to keep up with the bills and mostly contribute to the pockets of the people at the top of their company. Without making many decisions on how the business operates, who gets promoted, what they get paid, or the conditions under which they work. Cooperatives give you all of that but are being overlooked.
The wealth of Jeff Bezos is not the sign of a healthy labour economy. His amassed wealth of almost $200 billion shows that he knows how to take advantage of workers and profit massively to fund his competition in the new private sector space race. If Amazon were a cooperative, their 1.3 million workers would have the ability to do basic things like save for retirement, and own a home.
If you are at all intrigued by this piece and want to help achieve a future with more co-ops, I’d recommend you support your local co-ops. Vote with your dollars by banking, shopping, or even working with a co-op because they are a great opportunity for workers around the world like you.