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Sustainable Economic Democracy: Worker Cooperatives for the 21St Century

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Sustainable Economic Democracy: Worker Cooperatives for the 21St Century Regenerating Local Economies: Environment, Equity and Entrepreneurship in America’s Post Industrial Cities A publication series produced by the MIT Community Innovators Lab with support from the Barr Foundation Sustainable Economic Democracy: Worker Cooperatives for the 21st Century Authors: Nicholas Iuviene Amy Stitely Lorlene Hoyt October 2010 About CoLab About this series The Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) is This guide is part in a series of publications a center for research, teaching, and practice on equitable economic development within the MIT Department of Urban Studies strategies for America’s post-industrial cities, and Planning (DUSP). CoLab supports funded in part by the Barr Foundation. Other the development and use of knowledge titles in this series include: from excluded communities to deepen civic engagement, improve community practice, Strengthening Local Economies and inform policy, mobilize community assets, and Civic Life: The Untapped Power of Small generate shared wealth. Businesses We believe that community knowledge can City Scale Retrofits: Learning from Portland drive powerful innovation and can help and Oakland make markets an arena for supporting social Network Power: Building Collaborative justice. CoLab facilitates the interchange Partnerships for Energy Efficiency and Equity of knowledge and resources between MIT and community organizations. We engage This series is written for community partners students to be practitioners of this approach and urban planners who are working to build to community change and sustainability. a more equitable and sustainable economy. For more information, visit our website at: http://web.mit.edu/colab/. website colab.mit.edu phone 617.253.3216 fax 617.258.6515 address 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 7-307 Cambridge, MA 02139 Assistant Text Editor and Layout: Annis Sengupta Cover Design and Graphics: Annis Sengupta and Amy Stitely Sustainable Economic Democracy: Worker Cooperatives for the 21st Century Table of Contents 4 Research Model 5 Introduction 8 Case One: Mondragon - Basque Region, Spain 10 Learning from Mondragon 13 Case Two: Evergreen - Cleveland, Ohio 16 Learning from Evergreen 17 Analysis: Key Differences between Mondragon and Evergreen 18 A Cooperative Development Framework 26 Conclusion 27 Key Considerations 28 Notes 3 Research Model Using teaching and research to inform practice: This series is one product flowing from a year- Beyond the required thesis document, the long collaboration among students, staff at students agreed to create media products and the Community Innovators Lab, and Professor practice-oriented guides that could be broadly Lorlene Hoyt, all of whom participated in distributed to community partners, policy- the pedagogical experiment called, “The advocates, and policy-makers. Collaborative Thesis Project.” CoLab faculty, staff, and affiliates supported The Collaborative Thesis Project was the project by brokering relationships with initiated by Professor Hoyt and emerged community partners, hosting reflective from her observation that many students meetings, co-advising students, co-authoring find the thesis process harrowing and, to and editing written products, providing some extent, unsatisfying, in part because media support, and co-organizing public theses usually meet their end on the library presentations. shelves. In hopes of making the process less isolating and more rewarding, and of The Collaborative Thesis Project has been making the products more useful, Hoyt invited a great vehicle for directing institutional six students to pursue their research as a research capacity toward a deeper collaborative unit under her supervision. understanding of equity, environment, and entrepreneurship and their connection to Each student researched a different post- democratic engagement. Through this project industrial American city or set of cities and we’ve tried to mobilize academia for action their use or potential use of stimulus funds and expand our range of impact. For more for regenerating local economies. The group information visit our blog feed at: met regularly throughout the academic year http://colabradio.mit.edu/?cat=317. to share discoveries, learn across cases, and co-develop recommendations for action. 4 Preface Introduction Now is the time for an alternative economic Initiative in Cleveland, Ohio (Evergreen). development framework. In the past two Drawing from these two cases, we then years we witnessed the near collapse of put forth a general framework for building a global financial markets and the highest scalable cooperative network in post-industrial national unemployment rate since the American cities. early 80s. In the wake of this crisis, we are challenged to find a sustainable and democratic way to generate wealth in cities. What is economic The kind of questions we need to answer are: democracy? Economic democracy is a socio-economic What is an appropriate path to arrangement where local economic economic development for de- institutions are democratically controlled. industrialized cities where the loss These economic institutions include business, of a manufacturing economy has left finance, research and development, and many people adrift? education sectors. Economic democracy does not reject the role of markets, but rather How can people who live and work in de-emphasizes the primacy of the profit- cities build robust local economies maximizing motive among economic decision that are based upon democratic makers. principles? One means to achieving economic democracy And, what role can rooted institutions is through cooperative ownership of the play in helping to reorganize local economy by all who participate. In this local economic activity so that case, a wide ownership structure can force a communities have greater control? realignment of interests that helps reconcile conflicts between the owners of productive assets and their laborers. Shared ownership of the local economy helps root wealth in Worker cooperatives, when configured communities, keeping resources from “leaking in a network with rooted institutions, can out” of the area. Cooperative businesses are promote progressive, place-based, and one of the more natural firm types that fits endogenous economic development. In this within the model of economic democracy, be guide, we explore the worker cooperative they worker, producer, consumer, or housing network as a neighborhood, municipal, and cooperatives. regional strategy for generating wealth. We present two examples: the well-established Mondragon Complex in Spain (Mondragon) and the nascent Evergreen Cooperative 5 Introduction What is a worker On its website, the International Cooperative Alliance traces the evolution of the original cooperative? Rochdale principles to the adoption of the Worker cooperatives are typically for-profit following seven in 1996: businesses that are jointly-owned and democratically controlled by the employees of International Cooperative Alliance the firm, often referred to as worker-owners. Statement of Cooperative Identity Cooperatives can range from small-scale (1996): to multi-million dollar businesses. Globally cooperatives employ more than 100 million 1. Voluntary and Open membership. people and have over 800 million members (1). Although the form of organization 2. Democratic member control. varies dramatically between firms, most worker cooperatives generally adhere to the 3. Member Contribution to Capital. Rochdale principles that were established by the British Rochdale Society of Equitable 4. Autonomy and independence. Pioneers in 1844. These principles outline a set of ideals to which all cooperative 5. Education of members and public in businesses should adhere. cooperative principles. Rochdale Principles of Cooperation (1844): 6. Cooperation between cooperatives. 1. Open membership. 7. Concern for community. 2. Democratic control (one person, one The International Cooperative Alliance states vote). that cooperatives are different than traditional enterprises in that they put people at the 3. Distribution of surplus in proportion center of all their businesses, as opposed to to trade. capital. Because cooperatives are owned and democratically-controlled by their members, 4. Payment of limited interest on business decisions balance the need for capital. profitability with the needs of their members and the wider interests of the community. 5. Political and religious neutrality. 6. Cash trading (no credit extended). 7. Promotion of education. 6 Introduction Worker Cooperatives in the and employs over one million people (2). Mondragon, founded in 1956, now holds U.S. 33.3 million euros in assets and employs Studies on the efficiency of worker over 85,000 people internationally (3). The cooperatives and their success rate vary questions arise: considerably. Cooperatives emerged in the What can be learned from these European mid-19th century in response to the labor experiences? abuses and inequities that resulted from the industrial revolution. In the U.S., the Is it possible to achieve similar success rates economic recession of the 70s and 80s led in the U.S. context? to a renewed interest in cooperatives. In this era, the employee shared ownership program The most important lesson from Legacoop (ESOP) became the dominant business and the Mondragon is the importance of model for American firms that aspired to developing an economically integrated cooperative principles. However, despite its network of cooperatives rather than a single
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