The 2012 documentary film, Together: How co-operatives show resilience to the crisis, produced by CECOP-CICOPA Europe, focuses on an unconventional business structure you may or may not know a lot about—the worker co-operative. The Mindful Word itself functions as a worker co-operative. Structurally and ideologically, we have a great deal in common with the four businesses featured within the film, even though we aren’t part of the same industries.
Each member of a worker co-op owns a small piece of the business. All decisions are made democratically, so everyone has some say in how the business is run, no matter what their specific function is. Therefore, there’s no “us vs. them” division between workers and management, as is commonly found within conventionally structured businesses. Since workers aren’t competing for a place in a hierarchy (they may receive more pay if they complete more work, but don’t get any more power than others within the decision-making process), they’re more likely to cooperate to complete tasks rather than competing among each other. Since members own a share of the co-op they’re also more likely to provide better customer service than employees who have little or no interest in their work.
CECOP-CICOPA visits four different worker co-operatives in four different countries (France, Poland, Italy, and Spain), ranging from factories to social service agencies. The documentary highlights how the flexible, experimental nature of worker co-operatives has allowed them to survive the recent economic recession better than some of their corporate counterparts. In some towns, worker co-operatives are the main reason why the majority of people are still employed.
A disadvantage for some, when working in a co-operative, is that they have to take more responsibility for a business’ failures than they would if they were working for an organization with a different setup. But this may be a small price to pay for the flexibility to implement new ideas and the ability to offer input regarding the business’ future direction. At The Mindful Word, we feel that giving each contributor ownership allows them to understand that they’re contributing to a larger purpose, as opposed to being just a cog in a machine—this is one of the reasons why our devoted contributors stick around.
To find out more about worker co-operatives and the economic advantages they offer, watch Together here:
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]by Erica Roberts
image: Daryl I (Creative Commons BY-NC-SA)
