Worker Co-ops

The store where I have gained most of my cheese knowledge is a worker-owned cooperative. Sometimes when I tell people that they nod in understanding. Then they ask me what that means.

The basic concept is pretty simple: a consumer co-op is owned by the customers, an agricultural co-op is owned by the farmers, a housing co-op is owned by the people who live there, a worker co-op is owned by the workers.

How a particular cooperative is organized is up to the workers at that cooperative. As long as the principle of one member/one vote is maintained along with some financial investment by the workers, the cooperative is free to choose whatever management style it deems best. One of the main differences between a worker co-op and an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is that in an ESOP, different members may have uneven voting power based on their shares. By definition, members in a co-op have equal voting power.

Rainbow Grocery is the most decentralized large, worker-cooperative in the country. Basically, we run a grocery store with limited top-down management. Important decisions are made by an elected Board of Directors made up of worker-owners or by a vote of the entire membership. Everyone who works there is a member or on track to becoming one.

Most decisions are made on a department level though. It's our way of maintaining a participatory workplace; as we've gotten bigger, we've broken down into more departments so that workers can still give meaningful input into their daily work. While departments can't go against our cooperative's by-laws or against decisions the whole cooperative has voted on, they are otherwise fairly autonomous. For example, being a cheese buyer is my job. I don't need to call a meeting to bring in a new product or decide whether to buy 200 lbs. of Monterey Jack this week instead of 160 lbs. However, since our store has voted against carrying meat, I can't decide our department should start carrying prosciutto or pate without asking the entire membership.

I have attended as many worker-cooperative conferences as cheese conferences over the last decade. I'm committed to selling quality hand-made cheese but I am just as committed to helping create more meaningful living wage jobs, rooted in their communities and based on the principles of cooperation.

For more info, click on the links above.