Why Unions and Worker Coops Should Ally

This question comes from Daniel Rhoades and he asks a wonderful question framed as I like them: historically. He asks: wouldn’t it be a good idea for labor unions here, in the United States, to follow the example of what labor unions did back in 1919 in Seattle, a hundred years ago, when that city experienced a very important general strike? That’s when all unions get together stop everything that’s going on in order to make a fundamental change in the society but at least in the condition of the working class.

Very famous historical example, general strikes were being used around the world at that time to try to demand better conditions for working people including the veterans of the horrible world war that had just concluded. Let me give you the blunt, clear, short answer that Daniel Rhoades very good question demands. And the answer is an enthusiastic yes! I don’t think labor unions need to wait for the dire conditions like in Seattle in 1919 and they don’t have to wait until a general strike is a weapon that they use. They could and they should do it all the time. They should support worker coops.

Let me remind you also in case you’re not familiar that in the past particularly in the 19^th century labor unions in the United States when they were just getting going often worked in close coalition’s and cooperation with the co-operative movement across the United States. Coops of farmers, coops of industrial workers and so on. So, there’s historical precedent as well. But let me give you in conclusion the basic theoretical reason for why worker coops and labor unions have the kind of chemical connection that ought to be realized in a real coalition what do labor unions basically do.

They bargain on behalf of their members with the employer and they try to get for their members better wages, better benefits, better working conditions, greater security of their jobs and so on, then they could get if each worker bargained with the employer individually. Very simple idea. In Union there is strength and advantage that going it yourself usually does not afford you. So far so good.

But of course, as every union has learned that the employer doesn’t sit by idly. The employer has all kinds of mechanisms, maneuvers, advisors, consultants to undermine, block, dissolve, undercut unions and they’ve been doing it. And doing it successfully for quite a long time even when unions win in their struggle with the employer, and that happens, they know from bitter experience that no sooner have they won some benefit then the employer goes to work figuring out how to take it back, how to undo it and that has often been successful to them well. Then imagine with me the following wonderful alternative.

Suppose workers seeking good jobs, good incomes, job security and all the rest were bargaining not with somebody else who has opposed interests to the workers. But, suppose, instead they were bargaining with themselves. If they were the employer, if the workers together were the employers of the workers together. In other words, we were collectively self-employed people. If you bargain with yourself, the outcome is usually better than with bargaining with a person whose interests are opposed to yours. A person who will make more profits the less is shelled out to the workers needed to generate those profits.

Worker coops are the conclusion, the ultimate end, the goal, the whole purpose of what labor unions were designed to do. If the workers ran the enterprise, they wouldn’t bargain to get an improvement with themselves and then turn around and undercut and undermine what they had just won with themselves from themselves by themselves. It wouldn’t work like that, because it makes no sense. Worker coops are the way in which workers don’t have to bargain with anybody else. When they can together set up the kind of enterprise that will give them the things they need to make a good life for themselves, their children and their community.

It is the logical outcome of what unions were set up to do. It’s just a better solution then anything unions can achieve if they remain within the capitalist framework where they’re constantly beset by an employer who has every incentive to undo even though he’s a minority the needs of his employees, who are the majority, in every enterprise nothing is more logical than unification between unions and worker coops and unions now have the funds to facilitate to help their own members and others. Build the co-ops and their relationship with unions that could transform the conditions of workers in the United States. This is Richard Wolff from Democracy at Work with an appreciation of our patreon community.