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A cooperative model of social development:
Using the workplace for social and individual growth
Dana Silverman
MSW student at Monmouth University, International and Community Development
Please send comments to Dana at s0526508@monmouth.edu
Principles & Illustrations
This August 2004, at the Workshop on AlterGlobalizations
in San Miguel de Allende, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, we were
talking about topics on alternatives to capitalistic accumulation as
well as issues surrounding social and distributive injustice. This paper
explores the concepts that can serve as a stepping-stone for grassroots
community economic development. With it, I intend to bridge the gap
between profit and non-for-profit cultures.
This paper plants ideas in our heads, from which to build
cooperative social enterprises. It should be a bridge not just of economic
opportunity to those who are marginalized, but a conduit to the social
services that foster sustained opportunity. After a grassroots, strengths
based need assessment is done, those who are marginalized can capitalize
on the gaps that are revealed. Due to the ambiguity in the word cooperative,
I will use the term community enterprise interchangeably with cooperative.
Community enterprises revitalize communities through progressive personal
and systemic collaboration. It is one alternative to the secluded individual
enterprise or the large-scale, absentee-owner corporation propagated
by the trickle down theory economic growth model. (Midgley, 1997)
It should use both its internal, participatory structure
as well as external resources for true micro (intra & interpersonal)
and macro (systemic) change. The basis in which I propose the cooperative
businesses as a community/social enterprise for social development,
in the USA and elsewhere, is because:
- Successful
job retention for low and very low-income community residents often
required the involvement of supportive services. Community enterprises
can collectively decide what services the surplus profit is used toward.
- These
services should be utilized as enterprise opportunities by those who
most understand its need.
- The
project may be able to claim federal grant moneys as certain projects
funded with government sources are legally bound to support economic
development for low-income residents. (The Enterprise Foundation,
2003; Saul, 2001)
Current trends of governmental welfare, in the United
States, stresses a consumption, minimalist, remedial emergency based
intervention system. (Midgley, 1997) Midgley (1997) points out that
an alternative, more holistic and sustainable approach to social intervention
is social development, a model that incorporates social and economic
disciplines for the well being of all. There are certain attributes
of the cooperative (worker-owner) business model that contribute to
this model of social development.
Below is a brief outline of concepts and its application
showing how the cooperative business model is valid for filling individual
psychological needs (there is a need for academic research regarding
this) and providing a path out of economic and communal poverty. The
components below are part of a puzzle that when put together may equate
to equitable, sustainable holistic social development and community
revitalization.
Horizontal equality
Burch (1996) defines horizontal equality as those with
equal merit receiving the same share of distributed resources. A major
flaw in vertical economic structures (and we must be careful when reading
about cooperatives, for some vertical structures are using the terminology)
is a lack of comparitable worth. In an economic model that recognizes
social capitol and values the human component behind work, compartitable
worth is found when we set an equivalent standard based on equal
value of different work. (Burch, 1996) For example, in a setting with
comparitable worth, an ingredient that leads to horizontal equality
(Burch, 1996), childcare teachers and nursing home caretakers would
be paid an equal wage as a supervisor or manager.
In a community enterprise, it is viable to choose to pay
the worker-owner childcare teacher (whom allows the other worker-owners
to attend to their positions, especially for single mothers) an equal
wage as the manager of the enterprise.
Having a system based on horizontal equality, it is necessary
to form specific constitutions of equal merit across different work
fields. A dialogue between participants should lead to agreed-upon,
culturally appropriate values that serve as the baseline of equal merit.
Under this model of horizontal and participatory social development,
there should be less of a need for consumption welfare, for the welfare
of the people is placed back in their hands. (Midgley, 1997)
Horizontal organization
An administrative structure that practices empowerment and
offers all members appropriate chances of advancement, so long as it
does not harm the whole.
Application: the Concentric Ring Theory Participants
nominated for leadership enter back into the core group when the term
is over. This avoids oligarchy and encourages learning as exiting leaders
pass their learned skills onto incoming leaders. (personal conversation
with Dr. Morris Saldov, professor in Monmouth University's Social Work
Department, 2004; Maya Vanic Coffee Cooperative, Board meeting in Chiapas,
Mexico, 2004)
From dependence to Independence & Interdependence
The United States welfare system is slowly moving away from dependence,
since the welfare reform of 1996. However, the reform is greatly lacking
and those who exit welfare are still not able to be independent. Those
interested in reducing poverty and increasing community may want to
propose a pilot project to use the current welfare system as a springboard
for community enterprise.
Application: The current welfare program for economically
needy families is Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF). Under this
law, recipients can use some of the money towards a business by a special
savings account called Individual Development Assets (IDA) where the
US government banks a dollar for every eligible earned dollar saved.
This may help individuals contribute to their buy-in of the worker-owned
community enterprise. For the state of New Jersey, one would call the
Department of Community Affairs for information on the IDA program.
Community enterprises are not in the structure of the IDA program. It
is up to the community organizer to orchestrate this. The Philippines,
according to Midgley (1997), also has a micro-enterprise component in
its welfare system. Another option for funds is to urge banks to follow
their legal responsibilities under the Community Reinvestment Act.
Distributive Justice
Following the shown need of integrated economic and supportive
services to open economic opportunities for low and very low-income
populations, the factors that allow access to opportunity must be interwoven
into any welfare-to-work programs. Only then can distributive justice
begin to truly emerge. Distributive justice is when all people (and
sentient beings) have the mental, social and material needs for natural
& healthy development.
In the US, child-care is very expensive, even costing
more than rent in some cities. Childcare and transportation are the
greatest hurdles preventing welfare-to-work recipients from holding
steady employment. (Cresson, 2004; Saul, 2001) For those on welfare,
job stability increases 82% when childcare is offered. Meanwhile, 76%
of requested programs are left without proper funds in 32 states. (Newman,
et al, 2000) This inequality is a demonstration in the lack of distributive
justice. Some ways a community enterprise can capitalize on this is
through:
1. The cooperative can vote, as its primary
enterprise or with accumulated funds from its primary enterprise, to
buy a community van that may help the community with difficulties in
transportation; or they can vote to focus on writing grants or forming
a partnership with the Department of Transportation
2. Childcare can be provided for cooperative
members, with the caretaker being an equally valued position, or it
can be primary cooperative enterprise. Childcare is considered a valid
TANF work activity (SPDP, 2001), so the caretaker may be able to springboard
from welfare to business owner as a childcare worker. For Small Business
or Child Care (Business) Loans in the USA, visit http://www.njeda.com/brochure.asp
For technical assistance in creating a childcare business, visit the
Educational Information & Recourse Center at http://www.eirc.org/
The inequality in educational conditions and opportunities
between economic classes can be addressed through orchestrating community
resources to provide occupational and leadership training. Local professionals
as well as government agencies such as the Department of Labor might
provide this. Eventually, partnerships may be able to be set up with
local community colleges so that the training sessions can culminate
into a recognized certificate, for community organizing, leadership
or some other related skill. This is a community strengths-based approach
to community development. I would also approach the local Chamber of
Commerce (which may be either for or against these efforts) and the
Small Business Bureau for technical assistance.
Environmental Sustainability
Just as economic justice is a goal we should all work
toward, so is environmental justice. In the excessive large scale corporate
model that the world embraces today, the global reality unfairly and
unjustly punishes countries and peoples that do not benefit from the
enterprise causing the environmental destruction and are often not consulted
or repaid for their ill health. For innovative business ideas related
to environmental sustainability, visit the Institute for Local Self
Reliance at http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/
One enterprise example described on the Institute for
Local Self Reliance's website is Community Woodworks: A mill that reprocesses
& reworks deconstructed lumber. For more information, email ilsr@igc.org
or read the already cited paper of Richard Saul (2001). Another environmentally
sustainable proposal is to set up a community transit and job (car)-pooling
cooperative. Offer large industries the service of setting up car-pool
lists for their employees. (Massie, 1996) If many low-income workers
are employed there, reliable transportation is likely to lead to reliable
job stability and hence less costly turnover for the employer.
Multi-layered Collaborations
"Productive Chains, integrated in the form of Cooperatives
that complement each other, which enable advantages of scale. Each one
of these should have their own formal organization and their relations
should be formalized in covenants and contracts according to the services
they provide. Groups of cooperatives must be integrated into a Union
of Cooperatives or other formal organization." - Rommel Gonzalez
"We must build vertically integrated local enterprises
that will create jobs and career opportunities with family-sustaining
wages and fringe benefits and with (community & individual) upward mobility.
We must look to sectors of the local economy in which we can build enterprises
that will reverse the dollar drain from low-income communities and revitalize
community life." - Richard Saul
Main Street programs (check your state Department of Community
Affairs, the NJ program offers technical assistance in united down town
businesses), Consulting Paper Boat at http://www.paperboat.com
and Community Partners, Inc. at http://www.wraparoundsolutions.com/
might be able to provide technical assistance to develop these collaborations.
I am sorry, the first website is in English only, but the latter is
in both Spanish and English. These two both focus on social service
collaborations and strengths-based community organizing. The wrap around
approach, which is a community strength-based approach, is newly institutionalized
in New Jersey's (USA) Division of Child Behavioral Health Services.
Their approach currently focuses on collaborations for mental health,
yet the wrap around language is a step closer to realizing the potential
for social development, which includes economic realities into community
health. I would like to see grassroots economics as the next rung on
the ladder.
An agency or enterprise should have social, economic and
environmental capitol as their triple bottom line. This is one vision
statement of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE),
a network of grassroots local first independently owned businesses.
Also, an agency or community enterprise, or any organizing campaign,
should have in mind the health of the individual, the family, the community
and the larger globe. Collaborations are one way to make this happen.
An example of multi-layered collaborations is found in
the Cooperatives in the Mexican State of Hildago (Bowman, 2004), which
has two layers:
A. The 1st layer of organization is the individual
cooperative business, where every person has 1 vote
B. The 2nd layer organization: "The Integrator", a
Coalition of cooperative businesses, each cooperative has 1 vote. The
Integrator provides credit and training.
Approach your municipal Community Action Agency, the local
administers of federally funded programs, to partner for sponsorship
and shared grant writing. First do some preliminary research of why
your community might need an agency or project like the one you propose.
Within the Community Action Agency Act, Senate 909, these agencies are
mandated to "coordinate and establish linkages between governmental
and other social services programs to assure the effective delivery
of such services to low income individuals and to encourage the use
of entities in the private sector of the community and efforts to ameliorate
poverty in the community."
Paradigm (v)
We all want to live in a world without violence, without
war and without poverty. For this to happen, we need to reflect on ourselves
and on the world. We need to challenge the paradigms that feel second
nature to us, and we need to examine and analyze the paradigms of global
structures and current trends of development. The world is not a static
place. Empires come, empires go. I like change. I want to live in a
dynamic world. However, I want to see a world where each individual
can change with his or her growing potential, not a world where rulers
conquer, ruin, collapse and lead the way for another to conquer.
References
Bowman, B. (2004). Tierra, Libertad and Coops! In Hidalgo,
Mexico. Paper for the Workshop on AlterGlobalizations in San Miguel
de Allende, Mexico. http://www.globaljusticecenter.org/articles/hidalgo_coops.htm
Burch, H. (1996). Basic social policy & planning: Strategies
& practice methods. USA: Hawthorne Press Inc.
Cresson, D. (2004). Work First New Jersey: How successful
has it been in moving TANF recipients into the workforce & out of poverty?
April 27. Unpublished report for Monmouth University's SW 507-50 Social
Work Research, Professor Golam Mathbor
The Enterprise Foundation. (2003). Housing Project Management
and Contracts: Section 3 of the Housing and Community Development Act
of 1968. Retrieved on 8/26/04 from http://www.enterprisefoundation.org
Gonzalez, R. (2004). Social organization as a process
for change: Cooperatives of Yucatán and Campeche. A presentation from
Another World is Possible: Workshop for AlterGlobalizations. San Miguel
de Allende, Mexico. August 5-12. Retrieved from http://www.globaljusticecenter.org/papers/gonzales.htm
Midgley, J. (1997). Social welfare in global context.
Thousands Oaks: Sage Publications
Newman, S., Brazelton, T., Zigler, E., Sherman, L., Bratton,
W., Sanders, J., & Christeson, W. (2000). America's Child Care Crisis:
a crime prevention tragedy. Published by Fight Crime: Invest in kids.
Retrieved on 2/21/04 from http://www.fightcrime.org/
Saul, R. (2001). True welfare reform through capacity
building in low-income communities: Creating career opportunities through
sectoral development & building the structures that will provide necessary
post-employment support services & incentives to enable TANF families
to move into the economic mainstream. March. Office of Community Services,
Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human
Services. Washington DC. For a copy of this document, contact Richard
Saul at (202) 401-9341 or rsaul@acf.dhhs.gov
State Policy Documentation Project (SPDP). (2001). TANF
work activities and requirements. Received on 3/18/04 from http://www.spdp.org/tanf/work.htm
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