April 9, 2026 • 44 mins
The worker co-op has a rich tradition and can work a variety of ways. Join us as we dig into the nuts and bolts.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know. And it turns out that this is the
stuff you should know about worker cooperatives, but you might
be more familiar with as co ops, not coops. That's
why they put the hyphen in there, because it can
get pretty confusing.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
In fact, I went back when I titled this episode
for Jerry and added that hyphen because Jerry would say,
what is this think about coops?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yep, yep, And I'm sure Aaron Cooper's like, oh, but
don't get your hopes up, Aaron, We're not talking about you. Wait,
we just did it. Spinally happened. So Chuck, just let
me lay the scene here for a second. Okay, Because
co ops, especially for those of us in the United States,
(01:03):
they are like I can think of one, and that
is in Atlanta, and it is called Sevenanda, and it
is one of the few vegetarian grocery stores in the
entire country. That's my experience with a co op, right.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, Sevenonda legendary store.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
It is, and it's great. A great, great grocery store.
So they're kind of like this almost like fringe thing,
especially in the US, and you know basically everywhere they're
not really mainstream. But there was a time where there
are people who are like, this is the way to go,
this is how industry should develop. And it all just
like most things that have to do with labor and capital,
(01:41):
stemmed from the industrial revolution and it was a path
that people that we could have taken, and we so
took the capitalist route that it's we don't even question
the idea that people with money buy a mill and
all the equipment, and they hire you and put you
(02:01):
to work, and in return for your work, they give
you a wage and they manage things and they say
go do this, do that faster, stop doing that, and
do this instead. And again we just don't even question
it because it's so normal. But there's an alternative worker
cooperatives that it's just a different way of doing things,
(02:21):
and the idea that it could have been the way
things win is really surprising and interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah, well you forgot the last part of that little descriptor,
which is they get the money the profit from that
said business because they're the owners.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and we don't really question that,
although that's a little more easily questioned, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, but you know that pushed co ops now in
the United States to this fringe area where you might
have a you know, you kind of look at them
as or at least I do, as like these little
hippie operations, sure like Sevenanda, like this little vegetarian grocery
store that has been in little five Points since I mean,
(03:02):
it's got to be since the seventies, don't.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
You think it sure seems that way.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Mean some of the stuff on the shelves looks like
it's been there since the seventies.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
For sure. It's definitely got that well lived in feel
for sure.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, it's great, but that yeah, it's a fringe thing
for the United States. And I guess we could go
back in time a little bit and talk about where
these were this idea was.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Sort of born. And I know we've talked about Owenism before,
haven't we.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I don't know if we've talked about Owenism, but we've
definitely talked about the Chartists. But I mean, we've talked
about so many utopian societies from the nineteenth century who
can keep track.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, I guess you're right, or maybe I'm thinking of
I don't know, one of those other ones. But yeah,
this was a utopian sort of philosophy. Owenism named after
a guy named Owen, Robert Owen. He was a Welsh
mill owner and he had this vision that you were
kind of talking about, like, hey, it's it's early on,
(04:01):
it's in eighteen twenty five, and there's a way forward
that could be great for everyone. He tried this out
in New Harmony, Indiana, like I said, in eighteen twenty five,
for the first time.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, it didn't really live very long. New Harmony, Indiana
is still there. It's not a utopian society any long ago,
though it looks like a nice town based on its website.
But his whole idea was like what happens if everybody
kind of takes care of everybody else in this again mill.
I think he was a mill owner to where like
(04:35):
your children are schooled and fed, and you have opportunities
for education outside of your work, and he found that
productivity goes through the roof in those situations. So that
was it wasn't like this is the first worker cooperative. Yeah,
he helped lay the groundwork for this, and he inspired
a lot of other people through Owenism, both in the
(04:57):
United States and the UK.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, sure, sure. I don't know if they were using
the S word back then.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I don't know how much we're going to use the
S word, but it's impossible to, I think, not use
the word socialism at some point when talking about at
least some of these early ideas, because they were very
much sort of socialist ideas of let's take like you said,
let's take care of everyone, let's have all boats rise
and everyone chip in, sort of in a hippie commune
(05:25):
kind of way.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Initially, Yeah, and I was I was thinking about that.
I read something that was basically like, this is socialism
in its purest form. It's not like a planned central
government or planned society. It's more just like, hey, let's
all take care of each other, let's all contribute, let's
all benefit. That's about the extent of it. And I
was thinking about socialism too, the way that you just
(05:48):
basically danced around it like we do in the United
States here. If you're trying to explain something to somebody
that has like socialist tinge to hers, socialist in nature.
Look you can't, yeah, exactly, like you can't use that word.
And it occurred to me that like it's just basically approached,
like it's a brand. You got socialism, you got capitalism, right,
(06:09):
and when you if you buy into socialism, it's like
you're buying a kit, and here's your socialist society, right, Like,
like you can't just kind of pick and choose what
makes sense, and you don't have to go all socialism.
You don't have to go all capitalism. You can take
the best of everything and put it together if you
want to.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, here's your socialist get here's here's mediocre everything. Just
open it up and enjoy your mediocre life with mediocre things,
because nothing is awesome because capitalists aren't in charge of
making things perfect or great. Right, all right, So we
talked briefly about Robert Owen with this short lived sort
(06:48):
of hippie commune and New Harmony, and you mentioned that
that inspired people and at least uh, you know, overseas
and you know in England and here in America, but
their real cooperative. A lot of people talk about the
Rochdale Pioneers, which is near Manchester, Roachdale is, and they
(07:08):
were flannel makers.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
They wove flannel.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
It was a big seed of flannel manufacturing for like
hundreds of years. And they started staging the workers there,
started staging strikes kind of when industrialization hit, because you
mentioned that the beginnings of co ops were kind of
lockstep with the beginnings of the industrial revolution.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yes, for sure, because there was this idea that like, okay,
you like, you don't have to submit yourself to wage labor.
Your work is valuable. You should own your own work
and lease it out as you see fit. That was
kind of the way that they were thinking. And so
the weavers ended up forming I think sixty of them
got together and formed the Rochdale Friendly Cooperative Society. And
(07:55):
I'm sure, just based on experience, we're mispronouncing. It's probably
like Rideau right in the UK, but it's spelled Rochdal. Yeah.
And it was a retail store, right. It was basically
you could get flour and butter and all this stuff.
And this is where the basis of cooperatives come from.
This is the first co op store that existed in
(08:18):
the world. And the whole idea was you got all
these people who make this stuff coming together selling it,
dividing the fruits of their labor up evenly, and then
taking the profits and like reinvesting it and making this
business better. But rather than one rich person, you have
a bunch of non rich people who can conceivably come
(08:38):
up with the same amount of money as a rich person.
And if you do that, all of a sudden, you
own the factory and it's just divided equally among all
the people who put in for it and are working
for it. That's where that's the basis of all co ops.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, this one, the Friendly Cooperative Society didn't last long.
That store was just a couple of years. I think
it was eighteen thirty when it opened. And about fourteen
years later they got together and they tried it again.
There were some people from that original society. They got
together with other people who were you know, unemployed or
(09:14):
facing poverty or hungry. So some of those owenites and
they said, hey, let's let's give this another go. And
this time it was called the Ruschdale Society of Equitable Pioneers.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
And they had to And you'll see that.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
This is kind of a it's not always because all
co ops, you know, operate in their own way, but
they had to pay to be a part of it,
so everybody chips in a little bit of money. In
this case for the Society of Equable Pioneers, it was
just one pound each. And they got it going and said, hey,
we're going to do the kind of the same thing.
(09:48):
We're going to have like a kind of like a
general store basically, and we'll use the profits from that
to build housing for people who are members of the
co op, and we can buy up some land and
if you're not, if you are a co op member
and you're not working, you could like farm there and
grow crops for everybody.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And it was very much in that Owenite model.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, so they went from just being a co op
store to trying to get a whole utopian community formed,
and again that didn't go very far. I don't know
that there is any utopian community that's still around today.
They don't seem to last very long. Maybe there's no
such thing as utopia. Yeah, but that store model became
(10:30):
like just what all co ops were based on after that,
and in fact, the Rochdale Pioneers Cooperative store mushroomed into
what's now called today the Cooperative Group, which is a
multi billion pound operation. A bunch of different co ops
and a bunch of different sectors that are all part
(10:53):
of this larger co op. The Cooperative Group in the
UK that it grew from the Rochdale Pioneers, not like
inspired from it. I believe it actually grew from that, actually.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I think so, yeah group, Yeah, yeah, And you know,
you'll see that as a common thing too. Where the
largest co ops in the world, and we'll talk about
some later on in Spain and India are groups of
co ops that have formed larger co ops because the
whole idea is that you know, there's a lot more
you can get done with a lot more people, obviously.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, or a lot more companies. Like the different companies
can stand in for different individual workers, you know, I
think it's neat.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
So in the United States, it was really post Civil
War when things started to boom, and in particular Black
Americans after the Civil War were the ones who kind
of got this idea going because they were obviously, you know,
post Civil War, having a hard time with wide owned
businesses being treated poorly obviously, and they're like, well, why
(11:51):
don't we get our own thing going? And one of
the places that one of the earlier ones started in
Baltimore when black trade unionists, they were led by a
guy named Isaac Myers, founded what was called the Colored
Calkers Trade Union Society.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah. Calkers were the people who worked in shipyards that
waterproof the ships, make sure they didn't leak, right, And
it was traditionally a black dominated profession, but black people
were starting to get edged out in shipyards. So this
Colored Calkers Trade Union Society just decided to buy a
shipyard themselves so that they could employ black calkers, and
(12:29):
they did exactly that. They also bought railways and just
started founding this huge, essentially cooperative empire of black workers
and artisans. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I think they're also the ones who coined the contractors
term calk and paint will make it what it ain't.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I've not heard that one.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Have you never heard that?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
No? Did you make it up?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh? No, no, No, that's really Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
There's two contractor terms that basically mean you're getting kind
of shoddy work, right, calkin pain, I'll make it what
it ain't. And my favorite one, which is I can't
see it from my house.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh that's an app for that one.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
That one really stings.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, it especially when they're talking about your work.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well at any rate, Yes, the Caukers did come up
with that. I believe that's right. So your initial statement, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Things got going on a larger scale after that when
farmers started banding together, and in this case, post Civil War,
black farmers were excluded from the Southern Farmers Alliance and
they formed the Colored Farmers National Alliance and Cooperative Society,
which had a million members or more by eighteen ninety one.
And this wasn't sort of a strict, you know, definition
(13:46):
of a co op. It was more like, hey, we're
all farmers, so let's all sort of just cooperate with
one another and share information and you know, lift each
other up.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah. And because they were dealing with the Jim Crow South,
post Civil War South and all of that, they were
basically faced with an option like just submit yourself to
like really bad treatment, or figure out how to come together.
You don't have to know about co ops throughout history
to come up with your own co op. It's actually
like a general idea that any group would stumble upon,
(14:21):
typically when they're being mistreated or when they don't have
the resources to improve their lives. They realize like, well,
wait a minute, we're in the same boat. Let's just
put our resources together and improve our lives that way together.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, and this was like, this is spreading as a
philosophy more so than like all these like concrete examples
of like literal co ops that would come a little
bit later. But one of those other sort of ideas
that was spreading mixed in with this was something called
labor republicanism, and that was just you know, aligning with
this sort of the idea that hey, you know, if
(14:56):
you want real freedom, then you need to be able
to control your work and just be a wage laborer.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Right, You own that work, That's what I was talking
about earlier. You own that work, you lease it out
as you see fit. You're not submitting yourself to wage slavery. Like,
that's what that's all about. Apparently there's a debate going
on still today between labor republicanism and just universal basic income,
which one is actually the way to actual freedom from
being dominated by some boss.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
It's also tied into the rise of unions and unionism
for sure, don't you think.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, there's the Knights of Labor, which was basically the
first massive union in the United States that came close
to a million members by the eighteen eighties. Their whole
thing was essentially setting up worker cooperatives, like creating an
economy in the United States based around co ops, collectives,
(15:53):
things like labor republicanism. That's exactly what they were about.
And they were pretty successful to an extent. I think
we can see today that they weren't actually successful at all,
and instead they were supplanted by a much more business
friendly union, the American Federation of Labor, which became even
more massive.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, and that was less like hey, let's you know,
get rid of these bosses and make a co op,
and it was like, let's try and find a way
to work with them, and you know, and true union
style like get fair pay and all that kind of stuff,
which is great, but just sort of strayed from that
co op idea a little bit more. And I think
(16:34):
in eighteen ninety five was when finally the International Cooperative
Alliance was formed.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Sure, and that was you know.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
These are this is like a worldwide organization, obviously international.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Sure, what if they were just based in Topeka with
none but they're shooting for the sky.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, that'd be fun.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
You want to take a break, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
We'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit
sort of how these things work right after this.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
All right, we're back to talk.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Who helped this is Libby, I think, and she called
this section nuts and bolts because that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
These are all sort of listed under the Roachdale Principles
of Cooperation, which the ICA, the International Cooperative Alliance, adopted
in nineteen ninety five. And it's a series of bullet
points basically of generally how co ops can work. But
like I said, they're all they all have their own nuances.
(17:51):
But the first one is probably true across all cases.
You have a membership that is voluntary and anyone can
join as long as they fit the bill, like you
can't discriminate.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah, there are some slight differences among co ops that
as these bullet points start to spread out, that one
seems to be like that's the that's a common universality,
you know. Yeah, there's also another one. They need to
be run democratically with one vote per member.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
There's another way to do it that some co ops
choose where the more shares you have, the more votes
you have, so one share equals one vote rather than
one worker equals one vote. So one worker can amass
ten shares and they'll have ten votes opposed to the
other workers who just have one share each for sure.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And that capital that you have is also controlled democratically
and should serve the organization's goals and not just you know,
the CEO or whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Right, Like, if you're if your honeymakers, you wouldn't want
to use your profits to invest in like an up
and coming b extermination out of it? It makes sense. Yeah,
you also want to be autonomous. I love this one too,
Like it doesn't matter who you sign a contract with,
whether it's a government contractor with another business, a corporate
(19:11):
vulture who cares, there's nothing in that contract that can
basically undermine any of this. The worker's democratic voice, the
sharing of profits, being open to all, nothing can undermine that.
And I love that one because they're autonomous. They're like,
we don't need you.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Another thing that you have to do is you got
to train up your folks, got to coach them up
so they can all be contributors. And then you know,
another part of that is just letting people know what's
going on that you're you're not some weird fringe group.
But educate the people on what sort of the benefits
of cooperative.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Work, right, and then they're like all co ops smell
like this. Yeah, and then you want to work with
other cooperatives. That's a big one. I mean supporting one
another because it even in societies where they really support
co ops there they still have the decks stacked against them.
(20:10):
So the more they can rely on other co ops
on each other, the better off each co op is.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Going to be you know, yeah for sure. And they
always give back to the community.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
It seems like, you know, that's part of getting the
word out is doing like good work in the community.
And so they so people see like, oh, this is
that co op that's doing you know, the park cleanup
or you know, any anything sort of like that.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And here's the deal.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
You know, we said, there's a lot of different ways
you can structure these not you know, if you see
there's a co op, it doesn't mean every single person
that's working there that day is a member owner because
a lot of times you have to kind of prove
you're in it for the long haul, like there's a
probationary period. Sometimes you have to buy into it financially,
but not always. And also sometimes you either you're either
(20:58):
buying in financially and or being voted in by existing members.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yes, by Biff, that's right.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
And sort of the final thing is how it works
the structure at the top, because you know, even though
it's a co op, you still need to have kind
of people near the top in charge of the higher
you know, upper management sort of decisions, especially if they're
you know, larger co ops, because you know, you can
have some smaller co ops that are a little more
like you know, probably like Sevenonda, where you have workers
(21:29):
that are voting directly on just about everything that.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Happens with a co op.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
But the bigger you get, the more you might see
a structure where those workers aren't voting on everything directly,
but they're electing some of their own to sort of
act as the executive branch or maybe who like you know,
go out and hire a leadership staff or form a
board or something like that. But they're voting on the
people that do that. And you know, ideally, and I
(21:56):
think usually in most cases they're they're bringing in the
people that are going to want to serve the co op. Well,
it's not like all of a sudden they're like, oh no,
we got this board in there that's now taking over
and changing it to a more capitalist structure.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Right, We're going to bring in a young hot shot
fresh out of a private equity firm to take over.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Not a good idea.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
And again it's like some co ops face easier goes
of it, and depending on the country you're in, and
depending even on the state, it can be easier than others.
If you're in the Pacific Northwest, you can turn to
the Northwest Cooperative Development Center and Cooperative Fund of the Northeast.
It just keeps going and they'll essentially tell you how
(22:36):
to convert your business into a co op, which you
can do if you have an existing business, how to
start a co op from scratch, all the ins and outs,
that kind of thing. And again, this is highly necessary
to have somebody who has expertise and understanding on how
to navigate co op operations in the United States or
in other countries too.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Co op ops.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yeah, so you know, there are definitely some efforts in
the United States to assist people that have these ideas,
it's just not as robust as like in other countries.
And speaking of other countries, I know we talked about
Spain early on, and that is the home of the
largest and most prominent co op in the world, basically,
which is the I'm gonna say Mandragon.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
That's what I would say too, not.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
The Mandragon, even though that's way cooler.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
So it is, and that's how I want to put
it too.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, but the Mandragon Corporation is a collective. Again, this
is one of those it's a bunch of co ops
that got together to make a larger co op in
the Basque region of Spain. And it's named for the
town of Mandragon.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yes, And it was founded by Jose Maria Rismonda Rieta.
That is quite a name, nice, believe me. I know
he is a priest or. He was a priest who
was actually started out as a journalist writing against the
fascists against the Franco regime in the Spanish Civil War
(24:02):
in the thirties. After the war, he became a priest
and he was assigned to the town of mandra Gone
in nineteen forty one and he said, hey, mandra Gone,
we are going to go capital s word all the
way in this town.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, he you know, doing good stuff, like hey, let's
create a medical clinic, let's get some housing going for
these people. What about technical schools in education to like
lift everybody up. And in nineteen fifty six, there were
five workers who had been part of this, you know,
(24:38):
planned with him, and they created a cooperative company to
make kerosene heaters. That's how they got their start, the
biggest one in the world. Started out making kerosene heaters initially.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, for sure, and then it just started to grow
from there. They created their own pension and healthcare systems. Essentially,
every time the town faced a problem, they needed something
like funding for a new co op and they couldn't
get it from the outside world. They just did it themselves.
So each new problem, each new obstacle, saw a co
(25:11):
op founded to address it, and it just it just
kept growing and growing from there, and eventually it became
the Mandragon Corporation, which is enormous. It employs something like
eighty thousand people today and it's made up of again,
like you said, ninety five different co ops coming together
as a co op themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, and how it works for them.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
They are one of the ones that has one of
those probationary periods before you can become a member. And
once you've done that, you are a shareholder. You are
a worker and a shareholder in that company, and you're
voting on you know, all the stuff it takes to
run a corporation, business strategies, what kind of money people make.
Everyone gets an equal vote. They do have a governing council,
(25:57):
and that one because you know, it's a big, unwheeled
so they need they need sort of a higher up council.
There's a managing director and they sort of act as
like a CEO. But this is super awesome and kind
of one of the keys is the highest paid person there.
They have like a wage cap basically for what you
(26:18):
would call a CEO yea, and the highest paid wage
earner can be paid no more than six times the
salary of the lowest paid. If you look at a
regular capitalist American corporation, that number is about three hundred
and fifty to one rather than six to one.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, it's pretty impressive. They also share the co ops
profits the member owners, and they have to make difficult choices.
This is something that co ops are are good at
like this. This is why co ops are pro worker. Like.
If there's a hard time, an economic downturn or something
like that and sales are down, profits are down, most
(26:56):
capitalist companies just lay people off. They ramp up a
lot of works in like fat times, and then they
just cut them in lean times. Co Ops don't tend
to do that. Instead, they tend to all agree to
take a pay cut to spread the pain around so
that no one person has to take the brunt of it,
or no one group of people have to take the
(27:17):
brunt of it and lose their job.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
And they you know, they've had to change things a
little bit over the years. That ratio I think that
I said with six to one, that's an increase. It
used to be a three to one ratio of the
highest paid to the lowest paid worker. So they've had
to roll with the times a little bit. But six
to one is still way different than three hundred and
fifty to one for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So this is the far and away the largest. There's
the second largest is nothing to sneeze at either the
or A lungo labor contract Cooperative Society founded in Kerala, India,
has about eighteen thousand employees and it was founded back
in nineteen twenty five while the Brits were still ruling
India as a colony, and some of the workers from
(28:04):
the lower casts I think sixteen of them got together
to pool their money and said, hey, we're going to
start repairing roads. Government give us some contracts, and that's
where the whole thing started.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
The first Prime Minister of India, Nehru was was basically
very much into the idea of these workers co ops
and farmers co ops, and you know, did a lot
to encourage and incentivize these popping up over there. I
think there are a ton of Indian cooperatives and this
is just the biggest one at like eighteen thousand employees.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Right, Yeah, Yeah. Nehru also encouraged people to rethink their jackets.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Oh man, those are good looking. I can't get away
with those, but those are cool.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Okay. So that's India. I guess that's kind of second
to Spain, like we said, at least as far as
the largest co ops go. But Italy I would say,
is possibly the country that supports co ops the most.
On a societal level.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
It seems like there's that.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
S word streak still running through Italy to a large degree.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Sure. Yeah, yeah, So the Italian government gives financial incentives
to start and run a co op. There's laws that
say if you don't run a co op, you have
to give up one of your kids. They're really pro
co op. They also this is another thing too that
some co ops come out of, where a company will
(29:35):
be failing and the owners will be like, well that's
it for me, I'm ruined, and the employees will be like, well,
we still have some money that we can put together.
Let us buy the company from you, and the owner
will sell the company to the employees. And the government
of Italy helps facilitate this kind of thing to make
it more likely. And that makes so much more sense
than just letting a company fail. Let the workers buy
(29:58):
it if they want to and run as a co op.
Let them all over the company.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah, that's a big thing that happened in Argentina, and
I sort of remember this in the early two thousands
when Argentina was having such a rough time. A lot
of workers were laid off in the industrial sector and
they were did what you were just talking about. They
were like, well, hey, this factory is going out of business,
so let's as employees get together and buy these things.
(30:22):
And it became known as the National Movement of Recovered
Companies and they're about four hundred of these still going strong.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah. What's cool about the Argentinian model too, is I
think they actually took over these companies. They were all
laid off and they're like, oh yeah, watch this. I
think that's pretty neat. Yeah. Mexico is well known for
fishing cooperatives. This happens around the world, but Mexico has
some pretty strong ones. And one of the cool things
(30:49):
is that there's often lax enforcement of things like sustainability
and catch quotas among fishermen in Mexico. So these co
ops tend to support sustainability themselves by essentially paying attention
to one another and making sure everybody's acting fairly. Sustainability
(31:10):
just grows out of that.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
So you want to take another break.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Oh yeah, I didn't see that coming.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
All right, we'll come back right after this, and Josh,
we'll speak first, because that's how we do things.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
So Chuck, it's probably not a surprise, as we've seen
compared to other countries, the United States is not exactly
up to speed. As far as co ops are concerned,
there's potentially seven to ten thousand Americans out of what
three hundred and sixty somethingter million who are employees and
co ops in the United States. That's not a very
(32:04):
significant number, but there are the people who are employed
there are happier than you will ever be in your
entire life. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Probably.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
So.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
The largest one in the United States is the Cooperative
Home Care Associates started in the Bronx in nineteen eighty
five when twelve home health aids came together and said, hey,
there's got to be a better way, and they started
recruiting people and they've got Wow. Out of that seven
to ten thousand, two thousand of them work for the UHCA.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, and then they also typically hire women of color
and immigrants, usually low income, and train them to be
home health aids. And then eventually, with a one thousand
dollars payment, you can buy in and become a worker
member owner. And they tend to have people have compared
this model to actually this company to other home health
(32:59):
aid companies, and the workers tend to have greater job satisfaction.
They trust management more because they're talking about themselves in
a lot of cases, but even the workers who aren't
member owners tend to have a higher trust in management.
And this is where people are like, I don't get it,
Like why would you do this? Because what you're doing
(33:20):
is creating a social good, Like, it's not just about
maximizing profits. And I believe Cooperative Home Care Associates is
a for profit company, and co ops can be for profit.
They don't have to be a profit. But they're proving
that you can still promote a social good. You can
still make society a better place and still turn a profit.
(33:40):
It's just not you know, you're not going to ever
set the stock market on fire. That's not the point.
The point is more to create the social good, and
that's one of the things that the Cooperative Home Care
Associates does.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yeah, for sure, there are some other cool examples here
I'm going to jump to. I know you know where
I'm going because Olivia included the podcast company Maximum Fun.
Longtime supporters of stuff you should know. Maximum Fun was
had a single sole owner in Jesse Thorn. Yeah, he
(34:15):
was mogul very early on. He's the guy that set
up Mark Marin initially in his garage with equipment and
was like, here's how you do podcasting. So Jesse's a
pioneer in the business itself. Obviously does Judge John Hodgman
with Our Pal and Jordan Jesse go and Bullseye with
Jesse Thorn a great interview show, but Maximum Fun was his.
(34:37):
He started it as a very sort of forward thinking
young guy. She's I don't even know how many years ago.
It had to be twenty ish years ago at this point.
And three years ago Jesse was like, you know what,
I don't want to run the show anymore, and I
think Maximum Fun could transition to a co op. We've
(34:59):
got these great employees who are heavily invested, and why
not see if they'll go all in. And they did,
and Maximum Fund became a worker own co op.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, which is pretty cool. I mean even before that
he had basically transferred ownership of the individual shows to
the show creators and then so it was a I
guess kind of an easy, easyish leap into a co
op from there. So hats off Jesse Thorn and all
the peeps at Max Fun.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
If you happened to be up in Maine along the
coast and you're island hopper. I could not find exactly
what islands, but there is a trio of stores, the Galley,
VNS Variety and Burnt Cove Market, and all three of
them are worker owned and operated. And there it was
(35:49):
one of those situations where all three stores were being
sold and the owners couldn't find any buyers, and then
workers were like, well buy it. So now seventy people
off the coast of Maine are part of the Island
Employee Cooperative, which is again pretty cool totally.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I don't think Maine has many islands, so I'm surprised
you didn't find out what the deal was.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
I saw that the thing was headquartered and I think Stonington, Maine,
but I didn't see what island that was on, and
who knows could be the mainland for all I know,
I'm not a up up northeaster and up easter.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
A manor Yeah, across the pond, you're from away, I
think that is what they say.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, I know, I cannot tell you how much murder,
she wrote, I've seen in my life, and I still
was that picked up the lingo. Oh yeah, cabin cokain.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
I never, as you know, never saw a single episode
of murder. She wrote very sad about that.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
I didn't know that, and I see you differently now.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I need to I need to check it out. I
know it's a classic.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
By way, I think my delivery might have been so
dry that we're going to get Germany as landlocked emails.
I know there are thousands of islands off of Maine,
by the way.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Oh, okay, you got me, You fooled me, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
We should talk just at least mention aesops or employee
stock ownership plans.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, this isn't the same as a.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Co op because you're you're generally not getting like a
vote on things and how things run. But it's employees
owning the business. And our beloved Public's supermarket chain is
easily the largest employee owned company in the United States.
I think they owned about employees of Public's owned about
eighty percent of the company, which is a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, it's like they have stock, but rather than being
publicly traded, you have to be in a Public's employee
to buy and own public stock, and pretty cool. A
lot of people retire pretty well to do because of
the public stock that they've accrued over their career and
it is. It's great for sure.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
ACE Hardware that's another kind of cool, and that's you know,
they're independent retailers, and I think most people know that
because your local ACE Hardware is is owned and operated
by somebody who lives there, which is kind of a
cool model.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Yeah. Like, try buying something at one ACE and then
taking it back at the other ACE. You're going to
be sorely disappointed, my friend? Is that true? Oh? Yeah? They? Oh,
I didn't know that I bought something. I should say.
You and me bought something at an ACE and I
took it to the other ACE owned by the same company,
and because we bought it online, they could not they
(38:22):
could not return it.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Oh interesting, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Okay, yeah, be careful. You have to go back to
the same ACE. It says it like on the sign. Yeah.
ACE is the place and the only place.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
The helpful hardware folks.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Isn't that? Yeah? It is?
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Should we end on a few pros and cons?
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Oh, I just real quick want to shout out a
couple of co ops that are nonprofits. Subvert is an
alternative to band camp. It's musician owned and then fair,
which I think is a clever use of the term.
It's fare. They're an alternative to like Uber and Lyft,
and they're co ops. Oh okay, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah. I mean that's I got to check out and
see affairs in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Okay, okay, I don't use Uber.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
I use Lyft, but I've heard they're bad now too,
So it's I just don't even know who to get
rides from when I've had too much to drink anymore.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. I used to do Lyft because supposedly they treated
their people better. And I was talking to a lift
driver once He's like, no, Lyft is terrible. Now Uber's
nice to their drivers, and it's like, wow, who can
keep up with this? So I guess, yeah, just take
fair all.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Right, I'm gonna check that out.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Pros and cons now, yes, all right, well we've mentioned
some of these along the way. But one pro is,
you know one we touched on, which was that ratio
between the highest paid worker and the lowest paid worker.
They're definitely you know, the co ops. You're not going
to see things just so out of whack in terms
(39:52):
of wage earning.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
No, that's huge. Another one that's a pro in favor
of co ops, not all. All of them are pros
and favor of co ops. There are some cons too,
Like you said, pros and cons. But if you work
for a co op the chances of you getting laid
off are pretty low, which you would think like, oh, okay, well,
does our co ops just run and work as staffed
(40:16):
by lazy people. Turns out no, because as an owner,
a part owner of this co op, of this company
that you're working for, you are a manager. So if
everybody's a manager, they feel emboldened and empowered to police
other workers. Everybody's just kind of keeping one another honest
because they all have such a stake in this that
(40:38):
co op workers tend to actually be more productive and
happier and less slack than workers who are essentially just
wage labor.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yeah, or what do they call it? Quiet quitting?
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Oh I hadn't heard that, but that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Quiet quitting is when you're like phoning it in and
just doing the bare minimum to not get fired.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, which is yeah, no good. Everybody.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
One con is or I guess you would say it's
a pro for a non co op is they tend
to be able to move a little quicker and add
quicker on stuff if there's a crisis or if there's
anything that needs like really fast attention. They don't have
to sweat, you know, taking boats and asking everyone and
debating what they think. So that can definitely sort of
slow down in times of crisis if you're in a
(41:27):
co op.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Yes, but that said, you can make quick decisions and
be more agile as a traditional capitalist company, but you
can also make the wrong decision and go down the
strong road. So with a co op, because it's moving slower,
it's not trying to be on the fortune five hundred
or anything like that, they can take their time a
(41:48):
little more, and so they actually tend to outlast a
lot of other companies I guess compared to other startups,
co ops tend to last beyond the first five years, say,
against a tech startup or something like that, because you
can take your time making decisions enough to be like
now now now you know.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah for sure, and yeah, just job satisfaction.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
And we talked about this a few times, but overall
people that work for co ops tend to report much
happier lives basically when it turned in terms of their jobs.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
That's right, I guess that's it for co ops, Chuck,
I think so well. We both agreed that that's it
for co ops, which means it's time for listener.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, there's a follow up on the West Kowloon Walled
City episode, which I thoroughly enjoyed personally.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Hey, guys, just listen to The episode reminded me of
the Ponta I guess po and t or Ponti City
Tower and Johannesburg. Ponti City was completed in nineteen seventy
five and originally intended to be a luxury development for
the city's rich white folks. However, it quickly descended into
decay for various reasons, and is widely regarded as becoming
(43:07):
the world's first quote vertical slum end quote By the
late eighties, it said that at its worst, the vast
central core of the building was filled with trash, including
human remains, all the way.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Up to the fifth or sixth floor.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
When I was visiting friends in Johannesburg back in twenty thirteen,
I did a tour of the tower with one of
the residents. It's a truly astonishing building with a super
interesting story of grandeur and rapid descent into chaos and
looks to be coming back again. Ponti has been used
for sets of several sci fi films. Neil Blombcamp is
a big fan and was also the inspiration for the
tower setting of the questionable twenty twelve Dread reboot.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Thanks for the great stuff. That is from Bobby.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Bobby sent in a picture from the interior of the
City Tower and it is indeed super sci fi and
interesting looking.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
I got to check that out, man, I hadn't heard
of that at all. That was Bobby, Yeah, Bobby. Well,
thanks a lot, Bobby. That was a great email. We
appreciate it. And if you want to be like Bobby
and tell us about something that we didn't know about,
we're always welcoming those. You can send it off to
Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know. And it turns out that this is the
stuff you should know about worker cooperatives, but you might
be more familiar with as co ops, not coops. That's
why they put the hyphen in there, because it can
get pretty confusing.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
In fact, I went back when I titled this episode
for Jerry and added that hyphen because Jerry would say,
what is this think about coops?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yep, yep, And I'm sure Aaron Cooper's like, oh, but
don't get your hopes up, Aaron, We're not talking about you. Wait,
we just did it. Spinally happened. So Chuck, just let
me lay the scene here for a second. Okay, Because
co ops, especially for those of us in the United States,
(01:03):
they are like I can think of one, and that
is in Atlanta, and it is called Sevenanda, and it
is one of the few vegetarian grocery stores in the
entire country. That's my experience with a co op, right.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, Sevenonda legendary store.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
It is, and it's great. A great, great grocery store.
So they're kind of like this almost like fringe thing,
especially in the US, and you know basically everywhere they're
not really mainstream. But there was a time where there
are people who are like, this is the way to go,
this is how industry should develop. And it all just
like most things that have to do with labor and capital,
(01:41):
stemmed from the industrial revolution and it was a path
that people that we could have taken, and we so
took the capitalist route that it's we don't even question
the idea that people with money buy a mill and
all the equipment, and they hire you and put you
(02:01):
to work, and in return for your work, they give
you a wage and they manage things and they say
go do this, do that faster, stop doing that, and
do this instead. And again we just don't even question
it because it's so normal. But there's an alternative worker
cooperatives that it's just a different way of doing things,
(02:21):
and the idea that it could have been the way
things win is really surprising and interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah, well you forgot the last part of that little descriptor,
which is they get the money the profit from that
said business because they're the owners.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, and we don't really question that,
although that's a little more easily questioned, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, but you know that pushed co ops now in
the United States to this fringe area where you might
have a you know, you kind of look at them
as or at least I do, as like these little
hippie operations, sure like Sevenanda, like this little vegetarian grocery
store that has been in little five Points since I mean,
(03:02):
it's got to be since the seventies, don't.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
You think it sure seems that way.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes, yeah, I.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Mean some of the stuff on the shelves looks like
it's been there since the seventies.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
For sure. It's definitely got that well lived in feel
for sure.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, it's great, but that yeah, it's a fringe thing
for the United States. And I guess we could go
back in time a little bit and talk about where
these were this idea was.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Sort of born. And I know we've talked about Owenism before,
haven't we.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I don't know if we've talked about Owenism, but we've
definitely talked about the Chartists. But I mean, we've talked
about so many utopian societies from the nineteenth century who
can keep track.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, I guess you're right, or maybe I'm thinking of
I don't know, one of those other ones. But yeah,
this was a utopian sort of philosophy. Owenism named after
a guy named Owen, Robert Owen. He was a Welsh
mill owner and he had this vision that you were
kind of talking about, like, hey, it's it's early on,
(04:01):
it's in eighteen twenty five, and there's a way forward
that could be great for everyone. He tried this out
in New Harmony, Indiana, like I said, in eighteen twenty five,
for the first time.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, it didn't really live very long. New Harmony, Indiana
is still there. It's not a utopian society any long ago,
though it looks like a nice town based on its website.
But his whole idea was like what happens if everybody
kind of takes care of everybody else in this again mill.
I think he was a mill owner to where like
(04:35):
your children are schooled and fed, and you have opportunities
for education outside of your work, and he found that
productivity goes through the roof in those situations. So that
was it wasn't like this is the first worker cooperative. Yeah,
he helped lay the groundwork for this, and he inspired
a lot of other people through Owenism, both in the
(04:57):
United States and the UK.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Yeah, sure, sure. I don't know if they were using
the S word back then.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
I don't know how much we're going to use the
S word, but it's impossible to, I think, not use
the word socialism at some point when talking about at
least some of these early ideas, because they were very
much sort of socialist ideas of let's take like you said,
let's take care of everyone, let's have all boats rise
and everyone chip in, sort of in a hippie commune
(05:25):
kind of way.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Initially, Yeah, and I was I was thinking about that.
I read something that was basically like, this is socialism
in its purest form. It's not like a planned central
government or planned society. It's more just like, hey, let's
all take care of each other, let's all contribute, let's
all benefit. That's about the extent of it. And I
was thinking about socialism too, the way that you just
(05:48):
basically danced around it like we do in the United
States here. If you're trying to explain something to somebody
that has like socialist tinge to hers, socialist in nature.
Look you can't, yeah, exactly, like you can't use that word.
And it occurred to me that like it's just basically approached,
like it's a brand. You got socialism, you got capitalism, right,
(06:09):
and when you if you buy into socialism, it's like
you're buying a kit, and here's your socialist society, right, Like,
like you can't just kind of pick and choose what
makes sense, and you don't have to go all socialism.
You don't have to go all capitalism. You can take
the best of everything and put it together if you
want to.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, here's your socialist get here's here's mediocre everything. Just
open it up and enjoy your mediocre life with mediocre things,
because nothing is awesome because capitalists aren't in charge of
making things perfect or great. Right, all right, So we
talked briefly about Robert Owen with this short lived sort
(06:48):
of hippie commune and New Harmony, and you mentioned that
that inspired people and at least uh, you know, overseas
and you know in England and here in America, but
their real cooperative. A lot of people talk about the
Rochdale Pioneers, which is near Manchester, Roachdale is, and they
(07:08):
were flannel makers.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
They wove flannel.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
It was a big seed of flannel manufacturing for like
hundreds of years. And they started staging the workers there,
started staging strikes kind of when industrialization hit, because you
mentioned that the beginnings of co ops were kind of
lockstep with the beginnings of the industrial revolution.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Yes, for sure, because there was this idea that like, okay,
you like, you don't have to submit yourself to wage labor.
Your work is valuable. You should own your own work
and lease it out as you see fit. That was
kind of the way that they were thinking. And so
the weavers ended up forming I think sixty of them
got together and formed the Rochdale Friendly Cooperative Society. And
(07:55):
I'm sure, just based on experience, we're mispronouncing. It's probably
like Rideau right in the UK, but it's spelled Rochdal. Yeah.
And it was a retail store, right. It was basically
you could get flour and butter and all this stuff.
And this is where the basis of cooperatives come from.
This is the first co op store that existed in
(08:18):
the world. And the whole idea was you got all
these people who make this stuff coming together selling it,
dividing the fruits of their labor up evenly, and then
taking the profits and like reinvesting it and making this
business better. But rather than one rich person, you have
a bunch of non rich people who can conceivably come
(08:38):
up with the same amount of money as a rich person.
And if you do that, all of a sudden, you
own the factory and it's just divided equally among all
the people who put in for it and are working
for it. That's where that's the basis of all co ops.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, this one, the Friendly Cooperative Society didn't last long.
That store was just a couple of years. I think
it was eighteen thirty when it opened. And about fourteen
years later they got together and they tried it again.
There were some people from that original society. They got
together with other people who were you know, unemployed or
(09:14):
facing poverty or hungry. So some of those owenites and
they said, hey, let's let's give this another go. And
this time it was called the Ruschdale Society of Equitable Pioneers.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
And they had to And you'll see that.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
This is kind of a it's not always because all
co ops, you know, operate in their own way, but
they had to pay to be a part of it,
so everybody chips in a little bit of money. In
this case for the Society of Equable Pioneers, it was
just one pound each. And they got it going and said, hey,
we're going to do the kind of the same thing.
(09:48):
We're going to have like a kind of like a
general store basically, and we'll use the profits from that
to build housing for people who are members of the
co op, and we can buy up some land and
if you're not, if you are a co op member
and you're not working, you could like farm there and
grow crops for everybody.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
And it was very much in that Owenite model.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, so they went from just being a co op
store to trying to get a whole utopian community formed,
and again that didn't go very far. I don't know
that there is any utopian community that's still around today.
They don't seem to last very long. Maybe there's no
such thing as utopia. Yeah, but that store model became
(10:30):
like just what all co ops were based on after that,
and in fact, the Rochdale Pioneers Cooperative store mushroomed into
what's now called today the Cooperative Group, which is a
multi billion pound operation. A bunch of different co ops
and a bunch of different sectors that are all part
(10:53):
of this larger co op. The Cooperative Group in the
UK that it grew from the Rochdale Pioneers, not like
inspired from it. I believe it actually grew from that, actually.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
I think so, yeah group, Yeah, yeah, And you know,
you'll see that as a common thing too. Where the
largest co ops in the world, and we'll talk about
some later on in Spain and India are groups of
co ops that have formed larger co ops because the
whole idea is that you know, there's a lot more
you can get done with a lot more people, obviously.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah, or a lot more companies. Like the different companies
can stand in for different individual workers, you know, I
think it's neat.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
So in the United States, it was really post Civil
War when things started to boom, and in particular Black
Americans after the Civil War were the ones who kind
of got this idea going because they were obviously, you know,
post Civil War, having a hard time with wide owned
businesses being treated poorly obviously, and they're like, well, why
(11:51):
don't we get our own thing going? And one of
the places that one of the earlier ones started in
Baltimore when black trade unionists, they were led by a
guy named Isaac Myers, founded what was called the Colored
Calkers Trade Union Society.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah. Calkers were the people who worked in shipyards that
waterproof the ships, make sure they didn't leak, right, And
it was traditionally a black dominated profession, but black people
were starting to get edged out in shipyards. So this
Colored Calkers Trade Union Society just decided to buy a
shipyard themselves so that they could employ black calkers, and
(12:29):
they did exactly that. They also bought railways and just
started founding this huge, essentially cooperative empire of black workers
and artisans. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I think they're also the ones who coined the contractors
term calk and paint will make it what it ain't.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I've not heard that one.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Have you never heard that?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
No? Did you make it up?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Oh? No, no, No, that's really Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
There's two contractor terms that basically mean you're getting kind
of shoddy work, right, calkin pain, I'll make it what
it ain't. And my favorite one, which is I can't
see it from my house.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh that's an app for that one.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
That one really stings.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, it especially when they're talking about your work.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well at any rate, Yes, the Caukers did come up
with that. I believe that's right. So your initial statement, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Things got going on a larger scale after that when
farmers started banding together, and in this case, post Civil War,
black farmers were excluded from the Southern Farmers Alliance and
they formed the Colored Farmers National Alliance and Cooperative Society,
which had a million members or more by eighteen ninety one.
And this wasn't sort of a strict, you know, definition
(13:46):
of a co op. It was more like, hey, we're
all farmers, so let's all sort of just cooperate with
one another and share information and you know, lift each
other up.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah. And because they were dealing with the Jim Crow South,
post Civil War South and all of that, they were
basically faced with an option like just submit yourself to
like really bad treatment, or figure out how to come together.
You don't have to know about co ops throughout history
to come up with your own co op. It's actually
like a general idea that any group would stumble upon,
(14:21):
typically when they're being mistreated or when they don't have
the resources to improve their lives. They realize like, well,
wait a minute, we're in the same boat. Let's just
put our resources together and improve our lives that way together.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, and this was like, this is spreading as a
philosophy more so than like all these like concrete examples
of like literal co ops that would come a little
bit later. But one of those other sort of ideas
that was spreading mixed in with this was something called
labor republicanism, and that was just you know, aligning with
this sort of the idea that hey, you know, if
(14:56):
you want real freedom, then you need to be able
to control your work and just be a wage laborer.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Right, You own that work, That's what I was talking
about earlier. You own that work, you lease it out
as you see fit. You're not submitting yourself to wage slavery. Like,
that's what that's all about. Apparently there's a debate going
on still today between labor republicanism and just universal basic income,
which one is actually the way to actual freedom from
being dominated by some boss.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
It's also tied into the rise of unions and unionism
for sure, don't you think.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Yeah, there's the Knights of Labor, which was basically the
first massive union in the United States that came close
to a million members by the eighteen eighties. Their whole
thing was essentially setting up worker cooperatives, like creating an
economy in the United States based around co ops, collectives,
(15:53):
things like labor republicanism. That's exactly what they were about.
And they were pretty successful to an extent. I think
we can see today that they weren't actually successful at all,
and instead they were supplanted by a much more business
friendly union, the American Federation of Labor, which became even
more massive.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, and that was less like hey, let's you know,
get rid of these bosses and make a co op,
and it was like, let's try and find a way
to work with them, and you know, and true union
style like get fair pay and all that kind of stuff,
which is great, but just sort of strayed from that
co op idea a little bit more. And I think
(16:34):
in eighteen ninety five was when finally the International Cooperative
Alliance was formed.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Sure, and that was you know.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
These are this is like a worldwide organization, obviously international.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Sure, what if they were just based in Topeka with
none but they're shooting for the sky.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, that'd be fun.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
You want to take a break, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
We'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit
sort of how these things work right after this.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
All right, we're back to talk.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Who helped this is Libby, I think, and she called
this section nuts and bolts because that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
These are all sort of listed under the Roachdale Principles
of Cooperation, which the ICA, the International Cooperative Alliance, adopted
in nineteen ninety five. And it's a series of bullet
points basically of generally how co ops can work. But
like I said, they're all they all have their own nuances.
(17:51):
But the first one is probably true across all cases.
You have a membership that is voluntary and anyone can
join as long as they fit the bill, like you
can't discriminate.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah, there are some slight differences among co ops that
as these bullet points start to spread out, that one
seems to be like that's the that's a common universality,
you know. Yeah, there's also another one. They need to
be run democratically with one vote per member.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
There's another way to do it that some co ops
choose where the more shares you have, the more votes
you have, so one share equals one vote rather than
one worker equals one vote. So one worker can amass
ten shares and they'll have ten votes opposed to the
other workers who just have one share each for sure.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
And that capital that you have is also controlled democratically
and should serve the organization's goals and not just you know,
the CEO or whatever.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Right, Like, if you're if your honeymakers, you wouldn't want
to use your profits to invest in like an up
and coming b extermination out of it? It makes sense. Yeah,
you also want to be autonomous. I love this one too,
Like it doesn't matter who you sign a contract with,
whether it's a government contractor with another business, a corporate
(19:11):
vulture who cares, there's nothing in that contract that can
basically undermine any of this. The worker's democratic voice, the
sharing of profits, being open to all, nothing can undermine that.
And I love that one because they're autonomous. They're like,
we don't need you.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Another thing that you have to do is you got
to train up your folks, got to coach them up
so they can all be contributors. And then you know,
another part of that is just letting people know what's
going on that you're you're not some weird fringe group.
But educate the people on what sort of the benefits
of cooperative.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Work, right, and then they're like all co ops smell
like this. Yeah, and then you want to work with
other cooperatives. That's a big one. I mean supporting one
another because it even in societies where they really support
co ops there they still have the decks stacked against them.
(20:10):
So the more they can rely on other co ops
on each other, the better off each co op is.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Going to be you know, yeah for sure. And they
always give back to the community.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
It seems like, you know, that's part of getting the
word out is doing like good work in the community.
And so they so people see like, oh, this is
that co op that's doing you know, the park cleanup
or you know, any anything sort of like that.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And here's the deal.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
You know, we said, there's a lot of different ways
you can structure these not you know, if you see
there's a co op, it doesn't mean every single person
that's working there that day is a member owner because
a lot of times you have to kind of prove
you're in it for the long haul, like there's a
probationary period. Sometimes you have to buy into it financially,
but not always. And also sometimes you either you're either
(20:58):
buying in financially and or being voted in by existing members.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yes, by Biff, that's right.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
And sort of the final thing is how it works
the structure at the top, because you know, even though
it's a co op, you still need to have kind
of people near the top in charge of the higher
you know, upper management sort of decisions, especially if they're
you know, larger co ops, because you know, you can
have some smaller co ops that are a little more
like you know, probably like Sevenonda, where you have workers
(21:29):
that are voting directly on just about everything that.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Happens with a co op.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
But the bigger you get, the more you might see
a structure where those workers aren't voting on everything directly,
but they're electing some of their own to sort of
act as the executive branch or maybe who like you know,
go out and hire a leadership staff or form a
board or something like that. But they're voting on the
people that do that. And you know, ideally, and I
(21:56):
think usually in most cases they're they're bringing in the
people that are going to want to serve the co op. Well,
it's not like all of a sudden they're like, oh no,
we got this board in there that's now taking over
and changing it to a more capitalist structure.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Right, We're going to bring in a young hot shot
fresh out of a private equity firm to take over.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Not a good idea.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
And again it's like some co ops face easier goes
of it, and depending on the country you're in, and
depending even on the state, it can be easier than others.
If you're in the Pacific Northwest, you can turn to
the Northwest Cooperative Development Center and Cooperative Fund of the Northeast.
It just keeps going and they'll essentially tell you how
(22:36):
to convert your business into a co op, which you
can do if you have an existing business, how to
start a co op from scratch, all the ins and outs,
that kind of thing. And again, this is highly necessary
to have somebody who has expertise and understanding on how
to navigate co op operations in the United States or
in other countries too.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Co op ops.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Yeah, so you know, there are definitely some efforts in
the United States to assist people that have these ideas,
it's just not as robust as like in other countries.
And speaking of other countries, I know we talked about
Spain early on, and that is the home of the
largest and most prominent co op in the world, basically,
which is the I'm gonna say Mandragon.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
That's what I would say too, not.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
The Mandragon, even though that's way cooler.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
So it is, and that's how I want to put
it too.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah, but the Mandragon Corporation is a collective. Again, this
is one of those it's a bunch of co ops
that got together to make a larger co op in
the Basque region of Spain. And it's named for the
town of Mandragon.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Yes, And it was founded by Jose Maria Rismonda Rieta.
That is quite a name, nice, believe me. I know
he is a priest or. He was a priest who
was actually started out as a journalist writing against the
fascists against the Franco regime in the Spanish Civil War
(24:02):
in the thirties. After the war, he became a priest
and he was assigned to the town of mandra Gone
in nineteen forty one and he said, hey, mandra Gone,
we are going to go capital s word all the
way in this town.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, he you know, doing good stuff, like hey, let's
create a medical clinic, let's get some housing going for
these people. What about technical schools in education to like
lift everybody up. And in nineteen fifty six, there were
five workers who had been part of this, you know,
(24:38):
planned with him, and they created a cooperative company to
make kerosene heaters. That's how they got their start, the
biggest one in the world. Started out making kerosene heaters initially.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yeah, for sure, and then it just started to grow
from there. They created their own pension and healthcare systems. Essentially,
every time the town faced a problem, they needed something
like funding for a new co op and they couldn't
get it from the outside world. They just did it themselves.
So each new problem, each new obstacle, saw a co
(25:11):
op founded to address it, and it just it just
kept growing and growing from there, and eventually it became
the Mandragon Corporation, which is enormous. It employs something like
eighty thousand people today and it's made up of again,
like you said, ninety five different co ops coming together
as a co op themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, and how it works for them.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
They are one of the ones that has one of
those probationary periods before you can become a member. And
once you've done that, you are a shareholder. You are
a worker and a shareholder in that company, and you're
voting on you know, all the stuff it takes to
run a corporation, business strategies, what kind of money people make.
Everyone gets an equal vote. They do have a governing council,
(25:57):
and that one because you know, it's a big, unwheeled
so they need they need sort of a higher up council.
There's a managing director and they sort of act as
like a CEO. But this is super awesome and kind
of one of the keys is the highest paid person there.
They have like a wage cap basically for what you
(26:18):
would call a CEO yea, and the highest paid wage
earner can be paid no more than six times the
salary of the lowest paid. If you look at a
regular capitalist American corporation, that number is about three hundred
and fifty to one rather than six to one.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, it's pretty impressive. They also share the co ops
profits the member owners, and they have to make difficult choices.
This is something that co ops are are good at
like this. This is why co ops are pro worker. Like.
If there's a hard time, an economic downturn or something
like that and sales are down, profits are down, most
(26:56):
capitalist companies just lay people off. They ramp up a
lot of works in like fat times, and then they
just cut them in lean times. Co Ops don't tend
to do that. Instead, they tend to all agree to
take a pay cut to spread the pain around so
that no one person has to take the brunt of it,
or no one group of people have to take the
(27:17):
brunt of it and lose their job.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
And they you know, they've had to change things a
little bit over the years. That ratio I think that
I said with six to one, that's an increase. It
used to be a three to one ratio of the
highest paid to the lowest paid worker. So they've had
to roll with the times a little bit. But six
to one is still way different than three hundred and
fifty to one for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
So this is the far and away the largest. There's
the second largest is nothing to sneeze at either the
or A lungo labor contract Cooperative Society founded in Kerala, India,
has about eighteen thousand employees and it was founded back
in nineteen twenty five while the Brits were still ruling
India as a colony, and some of the workers from
(28:04):
the lower casts I think sixteen of them got together
to pool their money and said, hey, we're going to
start repairing roads. Government give us some contracts, and that's
where the whole thing started.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
The first Prime Minister of India, Nehru was was basically
very much into the idea of these workers co ops
and farmers co ops, and you know, did a lot
to encourage and incentivize these popping up over there. I
think there are a ton of Indian cooperatives and this
is just the biggest one at like eighteen thousand employees.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Right, Yeah, Yeah. Nehru also encouraged people to rethink their jackets.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Oh man, those are good looking. I can't get away
with those, but those are cool.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Okay. So that's India. I guess that's kind of second
to Spain, like we said, at least as far as
the largest co ops go. But Italy I would say,
is possibly the country that supports co ops the most.
On a societal level.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
It seems like there's that.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
S word streak still running through Italy to a large degree.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Sure. Yeah, yeah, So the Italian government gives financial incentives
to start and run a co op. There's laws that
say if you don't run a co op, you have
to give up one of your kids. They're really pro
co op. They also this is another thing too that
some co ops come out of, where a company will
(29:35):
be failing and the owners will be like, well that's
it for me, I'm ruined, and the employees will be like, well,
we still have some money that we can put together.
Let us buy the company from you, and the owner
will sell the company to the employees. And the government
of Italy helps facilitate this kind of thing to make
it more likely. And that makes so much more sense
than just letting a company fail. Let the workers buy
(29:58):
it if they want to and run as a co op.
Let them all over the company.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah, that's a big thing that happened in Argentina, and
I sort of remember this in the early two thousands
when Argentina was having such a rough time. A lot
of workers were laid off in the industrial sector and
they were did what you were just talking about. They
were like, well, hey, this factory is going out of business,
so let's as employees get together and buy these things.
(30:22):
And it became known as the National Movement of Recovered
Companies and they're about four hundred of these still going strong.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah. What's cool about the Argentinian model too, is I
think they actually took over these companies. They were all
laid off and they're like, oh yeah, watch this. I
think that's pretty neat. Yeah. Mexico is well known for
fishing cooperatives. This happens around the world, but Mexico has
some pretty strong ones. And one of the cool things
(30:49):
is that there's often lax enforcement of things like sustainability
and catch quotas among fishermen in Mexico. So these co
ops tend to support sustainability themselves by essentially paying attention
to one another and making sure everybody's acting fairly. Sustainability
(31:10):
just grows out of that.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
So you want to take another break.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Oh yeah, I didn't see that coming.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
All right, we'll come back right after this, and Josh,
we'll speak first, because that's how we do things.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
So Chuck, it's probably not a surprise, as we've seen
compared to other countries, the United States is not exactly
up to speed. As far as co ops are concerned,
there's potentially seven to ten thousand Americans out of what
three hundred and sixty somethingter million who are employees and
co ops in the United States. That's not a very
(32:04):
significant number, but there are the people who are employed
there are happier than you will ever be in your
entire life. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Probably.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
So.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
The largest one in the United States is the Cooperative
Home Care Associates started in the Bronx in nineteen eighty
five when twelve home health aids came together and said, hey,
there's got to be a better way, and they started
recruiting people and they've got Wow. Out of that seven
to ten thousand, two thousand of them work for the UHCA.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, and then they also typically hire women of color
and immigrants, usually low income, and train them to be
home health aids. And then eventually, with a one thousand
dollars payment, you can buy in and become a worker
member owner. And they tend to have people have compared
this model to actually this company to other home health
(32:59):
aid companies, and the workers tend to have greater job satisfaction.
They trust management more because they're talking about themselves in
a lot of cases, but even the workers who aren't
member owners tend to have a higher trust in management.
And this is where people are like, I don't get it,
Like why would you do this? Because what you're doing
(33:20):
is creating a social good, Like, it's not just about
maximizing profits. And I believe Cooperative Home Care Associates is
a for profit company, and co ops can be for profit.
They don't have to be a profit. But they're proving
that you can still promote a social good. You can
still make society a better place and still turn a profit.
(33:40):
It's just not you know, you're not going to ever
set the stock market on fire. That's not the point.
The point is more to create the social good, and
that's one of the things that the Cooperative Home Care
Associates does.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Yeah, for sure, there are some other cool examples here
I'm going to jump to. I know you know where
I'm going because Olivia included the podcast company Maximum Fun.
Longtime supporters of stuff you should know. Maximum Fun was
had a single sole owner in Jesse Thorn. Yeah, he
(34:15):
was mogul very early on. He's the guy that set
up Mark Marin initially in his garage with equipment and
was like, here's how you do podcasting. So Jesse's a
pioneer in the business itself. Obviously does Judge John Hodgman
with Our Pal and Jordan Jesse go and Bullseye with
Jesse Thorn a great interview show, but Maximum Fun was his.
(34:37):
He started it as a very sort of forward thinking
young guy. She's I don't even know how many years ago.
It had to be twenty ish years ago at this point.
And three years ago Jesse was like, you know what,
I don't want to run the show anymore, and I
think Maximum Fun could transition to a co op. We've
(34:59):
got these great employees who are heavily invested, and why
not see if they'll go all in. And they did,
and Maximum Fund became a worker own co op.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, which is pretty cool. I mean even before that
he had basically transferred ownership of the individual shows to
the show creators and then so it was a I
guess kind of an easy, easyish leap into a co
op from there. So hats off Jesse Thorn and all
the peeps at Max Fun.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
If you happened to be up in Maine along the
coast and you're island hopper. I could not find exactly
what islands, but there is a trio of stores, the Galley,
VNS Variety and Burnt Cove Market, and all three of
them are worker owned and operated. And there it was
(35:49):
one of those situations where all three stores were being
sold and the owners couldn't find any buyers, and then
workers were like, well buy it. So now seventy people
off the coast of Maine are part of the Island
Employee Cooperative, which is again pretty cool totally.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I don't think Maine has many islands, so I'm surprised
you didn't find out what the deal was.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
I saw that the thing was headquartered and I think Stonington, Maine,
but I didn't see what island that was on, and
who knows could be the mainland for all I know,
I'm not a up up northeaster and up easter.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
A manor Yeah, across the pond, you're from away, I
think that is what they say.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, I know, I cannot tell you how much murder,
she wrote, I've seen in my life, and I still
was that picked up the lingo. Oh yeah, cabin cokain.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
I never, as you know, never saw a single episode
of murder. She wrote very sad about that.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
I didn't know that, and I see you differently now.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
I need to I need to check it out. I
know it's a classic.
Speaker 3 (36:51):
By way, I think my delivery might have been so
dry that we're going to get Germany as landlocked emails.
I know there are thousands of islands off of Maine,
by the way.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Oh, okay, you got me, You fooled me, Chuck.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
We should talk just at least mention aesops or employee
stock ownership plans.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Yeah, this isn't the same as a.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Co op because you're you're generally not getting like a
vote on things and how things run. But it's employees
owning the business. And our beloved Public's supermarket chain is
easily the largest employee owned company in the United States.
I think they owned about employees of Public's owned about
eighty percent of the company, which is a lot.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
Yeah, it's like they have stock, but rather than being
publicly traded, you have to be in a Public's employee
to buy and own public stock, and pretty cool. A
lot of people retire pretty well to do because of
the public stock that they've accrued over their career and
it is. It's great for sure.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
ACE Hardware that's another kind of cool, and that's you know,
they're independent retailers, and I think most people know that
because your local ACE Hardware is is owned and operated
by somebody who lives there, which is kind of a
cool model.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Yeah. Like, try buying something at one ACE and then
taking it back at the other ACE. You're going to
be sorely disappointed, my friend? Is that true? Oh? Yeah? They? Oh,
I didn't know that I bought something. I should say.
You and me bought something at an ACE and I
took it to the other ACE owned by the same company,
and because we bought it online, they could not they
(38:22):
could not return it.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Oh interesting, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Okay, yeah, be careful. You have to go back to
the same ACE. It says it like on the sign. Yeah.
ACE is the place and the only place.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
The helpful hardware folks.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
Isn't that? Yeah? It is?
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Should we end on a few pros and cons?
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Oh, I just real quick want to shout out a
couple of co ops that are nonprofits. Subvert is an
alternative to band camp. It's musician owned and then fair,
which I think is a clever use of the term.
It's fare. They're an alternative to like Uber and Lyft,
and they're co ops. Oh okay, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah. I mean that's I got to check out and
see affairs in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
Okay, okay, I don't use Uber.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
I use Lyft, but I've heard they're bad now too,
So it's I just don't even know who to get
rides from when I've had too much to drink anymore.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. I used to do Lyft because supposedly they treated
their people better. And I was talking to a lift
driver once He's like, no, Lyft is terrible. Now Uber's
nice to their drivers, and it's like, wow, who can
keep up with this? So I guess, yeah, just take
fair all.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Right, I'm gonna check that out.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Pros and cons now, yes, all right, well we've mentioned
some of these along the way. But one pro is,
you know one we touched on, which was that ratio
between the highest paid worker and the lowest paid worker.
They're definitely you know, the co ops. You're not going
to see things just so out of whack in terms
(39:52):
of wage earning.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
No, that's huge. Another one that's a pro in favor
of co ops, not all. All of them are pros
and favor of co ops. There are some cons too,
Like you said, pros and cons. But if you work
for a co op the chances of you getting laid
off are pretty low, which you would think like, oh, okay, well,
does our co ops just run and work as staffed
(40:16):
by lazy people. Turns out no, because as an owner,
a part owner of this co op, of this company
that you're working for, you are a manager. So if
everybody's a manager, they feel emboldened and empowered to police
other workers. Everybody's just kind of keeping one another honest
because they all have such a stake in this that
(40:38):
co op workers tend to actually be more productive and
happier and less slack than workers who are essentially just
wage labor.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yeah, or what do they call it? Quiet quitting?
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Oh I hadn't heard that, but that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Quiet quitting is when you're like phoning it in and
just doing the bare minimum to not get fired.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah, which is yeah, no good. Everybody.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
One con is or I guess you would say it's
a pro for a non co op is they tend
to be able to move a little quicker and add
quicker on stuff if there's a crisis or if there's
anything that needs like really fast attention. They don't have
to sweat, you know, taking boats and asking everyone and
debating what they think. So that can definitely sort of
slow down in times of crisis if you're in a
(41:27):
co op.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Yes, but that said, you can make quick decisions and
be more agile as a traditional capitalist company, but you
can also make the wrong decision and go down the
strong road. So with a co op, because it's moving slower,
it's not trying to be on the fortune five hundred
or anything like that, they can take their time a
(41:48):
little more, and so they actually tend to outlast a
lot of other companies I guess compared to other startups,
co ops tend to last beyond the first five years, say,
against a tech startup or something like that, because you
can take your time making decisions enough to be like
now now now you know.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Yeah for sure, and yeah, just job satisfaction.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
And we talked about this a few times, but overall
people that work for co ops tend to report much
happier lives basically when it turned in terms of their jobs.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
That's right, I guess that's it for co ops, Chuck,
I think so well. We both agreed that that's it
for co ops, which means it's time for listener.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
Yeah, there's a follow up on the West Kowloon Walled
City episode, which I thoroughly enjoyed personally.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Hey, guys, just listen to The episode reminded me of
the Ponta I guess po and t or Ponti City
Tower and Johannesburg. Ponti City was completed in nineteen seventy
five and originally intended to be a luxury development for
the city's rich white folks. However, it quickly descended into
decay for various reasons, and is widely regarded as becoming
(43:07):
the world's first quote vertical slum end quote By the
late eighties, it said that at its worst, the vast
central core of the building was filled with trash, including
human remains, all the way.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Up to the fifth or sixth floor.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
When I was visiting friends in Johannesburg back in twenty thirteen,
I did a tour of the tower with one of
the residents. It's a truly astonishing building with a super
interesting story of grandeur and rapid descent into chaos and
looks to be coming back again. Ponti has been used
for sets of several sci fi films. Neil Blombcamp is
a big fan and was also the inspiration for the
tower setting of the questionable twenty twelve Dread reboot.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Thanks for the great stuff. That is from Bobby.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Bobby sent in a picture from the interior of the
City Tower and it is indeed super sci fi and
interesting looking.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
I got to check that out, man, I hadn't heard
of that at all. That was Bobby, Yeah, Bobby. Well,
thanks a lot, Bobby. That was a great email. We
appreciate it. And if you want to be like Bobby
and tell us about something that we didn't know about,
we're always welcoming those. You can send it off to
Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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