Gradually Integrate Worker-Management
click the links
Adam Golding <adamgolding@gmail.com>
13:07 (8 minutes ago)
[What I wrote my Riding Association today]
Be it resolved that we petition the Federal and Provincial parties to begin steps to gradually integrate worker-management by becoming a multistakeholder cooperative, consulting with experts including Richard Wolff, Michael Albert, Trebor Scholz, Lynn Hanley of Communitas Edmonton, The Hypha Cooperative in Toronto, and the CWCF.
As labor liaison I point out this will strengthen not just our union ties, but our ties with every cooperative on this map, which campaigns can directly consult for local labor organizing. (It's how I found Hypha after the municipal election, who sponsored me to take Scholz's course on 'platform cooperatives'.)
As I wrote when I applied to be Provincial Director: "I have just completed a course in online cooperatives: platform.coop/school -- after the last election I emailed various cooperatives in toronto and the hypa cooperative sponsored me to take this course, which has only strengthened my belief that the ONDP, along with its existing ties with unions, must push forward to be like the party that Richard Wolff proposed for America: one devoted to advancing democracy at work and worker cooperatives as a democratic antidote to the corporate corruption that is eroding our world in every industry -- we can begin by converting the Ontario NDP to a worker cooperative immediately"
I have also mentioned elsewhere how democracy at work would have provided a bulwark in several situations I observed where NDP workers felt powerless because union action would only help them after-the-fact: workers did not feel empowered internally to object to Mandates, "Wet'suwet'en", ABA, or Netanyahu, despite many workers being the ones speaking directly to voters, making them uniquely informed to weigh in: by not converting to a cooperative with a significant amount of worker management we are not just denying workers the right to vote on any work decisions, we are throwing away valuable data that can lead to victory[.]
In each case the workers were overruled by monied interests with larger donation totals and lesser empathy and front-line-information.
Cheers,
Adam Golding
--
adamgolding.ca
ps at the last march I brought out a volunteer and remarked to him yesterday: remember how many communists there were at the rally? (For Fightback) -- imagine if each one of them started a worker cooperative and even 10 percent succeed? Their speeches all made sense until the final line: "And the only solution is a communist revolution" -- and I always tell people that the cold war tested central planning, but not worker management, and that cooperatives are legal today so go start one, if you don't want to be a sole proprietor, and as policymakers we can subsidize such efforts, but also, and most importantly, lead by example