Workers Cooperatives: Limited in Size?
December 31st, 2006The Worker’s Paradise reports that in 2006 at least two workers cooperatives converted to capitalist businesses Good Vibrations and Burley Bicycles. He implies that this conversion was due in part to the growth of these two companies.
He quotes Melissa Hoover of the US Federation of Worker Co-operatives:
“For those of us who believe that worker-owned and democratic workplaces can be a cornerstone to an economically just society, the question of growth is the next big issue to struggle with. The worker cooperative movement, to the extent that it is even yet a movement and not just a collection of successful businesses, is sorely lacking in methods, strategies and experience for keeping a healthy co-op culture in the face of growth, of working with growth, of anticipating and planning to grow in ways that allow us to not only maintain our co-op values in the face of market pressures, but champion them as a real alternative.”
It would be interesting to see how the question of growth applies to the cooperatives in the Spanish Revolution.