A hundred years ago, radical Finnish immigrants founded a cooperatively-owned park to escape political repression on Minnesota’s Iron Range. It’s still “a workingman’s paradise.”
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The labor movement once built 40,000 units of low-cost co-op apartments for working class New Yorkers. Those units are embers of a vision that once fired the labor movement: Build for human need, not for profit. Labor can build it again.
What History Books Left Out About Depression Era Co-ops
It would seem that a movement that provided livelihood for more than 300,000 people in California alone would merit discussion in the history books.
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When maximizing profits isn't the only goal, companies can actually work better. Under worker-run management structures, co-ops might avoid the usual friction between bosses giving orders from above, and staff misunderstanding or disputing decisions or resisting unfair work burdens from below. Fusing the workforce and management streamlines operations and saves energy otherwise sunk into training and monitoring the workforce.
A cooperative model places union members firmly in the role of being innovators. It allows the labor movement not only to promote a positive vision of members realizing their best selves in the workplace, but also to provide the skills that will enable people to do that.
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