How Worker Co-ops Work

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. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:46Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:56Josh Clark?

  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 Stuff You Should Know about worker cooperatives, which 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.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. In fact, I went back when I titled this episode for Jerry and added that hyphen because Jerry would say, what is this thing about coops?

• 2:26Josh Clark?

  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.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  It's finally happened.

• 2:37Josh Clark?

  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, they're like, I can think of one and that is in Atlanta and it is called Seven Onda and it is one of the few vegetarian grocery stores in the entire country. That's my experience with a co-op, right?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, Seven Onda, legendary store.

• 3:03Josh Clark?

  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 were people who were 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 stemmed from the Industrial Revolution. And it was a path that people that we could have taken and we so took the capitalist route.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:35Josh Clark?

  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 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, it's just a different way of doing things. And the idea that it could have been the way things went is really surprising and interesting.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  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. Yeah.

• 4:20Josh Clark?

  That's true. Yeah, and we don't really question that, although that's a little more easily questioned, you know?

• 4:25Speaker 02

  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, you kind of look at them as, or at least I do, as like these little hippie operations.

• 4:40Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Like Seven Onda, like this little vegetarian grocery store that has been in Little Five Points since, I mean, it's got to be since the seventies, don't you think?

• 4:50Josh Clark?

  It sure seems that way, yes.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, some of the stuff on the shelves looks like it's been there since the seventies.

• 4:55Josh Clark?

  For sure. It's definitely got that, that well-lived-in feel for sure.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's great, but that, yeah, it's on, 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, where this idea was sort of born. And I know we've talked about Owenism before, haven't we?

• 5:15Josh Clark?

  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 19th century, who can keep track?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  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, it's in 1825, and there, there's a way forward that could be great for everyone. He, he tried this out in New Harmony, Indiana, like I said, in 1825 for the first time.

• 5:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it didn't really live very long. New Harmony, Indiana is still there. It's not a utopian society any longer, although 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 your children are schooled and fed, and you have opportunities to, 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. But he helped lay the groundwork for this, and he inspired a lot of other people through Owenism, both in the United States and the UK.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I don't know if they were using the S-word back then. 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, 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 kind of way initially.

• 7:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I was, I was thinking about that. I read something that was basically like, this is socialism in like 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 basically danced around it like we do in the United States here. If you're trying to, if you're trying to explain something to somebody that has like socialist tinge to her, socialist in nature.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Look out.

• 7:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, 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.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:54Josh Clark?

  And when you, if you buy into socialism, it's like you're buying a kit and here's your socialist society.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:00Josh Clark?

  Like, like you can't just kind of pick and choose what makes sense and, 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.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:12Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, here's your socialist kit. Here's, here's mediocre everything. Just open it up and enjoy your mediocre life with mediocre things because

• 8:21Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  nothing is awesome because capitalists aren't in charge of making things perfect or great.

• 8:27Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  All right. So we talked briefly about Robert Owen with this short-lived sort of hippie commune in New Harmony. And you mentioned that that inspired people in at least, you know, overseas and, you know, in England and over, and here in America. But the first real cooperative, a lot of people talk about the Rochdale pioneers, which is near Manchester, Rochdale is, and they were flannel makers. They, they, they wove flannel. It was a big seat 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

• 9:13Speaker 02

  beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.

• 9:16Josh Clark?

  Yes, for sure, because there was this idea that like, okay, you um, like, you don't have to submit yourself to wage labor. You, your, 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. Um, and so the Weavers ended up forming, I think 60 of them got together and formed the Rochdale Friendly Cooperative Society.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Sounds nice.

• 9:40Josh Clark?

  I'm sure, just based on experience, we're mispronouncing it. It's probably like Riddell.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:46Josh Clark?

  In the UK, but it's spelled R O C H D A L E.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:51Josh Clark?

  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 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 up with the same amount of money as a rich person. And if you do that, all of a sudden you own the factory,

• 10:29Josh Clark?

  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.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, this one, uh, the Friendly Cooperative Society didn't last long. That store was just a couple of years. Uh, I think it was 1830 when it opened, and about 14 years later, uh, they, they got together and they tried it again. There were some people from, uh, that original society. Uh, they got together with, uh, other people who were, you know, unemployed or facing poverty or hungry. Um, so some of those Owenites, and they said, hey, let's, let's give this another go. Uh, and this time it was called the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. And they had to, and you'll see that 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

• 11:22Speaker 02

  in a little bit of money. In this case, for the Society of Equitable Pioneers, it was just one pound each. And they got it going and said, hey, we're gonna do the kind of the same thing. We're gonna have like a, it's 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. And it was very much in that Owenite model.

• 11:53Josh Clark?

  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. But that store model became 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

• 12:34Josh Clark?

  different co-ops and a bunch of different sectors that are all part 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 actual

• 12:48Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 12:49Josh Clark?

  group, yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  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.

• 13:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, or a lot more companies, like the different companies can stand in for different individual workers, you know? I think that's neat.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  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 white-owned businesses being treated poorly, obviously. And they were like, well, why don't we get our own thing going? And one of the places that, one of the earlier ones, was started in Baltimore, when Black trade unionists, they were led by a guy named Isaac Myers, founder of what's called the Colored Caukers Trade Union Society.

• 13:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Caukers were the people who worked in shipyards that waterproofed the ships, made 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 Caukers Trade Union Society just decided to buy a shipyard themselves, so that they could employ Black Caukers. And they did exactly that. They also bought railways and just started founding this huge, essentially cooperative empire of Black workers and artisans.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think they're also the ones who coined the contractor's term, "Cauk and paint will make it what it ain't."

• 14:31Josh Clark?

  I've not heard that one.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Have you never heard that?

• 14:35Josh Clark?

  No, did you make it up?

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no. That's a...

• 14:38Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's two contractor terms that basically mean you're getting kind of shoddy work.

• 14:44Josh Clark?

  Right, right.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  "Cauk and paint will make it what it ain't." And my favorite one, which is, "Well, I can't see it from my house."

• 14:50Josh Clark?

  Oh, I've heard that one.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  That one really stings.

• 14:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it does. Especially when they're talking about your work.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:59Josh Clark?

  Well, at any rate, yes, the Caukers did come up with that, I believe.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 15:06Josh Clark?

  To support your initial statement.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. 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 1891. And this wasn't sort of a strict, you know, definition 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.

• 15:43Josh Clark?

  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 to come up with your own co-op. It's actually like a a general idea that any group would stumble upon, typically when they're being mistreated, or when they don't have the resources to 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.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this 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 you want real freedom, then you need to be able to control your work and not just be a wage laborer.

• 16:48Josh Clark?

  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. And 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?

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. It's also tied into, you know, the rise of unions and unionism, for sure, don't you think?

• 17:16Josh Clark?

  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 1880s. Their whole thing was essentially setting up worker cooperatives, like creating a an economy in the United States based around co-ops, collectives, things like labor republicanism. That's exactly what they were about. And they 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.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  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.

• 18:07Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Uh, and, you know, in true Jungian style, like get fair pay and all that kind of stuff, which is great.

• 18:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  But just sort of strayed from that co-op idea a little bit more. And I think in 1895 was when finally the International Cooperative Alliance was formed.

• 18:24Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  And that was, you know, th- these are, this is like a worldwide organization, obviously international.

• 18:32Josh Clark?

  Sure. What if they were just based in Topeka with no connections outside of Topeka? But they're shooting for the sky.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that'd be fun.

• 18:41Josh Clark?

  You want to take a break?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit just sort of how these things work right after this.

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• 21:35Speaker 02

  All right, we're back to talk. Who helped? This is Libby, I think, and she called this section "nuts and bolts", because that's exactly what it is.

• 21:41Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  This is, these are all sort of listed under the Rochdale Principles of Cooperation, which the ICA, the International Cooperative Alliance, adopted in 1995.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  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. 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.

• 22:17Josh Clark?

  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, a universality, you know?

• 22:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:29Josh Clark?

  There's also another one, they need to be run democratically with one vote per member.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 22:36Josh Clark?

  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 10 shares and they'll have 10 votes opposed to the other workers who just have one share each.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  For sure. 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.

• 23:04Josh Clark?

  Right. Like if you're, if you're honey makers, you wouldn't want to use your profits to invest in like an up and coming bee extermination outfit.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Bee worship.

• 23:13Josh Clark?

  Because it makes sense.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:15Josh Clark?

  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 contract or with another business, a corporate vulture, who cares? There's nothing in that contract that can basically undermine any of this. The workers' democratic voice, the sharing of profits, the, it 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.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great. 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 work.

• 24:03Josh Clark?

  Right. And then they're like, all co-ops smell like this.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:09Josh Clark?

  And then you want to work with other cooperatives. That's a big one, too. I mean, supporting one another because even in societies where they really support co-ops, they still have the decks stacked against them. So the more they can rely on other co-ops on each other, the better off each co-op is going to be, you know?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And they always give back to the community, 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, anything sort of like that. And here's the deal, 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

• 25:11Speaker 02

  buying in financially and/or being voted in by existing members.

• 25:16Josh Clark?

  Yes, by BIF.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  That's right. 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 Seven Anda, where you have workers that are voting directly on just about everything that happens with a co-op. 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

• 26:01Speaker 02

  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 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, we got this board in there that's now taking over and changing it to a more capitalist structure.

• 26:21Josh Clark?

  Right. We're going to bring in a young, hot shot, fresh out of a private equity firm to take over.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  Not a, not a good idea.

• 26:28Josh Clark?

  And again, it's like some co-ops face easier goes of it, 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 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.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Co-op ops?

• 27:11Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  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 Mondragon?

• 27:34Josh Clark?

  That's what I would say, too.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  Not the Mondragon, even though that's way cooler sounding.

• 27:39Josh Clark?

  It is, and that's how I want to put it, too.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the Mondragon 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 Mondragon.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  Yes, and it was founded by Jose Maria Rizmendiarieta. That is quite a name.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 28:01Josh Clark?

  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 in the 30s. After the war, he became a priest, and he was assigned to the town of Mondragon in 1941. And he said, hey Mondragon, we are going to go capital S-word all the way in this town.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  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 and, and education to like lift everybody up? And in 1956, there were five workers who had been part of this,

• 28:51Speaker 02

  you know, plan with them 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.

• 29:01Josh Clark?

  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.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  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-op founded to address it. And it just, it just kept growing and growing from there. And eventually it became the Mondragon Corporation, which is enormous. It employs something like 80,000 people today.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:38Josh Clark?

  And it's made up of, again, like you said, 95 different co-ops coming together as a co-op themselves.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and how it works for them, 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. Your business strategies, what kind of money people make. Everyone gets an equal vote. They do have a governing council in that one because, you know, it's a big unwieldy one. So they need, they need sort of a higher up council. There's a managing director and they, they sort of act as like a CEO, but, and this is- Super awesome and kind of one of the keys is the highest paid person there.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  They have like a wage cap, basically, for what you would call a CEO.

• 30:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  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 350 to one rather than six to one.

• 30:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's pretty impressive. They also share the co-op's profits, the member owners, and they have to make difficult choices. This is something that co-ops are good at. Like, 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 capitalist companies just lay people off. They ramp up a lot of workers 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 brunt of it and lose their job.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And they've, you know, they've had to change things a little bit over the years. That ratio, I think that I said was 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 350 to one.

• 31:53Josh Clark?

  For sure. So this is the, far and away, the largest. There's, the second largest is nothing to sneeze at either. The Erulungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society, founded in Kerala, India, has about 18,000 employees. And it was founded back in 1925 while the Brits were still ruling India as a colony. And some of the workers from the lower castes, I think 16 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.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Then, you know, the first Prime Minister of India, Nehru, was basically...

• 32:37Speaker 02

  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 18,000 employees.

• 32:53Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Nehru also encouraged people to rethink their jackets.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Those are good looking. I can't get away with those, but those are cool.

• 33:04Josh Clark?

  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.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  It seems like there's that S-word streak still running through Italy to a large degree.

• 33:28Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:29Josh Clark?

  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 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.

• 34:11Josh Clark?

  Let the workers buy it if they want to and run it as a co-op. Let them all own the company.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a big thing that happened in Argentina. And I sort of remember this in the early 2000s, 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, this factory is going out of business. So let's, as employees, get together and buy these things. And it became known as the National Movement of Recovered Companies. And there are about 400 of these, still going strong.

• 34:42Josh Clark?

  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.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:54Josh Clark?

  Um, 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 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 just grows out of that.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  So you want to take another break?

• 35:27Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, I didn't see that coming.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  All right, we'll come back right after this. And Josh will speak first because that's how we do things.

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• 36:33Josh Clark?

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• 38:16Josh Clark?

  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 7,000 to 10,000 Americans out of, what, 360-something million who are employed in co-ops in the United States. That's not a very significant number, but there are... The people who are employed there are happier than you will ever be in your entire life.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably so. The largest one in the United States is the Cooperative Home Care Associates. It was started in the Bronx in 1985 when 12 home health aides 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 7,000 to 10,000, 2,000 of them work for the UCHCA.

• 39:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And then they also typically hire women of color and immigrants, usually low income, and train them to be home health aides. And then eventually with a thousand dollar 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 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 is creating

• 39:56Josh Clark?

  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 nonprofit. 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. 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.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  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 Livia included the podcast company Maximum Fun.

• 40:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Longtime supporters of Stuff You Should Know. Maximum Fun was, had a single sole owner in Jesse Thorne.

• 40:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was mogul very early on. He's the guy that that set up Marc Maron 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.

• 41:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  And Jordan Jesse Go and Bullseye with Jesse Thorne, a great interview show. But Maximum Fun was was his. He started it as a very sort of forward thinking young guy. Geez, I don't even know how many years ago. It had to be 20 ish years ago at this point.

• 41:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  And three years ago. Jesse was like, you know what? Um, uh, I don't want to run the show anymore. And I think Maximum Fun could transition to a co-op. We've got these great employees who are heavily invested. And why not see if they'll go all in? And they did. And, uh, and Maximum Fun became a worker owned co-op.

• 41:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which is pretty cool. I mean, even before that, uh, 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, easy-ish leap into a co-op from there. So hats off Jesse Thorne and all the peeps at Max Fun.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 42:04Josh Clark?

  Uh, if you happen to be up in Maine, along the coast, uh, and you're an island hopper. I could not find exactly what islands, but there is a trio of stores, The Galley, uh, VNS Variety and Burnt Cove Market. And all three of them are, um, worker owned and operated. Uh, and they were, it was one of those situations where all three stores were being sold. And, um, the, the owners couldn't find any buyers and the workers were like, we'll buy it. So now 70 people off the coast of Maine are part of the Island Employee Cooperative, which is again, pretty cool.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Totally. I don't think Maine has many islands, so I'm surprised you didn't find out what the deal was.

• 42:45Josh Clark?

  I saw that the thing was headquartered in, 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, a, up, up nor'easter and up Easter.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  A Mainer?

• 43:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I'm from across the pond.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  You're from away, I think is what they say.

• 43:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I know. And I cannot tell you how much Murder She Wrote I've seen in my life and I still.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Was that Maine?

• 43:12Josh Clark?

  Haven't picked up the lingo. Oh yeah, Cabot, Maine.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never, I, as you know, never saw a single episode of Murder She Wrote. Very sad about that.

• 43:19Josh Clark?

  I didn't know that and I see you differently now.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  I need to, I need to check it out. I know it's a classic.

• 43:26Josh Clark?

  It's a great, great show.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  I think my delivery might have been so dry that we're gonna get Germany as landlocked emails. I know there are thousands of islands off of Maine, by the way.

• 43:35Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. You got me. You fooled me, Chuck.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  We should talk, just at least mention ESOPs or employee stock ownership plans.

• 43:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  This isn't the same as a co-op because you're, you're generally not getting like a vote on things and how things run.

• 43:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  But it's, it's employees owning the business and our beloved Publix supermarket chain is easily the largest employee-owned company in the United States. I think they own about, employees of Publix own about 80% of the company, which is a lot.

• 44:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's like they have stock, but rather than being publicly traded, you have to be in a Publix employee to buy and own Publix stock.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  And Pretty cool.

• 44:14Josh Clark?

  A lot of people retire pretty well to do because of the Publix stock that they've accrued over their career. And it's, it's great, for sure.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Ace Hardware, that's another kinda cool one. That's a, 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.

• 44:37Josh Clark?

  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.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Is that true?

• 44:45Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. They

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 44:47Josh Clark?

  I bought something, or I should say Yumi 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 could not return it.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. I don't think I knew that. Okay.

• 45:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah, be careful. You have to go back to the same Ace. It says it like on the sign.

• 45:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, Ace is the place.

• 45:09Josh Clark?

  And the only place.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  The helpful hardware folks? Isn't that it?

• 45:13Josh Clark?

  Yep, it is.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Should we end on a few pros and cons?

• 45:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, I just real quick wanna shout out a couple of co-ops that are nonprofits. Subvert is an alternative to Bandcamp. It's musician-owned. And then FARE, which I think is a clever use of the term, it's F-A-R-E. They're an alternative to like Uber and Lyft and they're co-ops.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 45:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's, I gotta check out and see if FARE's in Atlanta.

• 45:41Josh Clark?

  Okay. Okay.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  I don't use Uber, 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.

• 45:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I used to do Lyft because supposedly they treated their people better. And I was talking to a Lyft driver once. He's like, no, Lyft is terrible. Now Uber's nice to their drivers. And it's like,

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 46:01Josh Clark?

  Who can keep up with this? So I guess, yeah, just take fare.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  All right, I'm gonna check that out. Pros and cons now?

• 46:08Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  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 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 of wage earning.

• 46:30Josh Clark?

  No, that's huge. Another one that's a pro in favor of co-ops, not all of them are pros in 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, okay, well, does our co-ops just run and work staffed 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

• 47:10Josh Clark?

  keeping one another honest because they all have such a stake in this that co-op workers tend to actually be more productive and happier and less slack than workers who are essentially just wage labor.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or what do they call it? Quiet quitting?

• 47:27Josh Clark?

  Oh, I hadn't, I hadn't heard that, but that makes sense.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, quiet quitting is when you're like phoning it in and just doing the bare minimum to not get fired.

• 47:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Which is, yeah, no good, everybody. 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 act 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 votes 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 co-op.

• 48:03Josh Clark?

  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 wrong road. So with a co-op, because it's moving slower, it's not trying to be on the Fortune 500 or anything like that. They can take their time a 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, doesn't have to be like now, now, now, you know?

• 48:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. And yeah, just job satisfaction. And we talked about this a few times, but overall, people that work for co-ops tend to report much, much happier lives, basically, in terms of their jobs.

• 48:58Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 49:00Josh Clark?

  I guess that's it for co-ops, Chuck.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 49:05Josh Clark?

  Well, we both agree that that's it for co-ops, which means it's time for listener.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a follow up on the Wes Cowloon Wald City episode, which I thoroughly enjoyed personally.

• 49:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, me too.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Hey, guys, just listened to the episode. It reminded me of the Ponte, I guess, P-O-N-T-E, or Ponte City Tower in Johannesburg. Ponte City was completed in 1975 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 the world's first, quote, "vertical slum," end quote, by the late 80s. It's said that at its worst, the vast central core of the building was filled with trash, including human remains, all the way up to the fifth or sixth floor. When I was visiting friends in Johannesburg back in 2013, I did a tour of the tower with one of the residents.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  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. Ponte has been used for sets of several sci-fi films. Neil Blomkamp is a big fan and was also the inspiration for the tower setting of the questionable 2012 Dread reboot.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  Uh, thanks for the great stuff. That is from Bobby. Bobby sent in a picture from the interior of the city tower and it is indeed super sci-fi and interesting looking.

• 50:31Josh Clark?

  I gotta check that out, man. I hadn't heard of that at all. That was Bobby?

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bobby.

• 50:37Josh Clark?

  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 [email protected].

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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