Worker owned businesses--or how to stay alive and well as the world economy falls on its ass--oops -- its bottom line

Labor as Capital, worker run companies

For many years people have been fed the economic version of bullshit—that labor and capital, communism or cooperativism and capitalism are enemies. We’ve also been fed the other bullshit that globalization is the answer to a better world. With the prediction that maybe 51 million people may lose their jobs worldwide this year 2009, and the horrible tragedy of that beautiful family lying dead –because both parents lost their jobs—only the braindead should still believe in these lies.

The history of the collapse of the world economic systems starts with the destruction of the family farms. While there are family farms near a city, that city has a good chance of surviving catastrophic times. When the farms are far far away the opposite is true. The line was that it was more efficient for a country to have big factory farms. And then it is more efficient to buy from wherever it is cheaper and the hell with your own country's farms.

Then it was the turn for the local factories. They were closed and the products and the blue collar jobs were out-sourced. It was more bottom line efficient to make a shoe for ten cents in China or the other countries of the Far East,and ship it back and sell the shoe for $75 than to pay a decent wage and make the shoe for $15 or $20 and sell it for $40 or $50. (this happened also in Israel where jobs went to our enemy—Jordan-or our potential enemy-China).

Then the middle class, who were happily spending their high salaries on stupidities and never caring about the farmers or the working class, got their turn at being unnecessary to the big wheels. Their jobs got out-sourced to countries such as India, where there are many educated professionals who are very happy to get much lower salaries.

And now it is the turn of everyone else—for the bottom line economy has taken the bottom out of the economy and everyone is falling splat on their fat or no longer fat asses.

So what is the solution? It’s sitting right in front of us: labor owned and operated businesses. They used to be called Guilds, they are sometimes called cooperatives, but the name does not matter.

If we see Labor –the ability to perform a job, and Experience –the skills needed to perform a job and supervise a job as Capital--the power to get a business started and off and running-- we have an alternative to soup kitichens, bread lines, over-printed worthless money and cycles of brainless blaming and violence.

I’m not sayng do away with corporations, for a group of people trying to star a business together need the legal protections that a corporate charter can provide them—so that no asshole can sue them for their family home if something goes wrong, as it sometimes will. A corporation as opposed to a family or partnership business has limited liability.

There are precedents, I remember seeing a documentary about a factory in the countryside of one of the mid southern states which was bought and run successfully by the workers who had just been laid off by the bosses out-sourcing their jobs to somewhere in Asia. There are other examples but that one stuck in my mind, for the owners never thought that their lowly blue collar workers could easily and elegantly replace them as the management.

But that is just the point: when workers are the managers they don’t need to have a bottom line policy-- for there is no drain to the non-working stockholders or the overly greedy upper management. If they make a nice product that sells for a reasonable profit they will all eat, have money for clothes and cars and sending their kids to a local college. The profit does not have to be so big as to finance a private jet to the CEO or a marbled executive toilet for the upper management.

So before anyone thinks of suicide, or drinking himself to death or a lifetime of happy pills on welfare, let’s take a good look at the skills we have and how we can apply them to putting together a worker run limited liability company.

If the workers run the company, they can create work schedules that fit their needs, maybe half days or split days for mothers with young children, or a completedly outfitted nursery and kindergarten on the premises (with a breat feeding room too). A split day or weekend double shifts could help those going to college or a vocational school to be employed. Food for the cafeteria could be partially cooked at home. Grandma might come back to work to supervise the nursery or have a story hour a few times a week. Grandpa could come out of retirement to explain or trouble shoot that ornery equipment.

A worker run company could be white collar also, --a medical lab could be run by the technicians, a medical service by the doctors and nurses, a school by the parents and teachers and the community etc.

This could be the future as the world egg cracks.

We don’t have to fall between the cracks!!

We can help each other stay alive and kicking. There are two sayings most people know: G-d helps those who help themselves and Love your neighbor/friend as yourself. Put those two together and have a worker owned, or perhaps a neighborhood or community owned business. And if worker owned businesses only bought from similar businesses –well you have a power base.