Posted by:
John Duda
Affirms commitment to cooperative development
At their recently concluded 2011 convention, the United Steelworkers passed a resolution expressing a commitment to the development of worker-owned cooperatives. The resolution recognizes the role that worker-ownership can play in both stimulating long-term economic development and protecting the rights of workers:
Our Union will continue to promote and develop unionized, worker-owned cooperatives, as well as other forms of worker-ownership, as a profitable and sustainable means to create jobs and invest in our communities.
The resolution comes in the wake of the historic 2009 agreement between the USW and Mondragon, the 100,000+ person system of interlinked cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain, to explore the development of worker-owned enterprises in North America. (A good update on that agreement is available from Christina Clamp of Grassroots Economic Organizing.) Other unions are also exploring worker co-ops as a means of stabilizing community wealth, most recently in Pittsburgh, where three unions (SEIU, the Operating Engineers, and the Teamsters) are working with a consortium of foundations and community development organizations to convert a Sodhexo-owned laundry, slated for closure, into a worker-owned cooperative.
The resolution also reaffirms the Steelworkers’ commitment to broader strategies aimed at increasing workers’ control over their workplaces and their industries. Part of the resolution, for instance, advocates ensuring that the union’s considerable pension funds are “used in a way that not only provides a reasonable monetary return, but also provides job security, job creation and invests in our communities,” an approach growing in popularity not only among unions, but also state and local governments.