Worker Cooperatives

This introductory chapter clarifies the types, potentials, and limitations of worker ownership and particularly the worker cooperative. It also raises the key themes of the rest of the book: worker control and workplace inequality, the relationship between organizational structure and organizational inequality, and why two initially similar organizations develop into ones that were very different from each other and from most other cooperatives of their era. The chapter asks if organizational structure can significantly minimize or eliminate inequalities of class, race/ethnicity, and/or gender within an economic system built on differentiation and exclusion. It also explores how conditions of worker ownership change the meaning of the term “worker” itself, as well as how worker identities are produced in organizations owned by the workers. How worker cooperatives conceive of those who labor together within them and how these conceptions can interrupt or facilitate the reproduction of the inequality found in the larger labor market are also considered. Finally, the chapter asks what worker cooperatives might offer beyond their own boundaries.