Reflecting on the Movement: Yochai Gal

[Editor's note: We'll be sharing responses to our survey asking cooperators to reflect on the last 20 years of worker cooperative development. If you'd like to share your thoughts, you can complete the survey here.]

When did you first become involved with the worker cooperative movement?
2006.

What were your hopes for the worker cooperative movement at the time that you first became involved?
More co-ops, better pay for everyone.

In what ways have those hopes been realized? In what ways haven't they been?
My personal ambitions have come to fruition. I work at a worker co-op with multiple locations. I make a good wage, have amazing benefits and flexibility, and enjoy my work immensely. The co-op model has worked very well for me. However, none of my political goals have reached that level of success. When I started my co-op in 2007 there were roughly 300 worker co-ops in the US (about 1 per million people). Now there are only around 400 (or 1 for every 855K people). That's a growth rate of less than 2%!

What has your experience been with national and regional worker co-op organizations? In what ways have they been beneficial for worker co-ops?
Local orgs have been mixed; national pretty poor. I had a lot of help getting started in the bay area due to the local org (NOBAWC) but had only frustration from the now defunct WORC'N org in Boston for my second co-op. Meanwhile another local org (VAWC) appear helpful in their region, but my co-op is far from them.

As for the national platform, I see the USFWC as an abject failure. They have done a few good things with respect to healthcare and national legislation, but their emphasis on technical support (particularly at conventions) and educational initiatives do nothing to combat the overall issue with worker co-ops: people simply don't know they are an option or how to do them.

There is a strong underlying cultural issue in the US at the root of this, but the USFWC has ignored specific groups (largely working class white people) as it has adopted more and more of an intersectional theory of change. I'm not opposed to identifying multiple systems of oppression, but I do not believe they have done a good job treating each equally, especially with respect to working class folks. The white working class is absolutely massive, and yet have almost no presence in the national movement. I think this is a huge missed opportunity! I recall attending a regional convention (the ECWD) a number of years ago. Not present were the Island Employee Cooperative, the largest worker co-op in the region (not including New York). When I asked a technical specialist who was familiar with the co-op why they weren't their, he said that they didn't really understand what all this was about.

Again, a huge missed opportunity that I've seen repeated not only from the USFWC but from plenty of non-profits, educational institutions, incubators, and so on.

A note: I am disappointed that the USFWC only receives a small portion (I think 10%) of its funding from members. I think that speaks volumes.

What would you like to see national and regional worker co-op organizations do going forward? Where do you think their focus should be?
Outreach to all communities, greater/equal emphasis on class, support efforts like ICA Group or CDI's conversion models, less of a focus on so-called anchor institutions, movement to smaller, membership organizations (abandoning the grant cycle and non-profit industrial complex), etc.

None of this will happen, of course.

Additional Notes
The greater issue is simply that there is no money for this stuff, because (again) there are no worker co-ops.

A few years ago I traveled to Spain (on my own dollar) to learn about Mondragon. There are a lot of things you can say about them, both good and bad. But a big takeway for me is this: in the Basque region alone there are 3,000 worker co-ops (only 100 or so are Mondragon member co-ops). This is a region with only 2.1 million people. That's one co-op for every 700 people.

After nearly 20 years, I am quite cynical about the prospects for worker co-ops in the US.