2012 A Special Year for Co-op's

Everyone in the co-op movement was chuffed when the United Nations designated 2012 as the International Year of Co-operatives. Co-operation has been an international movement for a long time with the founding of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) in 1895.
Co-op’s where a key ingredient in the formation of the International Labour Organisation in 1919. The ILO, formed as part of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I reflected the belief that peace could only be accomplished if based on social justice.
The first Director General of the ILO was French Co-operator Albert Thomas (ex- executive committee of the ICA) and the Co-op Branch of the ILO was established in 1920.
The 1920 Governing documents of the ILO say that “The Peace Treaty foresees that the ILO should not only be concerned with the conditions of work but also with the conditions of workers. By and large, it is under the organisational form of co-operatives that this concern is best addressed for the largest part of the population. The Co-operative Section will not limit itself to the questions of distribution, but will also research into the question of housing, leisure time of workers and transportation of the workforce etc.”
Sadly before this could be fulfilled the world was plunged into depression and world war. Following which international politics was blighted by the cold war. Unlike the International Trade Union Movement the ICA was not split by the cold war. Whilst this degree of unity was laudable the consequence was the organisation was to be largely ignored by the western dominated UN and it was unable to be firm about co-op’s being independent of the state until it ended.
It is only in modern times then that the ILO and UN have rediscovered the importance of Co-ops to social justice and the global economy. It may be hard to believe but the contemporary global Co-op sector secures the livelihoods of three billion people. There are a billion owner members of co-ops and they directly employ over 100 million workers.
To put this in perspective that is twenty percent more than all the transnational corporations added together. There are also three times as many member owners of co-operatives as there are shareholders in capitalist businesses, as there are only 328 million people who own company shares.
I celebrated the launch of the international year at Birmingham Film Co-op one of many new co-op’s that have sprung up to fill the gap in the market for the distribution of radical films.
The film was The Take. It follows thirty unemployed car-parts workers in Buenos Aires during Argentina’s economic collapse of 2001. They march into their idle factory, roll out sleeping bags and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the silent machines, armed only with an abiding faith in shop-floor democracy they face off the bosses, bankers and a system that sees their factory as scrap. What shines through the film, directed by Canadian journalist Avi Lewis and writer Naomi Klein, is the simple drama of the workers struggle for dignity. Importantly this is not just another tale of heroic failure.
Over a decade after the campaign - ‘Resist, Occupy, Produce’ - the Argentine recovered factories movement began there are still 300 factories that have survived as workers co-ops. But co-op’s are not just acts of desperation by workers or small social clubs for radical film goers.
The top 300 co-op enterprises worldwide have a turnover of US$ 1.6 trillion. This - a bigger economy than Spain - is a significant sector in any language and if anything despite being the home of modern co-operation the UK has a lot of lost ground to make up. In Europe, three countries have over half of their population in co-operative membership – Ireland is top with 70%, then Finland at 60% and Austria at 59%. Other countries with the high proportions of people in co-operative ownership are India with 242million and China with 160million. Even the land of free enterprise the USA has a higher proportion than the UK with 120million co-op members.
It was good to see former Labour MEP Pauline Green, now President of the ICA speaking to the UN General Assembly to launch the year in New York where she called for countries globally to provide co-operatives with a “level playing field”.
She said the unique legal and financial framework of co-operatives should be fully recognized in public policy and regulation saying “Co-operatives are asking for their model of business to be given equal promotion with the shareholder model. The diversity and robustness of the co-operative business model is based on principles and values. This is why co-operatives were resilient during the global financial crisis, employing over 100 million people worldwide and enabling the development and welfare of societies in the most competitive economies.”
The strap line for the UN year is, Co-operative Enterprises build a better world. Whilst I am sure that is true, given the state of the UK economy, the crying need is for more co-operation here!