After their editions on The Crisis in Steel, Fighting Rust, and Fighting Shutdowns, The Cornell ILR's Labor Research Review focused their April 1985 edition on "Workers as Owners," looking exclusively at cases where ownership would stanch the divestment of industry from the Northeast and Midwest. Articles included
Worker Ownership: A Tactic for Labor by Dan Swinney
The Case Against Worker Ownership by Mike Slott
ESOPs & CO-OPs: Worker Capitalism & Worker Democracy by David P. Ellerman
Lessons From Three UAW Locals by Craig Livingston
A Lost Dream: Worker Control at Rath Packing by Gene Redmon, Chuck Mueller, and Gene Daniels
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Swinney: Worker ownership
Submitted by Joe on
Swinney:
Worker ownership is a tactic to consider when:
- there is a viable company that is being closed and that could be operated profitably.
- there is a viable company company that is available for worker ownership for any reason.
- wage and benefit concessions are the only option to maintain a viable company. Worker ownership becomes the quid pro quo in bargaining with the company as the cost for cash.
Worker ownership is not a good tactic when:
- proposed by a company as an effort to liquidate or neutralize the union.
- the company is not capable of surviving in the marketplace.
- proposed by a company as an effort to get the workers to finance the closing of a plant which has been milked dry and would have no viable future under any owner.
- the workers are not capable of running the plant.
Swinney lauds "companies
Submitted by Joe on
Swinney lauds "companies that are worker-owned, worker-managed, unionized, and a real asset to the labor movement and the community. Examples include the O & O Supermarkets in Philadelphia, Franklin Forge in Michigan, Atlas Chain in Pennsylvania, and Seymour Specialty Wire in Connecticut. In America, these are very few examples, but the potential for many more exists." Where are they now?
- The O&O Supermarkets had several positive years before they were closed or sold in 1989, challenged by a variety of factors. Assistance provided by PACE and the United Food and United Food and Commercial Workers.
- Franklin Forge was an unprofitable subsidiary of a larger company that was bought by its workers and reorganized as a cooperative in 1985 with the aid of many groups including the UAW, the Industrial Cooperative Association, and the Michigan Employee Ownership Center. It was growing up until 1989. After that? In 2006 the MI Department of Environmental Quality's remediation and redevelopment listed with their company name "aka Ogemaw Forge." 5 years earlier in 2001 Ogemaw Forge's assets appear to have been auctioned off. What happened from 1989 to 2001?
- Seymour Specialty Wire, in Connecticut, was a rescued shutdown organized as a democratic ESOP the operated from 1985 to 1992. The buyout did not "transform a decades-old factory into a state-of-the-art factory," and did not survive. Ironically, the film Other People's Money, in which a financier comes to town to persuade stockholders to liquidate an aging wire and cable company, was filed on the Seymour site payment from the film helped finance the buyout. Their site is now an EPA superfund site.
- Atlas Chain was a democratic ESOP in Pennsylvania starting in 1983, and was assisted by PACE. The appear to have started a credit union. Other than that I don't see much about them.
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