Worker Cooperatives as a Response to the Crisis

Pierre Laliberté

In recent times, it has become commonplace to say that we are not so much facing an economic crisis as much as a crisis of the prevailing economic model. Undeniably, not only has neoliberalism failed to deliver decent social and environmental outcomes, but it has even failed on its own terms: delivering economic growth and stability.

The dominance of the financial interests and liberalisation has wreaked havoc on workers and communities alike. It has imposed new costs on governments and led to increased insecurity the world over. Yet for all the obvious limitations of the “model”, the way forward is not always clear, as if even the victims and critics of the system had internalised Margaret Thatcher’s infamous TINA.[i]

Beyond the necessary mobilisations to resist self-defeating austerity measures and to reform political and economic governance, it is important that workers and their organisations get a tangible sense that organising the economy around more ethical and democratic principles is both possible and viable.

It so happens that cooperatives have proven just that. Every day, throughout the world, tens of thousands of workers go to work in workplaces that they run themselves along cooperative principles.

The 2012 Strike Wave, Marikana and the History of Rock Drillers in South African Mines

Paul Stewart

After gold was discovered in South Africa in 1886, rock drillers rapidly established themselves as an elite occupational group. A century ago, rock drillers on the North American Lake Superior copper mines similarly enjoyed ‘superior status’. They were ‘the working class elite’ and went on strike when their status was challenged.[i] This occupational tradition continues into the present.

Rock drillers have consequently long manifested a specific occupational culture resulting directly from their central productive role underground. Due to this role and their objectively-located social power, rock drillers historically received differential treatment in mining globally. This is the basis for the platinum Rock Drill Operator (RDO)-led strikes since February 2012 and at Marikana in August 2012 where 34 mineworkers were shot dead by police, precipitating a social crisis and triggering the long-threatened down-grading of South Africa’s financial trading rating on the international market.[ii]

Universal social protection floors – a minimum the world is too rich not to have

Frank Hoffer

The problem of capitalism is not its wealth-creating capacity, but its inability to share it. A global economic system that produces incredible wealth, but cannot ensure “zero hunger” on this planet is deeply flawed. Markets lacking the visible helping hand of democratic and accountable governments are producing socially undesirable, and most likely unsustainable, outcomes.

The most successful – and actually the only – way to provide universal minimum social protection in modern societies is the welfare state that guarantees basic rights for those in need, and is financed through compulsory payments (contributions or taxes) by all members of society according to their abilities. Systems might be organised in different ways, but at the end of the day all systems are based on the capacity and willingness of governments to impose on their citizen obligatory solidarity with the poorer members of society.

Where is decent work in DfID policy? Marketisation and securitisation of UK international aid

Phoebe V. Moore

Nothing is spared. Even international development policy is marketised and securitised in the United Kingdom (UK). Outreach to areas of the world suffering from tsunami-related devastation has not disappeared, but recent government decisions reveal significant shifts for aid spending to prioritise future conflict prevention in areas facing high levels of unemployment and lacking welfare protection, and to manage future financial impacts of terrorist attacks. Controversially, UK aid spending is increasing in areas where crisis-driven unemployment can be linked to rising social unrest, even as cuts are made to the organisation most dedicated to advocating workers’ rights, the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

DfID securitises, marketises international aid
In March 2011 the Department for International Development (DfID) published the ‘Multilateral Aid Review: Ensuring maximum value for money for UK aid through multilateral organisations’ (DfID, 2011). The UK’s newly-elected coalition government in 2010 decided to increase development aid to 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) by 2013, which is, in cash terms, an increase from £7.8 billion in 2010–2011 to £11 billion in 2014–15. In that context, DfID, in cooperation with then Secretary of State for International Development Anthony Mitchell reviewed 43 multilateral aid organisations previously used to channel funding using a specific methodology designed to measure organisations’ aims and objectives, value for money and cost effectiveness. UN-HABITAT, UNIDO, UNISDR[1], and the ILO, did not meet these marketised development objectives, so DfID decided to withdraw core funding to established partners. Market-oriented judgements such as these are part of the wider strategy of securing the dominant status of neoliberalism as an expansive global framework for economic and social policy.