At their national convention in Las Vegas last year, the Steelworkers Union committed to a partnership with an international federation of worker co-operatives (Codename: Mondragon ) and an existing worker co-op in Ohio on an initiative to create U.S. based manufacturers owned and controlled by their unionized workers. And it would appear “worker ownership” has become the hot new heroic life support measure everyone in organized labor is talking about – unions creating their own employers with a CBA written right into the business plan. Why? Because apparently workers always need third-party representation, even when negotiating with themselves. An eighteen-page USW white paper lays out the “Union Co-op Model” with claims that the unorthodox business structure minimizes workplace conflict, creates sustainable communities, and addresses many of the nagging evils of our current profit-driven economic system. Every employee owns one share of the business and votes for a Board of Directors. That Board hires and fires members of management. That management team negotiates a collective bargaining agreement with the USW. The union can then collect dues from the owners/workers allowing USW officials to attend future junkets to Vegas to cook up ever more elaborate schemes to keep the whole union scam running. USW president Leo Gerard, a Canadian, has been pushing a global strategy for saving the Steelworkers since he took office in 2001. “To survive the boom and bust, bubble-driven economic cycles fueled by Wall Street, we must look for new ways to create and sustain good jobs on Main Street…. Worker-ownership can provide the opportunity to figure out collective alternatives to layoffs, bankruptcies, and closings.” Unions used to oppose workers’ co-ops because they were essentially cut out of the deal. Now, with dwindling power to put behind the traditional union tactics of business disruption, unions are entering the hallucinatory phase of their excruciatingly slow death and embracing the notion of actually supplanting business instead. The one fly in this transnational collectivist bliss might be finding investors crazy enough, especially given the plan’s emphasis on “jobs before profits” and “social transformation” over sound management. “A key part of the co-op’s mission is to support and invest in their communities by creating jobs, funding development projects, supporting education, and providing opportunity.” Tra la la. Too bad we’ll never know how that all would have turned out.
