Description
Book SynopsisIn this inside look at worker cooperatives, Joan Meyers challenges long-held views and beliefs. From the outside, worker cooperatives all seem to offer alternatives to bad jobs and unequal treatment by giving workers democratic control and equitable ownership of their workplaces. Some contend, however, that such egalitarianism and self-management come at the cost of efficiency and stability, and are impractical in the long run. Working Democracies focuses on two worker cooperatives in business since the 1970s that transformed from small countercultural collectives into thriving multiracial and largely working-class firms. She shows how democratic worker ownership can provide stability and effective business management, but also shows that broad equality is not an inevitable outcome despite the best intentions of cooperative members.
Working Democracies explores the interconnections between organizational structure and organizational culture under conditions of wo
Trade Review
Working Democracies presents one of the most comprehensive and detailed studies on the organizational form and democratic control of worker cooperatives
* ILR Review *
Table of Contents1. Worker Cooperatives: What Workers Want
2. "By Deed Instead of by Argument": Worker Ownership in the United States
3. Metamorphoses: Worker Cooperatives in the Golden Valley
4. People's Daily Bread Bakery: Worker Ownership, Working-Class Empowerment
5. One World Natural Grocery: Managing without Managers
6. Managerial and Participatory Bureaucracies: Varieties of Inequality Regimes
7. Worker Identities: Making Inequality Regimes Meaningful
8. Bureaucracies, Democracies, and Economies: A Future of Work
