Subscribe to Dollars & Sense magazine. Recent articles related to the financial crisis. We're big in Brussells!The European Federation of Employee Shareownership (EFES) has selectedWorker-Owners and Unions: Why Can't We Just Get Along? from the Sept/Oct issue as one of 50 "remarkable" articles (out of 1,507!) on employee ownership. Although the other articles are from the likes of BusinessWeek, Newsweek, and MSNBC, ours was the only article to get a hyperlink in the top summary. Then again, we were probably the only worker-run collective in the bunch as well. In the article, author Dan Bell examines several real-world case studies of interactions between worker owned businesses and unions, ultimately arguing for greater collaboration between the two. "Can worker-owners and unions get along? Notwithstanding the profound differences between worker ownership and union representation as strategies for improving working conditions and giving workers a voice, and in spite of unions' sometimes valid skepticism, the simple answer is: They must! Globalization has exposed both the labor movement and worker-owned cooperatives to intense competition within a framework of laws and policies that relentlessly favor corporations over workers. To respond effectively, workers need a varied toolkit; they cannot afford to abandon solidarity merely because different groups pursue different strategies." |