Richard Wolff's talk on worker coops

As Richard Wolff discusses in the video, worker coops are a democratic way of organizing businesses. Now, I would think democracy is supposed to be a held value of most people in Western society. Most western nations have some form of representation for people on the government level. The question becomes: why isn't this representation on the economic level? A large chunk of our time is spent at work after all, and work is what helps us better our lives and be able to feed ourselves at night. So why isn't work organized democratically when it determines such important things such as whether we get to improve our lot in life and can feed ourselves? Additionally, business owners make decisions that affect the workers all of the time, such as what to do with the profits, the rules of the business, etc. The workers have no say over these things which makes the authority of the business owner dictatorial. Worker coops are more innovative and productive than traditional firmsAs Richard Wolff pointed out, Mon dragon Corporation is so technologically advanced that corporations like Microsoft pay them to have their workers work alongside them. You can also see here how Microsoft and Mon dragon signed an agreement for technological cooperation centers[1]. Not only can worker coops be as innovative as traditional businesses, but they are more productive as well. Now, Richard Wolff didn’t discuss this, but there are a couple of studies which have found worker coops in the plywood industry are much more productive[2][3], and there are reasons they formulate for why worker coops would be more productive in general. Here are three reasons for this:1) "A co-op mitigates the agency cost associated with a corporation's division between ownership and control". Since co-ops are owned by the workers, they are much more likely to be informed about the business decisions than if they weren't owners, thus there is no need to spend extra time from business owners to educate them on this matter. [3, pgs 124-125) 2) Worker co-ops eliminate "the separation of interests between workers and owners. "[3, pg 125] As one can imagine, there are many instances in which a conventional firm would be presented with opportunities where they can make a decision that more benefits them and harms the workers. The workers would be opposed to this, and normally what happens in a conventional firm, is that bargaining goes on and this takes up precious time that could be devoted to work. In a co-op, this bargaining would not take place, since worker-owners would likely choose what benefits the majority of the workers, whereas in a traditional business, the owner would choose what only benefits themselves. 3) Workers are able to monitor each other better than in traditional businesses where the monitor is a single manager [3, pgs 125-126]. This makes sense as well, since in co-ops, the workers are the ones who make the decisions of the company, and would be involved in hiring and firing other workers. Co-workers are more often among their co-workers than a manager is, so they would be able to monitor their co-workers more effectively than a manager. This provides incentive for each worker to provide their best work and not laze around. Worker coops have been around a long time and are on the rise, but still mostly unknownAs Richard Wolff stated, Worker coops have been around for centuries, and while they had declined soon after world war 2, as he talked about, they are now on the rise once more. While there are so few worker coops, “the movement is growing. For example, the U. S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives was founded in 2004;32 smaller such federations and organizations are continually being born in states across the country, for instance the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives in the San Francisco area (founded in 1994), the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives in Massachusetts (founded in 2005), the California Center for Cooperative Development (incorporated in 2007), the Federation of Workplace Democracies in Minnesota (founded in 2004), Green Worker Cooperatives in the Bronx, CooperationWorks! (from the 1990s), the Cooperative Fund of New England (from 1975), the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, the ICA Group in Boston (from 1978), North American Students of Cooperation (from 1968), and many others. ” [4, pg 18]The fact that the worker cooperative movement is growing suggests it is becoming more popular among the people. I would argue one of the reasons why this is the case, is because of what Richard Wolff discussed: worker coops are not taught about in schools, and that is a fault of the education system. After all, we live in a society that favors capitalism, so why would they teach us about a successful alternative? The results of worker coops not being discussed are horrid, 89% of Americans don’t even know what a cooperative is(let along a worker cooperative)[5] This is truly a failure of the education system. Worker coops are morally superior to traditional businessesAs Richard Wolff pointed out, many Christian societies organized their businesses as worker coops, such as the shakers in the United States and many of the Roman Catholics in Italy. There is a religious basis behind worker coops, and not just an atheistic, socialist basis. Additionally, I would argue worker coops are morally superior because: Traditional businesses have an unnecessary position which takes money away from people who could be earning it instead. The business owner is an unnecessary position and they take a percentage of the profits based on what the workers do. That profit could be distributed amongst the workers if the business owner was not there and the employees owned the business. The fact that cooperatives do exist, show that a business owner is not necessary. While someone could argue that since there are so few cooperatives, this shows that a business owner is necessary in order to have success in a company, this is proven false with the facts I showed about cooperatives above. Essentially, a cooperative gives a level of consent not seen in traditional businesses. A person has to work in order to survive, so the fact that business owners know this mean they can have outrageous demands on the workers, since they may not have any other option. It often takes many applications to jobs to finally get one, so a person is desperate enough to make a living that they will be forced to put up with a tyrannical business owner. However, if all of the businesses were cooperatives, the worker would have a say in business rules, decisions, etc. Similar to how governments that don't give a consent to the governed are immoral, so are traditional businesses for the same reason. I believe my arguments are sufficient for this round and I will turn this over to my opponent. Sources:[1] dragon+microsoft+deal">. https://www.google.com... dragon+microsoft+deal (I couldn't directly link to the source because every time I have mon dragon corporation in a link, it doesn't post properly on debate. org. The source I am using is the first one from mon dragon-corporation. com)[2] . http://www.jstor.org...;(you need a jstor account to read this for free, but Jstor accounts are free if you don’t have one. It’s easy to set up an account)[3] . http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu...[4] . http://scholarworks.umb.edu...[5] www. geo. coop/story/new-survey-reveals-perceptions-and-myths-about-co-ops