title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: There are 12 playable characters, each with a unique special move that can be used when their 'Special' meter is filled. They either give the player an advantage, or hinder the opponent. Baraka's "Blade" will remove all blocks on the edges of his grid. Kenshi's "Invisible" will briefly make all of the blocks in the opponent's grid invisible, making matching much harder.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: The setting begins immediately after the events of "Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance". The Deadly Alliance (Shang Tsung and Quan Chi) were successful in their plan. Raiden's warriors, who were meant to protect the six fictional universes (named "realms"), were killed during their tournament. It served as the perfect distraction to defeat their enemies while they simultaneously claimed enough souls to resurrect the Invincible Army. As a single survivor, Raiden attempts to fight both sorcerers but is ultimately defeated. The Deadly Alliance quickly dissolves as the two sorcerers turn on each other for Shinnok's amulet, which allows them to control the army. Quan Chi has no time to enjoy his victory before he sees that the Dragon King Onaga, the former emperor of the realm of Outworld, has been resurrected too. Quan Chi, Shang Tsung and Raiden join forces to stop Onaga, though Raiden ultimately unleashes all his powers in a colossal explosion that, apart from destroying both members of the Deadly Alliance, the surrounding palace and himself, has little effect on Onaga.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Onaga now seeks to use six artifacts called the Kamidogu (literally "Tool of God" or "divine clay"), which are able to destroy the realms. Those fighters who survive the battle against the Deadly Alliance now stand against Onaga and his supporters. The latter include the forces of Edenia, now led by Mileena in the titular theme of deception as she masquerades as her sister, Princess Kitana. Other enemies include the former defenders from the realms, who were resurrected by Onaga and are under his control.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: A young man named Shujinko is deceived into spending his entire life collecting the Kamidogu for Onaga, who uses the guise of an emissary of the Elder Gods, the beings who created the realms, named Damashi. Onaga reveals his identity and intentions after Shujinko has gathered all the Kamidogu. Shujinko, led to believe he was working for the greater good, decides to continue training to defeat Onaga.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: 26 total characters appear in the game, with seventeen returning and nine making their series debuts. Only one character (the boss Onaga) is unplayable.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: The GameCube version had two more playable characters: the sub-boss from the original "Mortal Kombat", Goro, and Shao Kahn, the final boss of the past digitized "MK" titles; both were previously thought to have perished in the prologue of "Deadly Alliance". PlayStation Portable version also had the characters from the GameCube version and had four more characters — Blaze, Frost, Jax and Kitana - taken directly from the "Deadly Alliance".


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Several of the returning characters have been redesigned and were given new moves, such as Liu Kang, who reappears as a zombie. Character redesigns were generally well-accepted, namely in the case of Sub-Zero. Once again appearing youthful rather than his depiction as a septuagenarian in "Deadly Alliance", Sub-Zero sported a "grandmaster" armor set that was often likened to Shredder from the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" franchise. Scorpion was redesigned to resemble a more classical ninja look, while characters like Ermac received a considerable makeover from the standard palette-swap ninja fare, offering up a more sorcerous appearance.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: "Mortal Kombat" co-creator Ed Boon wanted "Deception" to be an unpredictable fighting game that gave players new features "they could never imagine". In order to do so, the Midway staff listened to fans on bulletin boards to know what to work on for "Deception", such as the playable characters. Wanting to surprise fans and make the game deeper, they added the puzzle and chess minigames (the chess minigame had first been considered for "Deadly Alliance", but the developers lacked time to implement it). Boon and John Podlasek supervised the staff, which was divided into teams to work on different areas of the game. One of their concerns was to maintain the traditional feel of the "MK" series as they wanted the game's violence to make it a more realistic fighting game, rather than "a fighting simulator".


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Character appearances were improved to make their moves "more responsive" to the player's input. They also wanted to bring back several characters they felt were absent for too long — including Sindel, Nightwolf, Baraka, and Mileena — and an arena with several weapons which players could use to fight; however, it was remade to become the Liu Kang's Tomb arena. Characters' combos were redesigned to be distinctive so that they would be more important; as Boon noted, they were necessary for any move the player would use to inflict more damage on an opponent. The Midway staff focused on the designs and functions of the backgrounds, wanting to make them as influential to the outcome of the battle as the fighting between the characters.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Because of popular demand and favorable reception of "Deadly Alliance", the number of finishing moves, known as Fatalities, increased to two per character. The Fatalities were developed by a group of animators led by Carlos Pesina; they comically described Mileena's Fatality in which she eats the opponents' neck as the most disturbing due to how her "sexy moves" are modeled from Pesina. The Hara-Kiri moves were added to allow the losers to perform a finishing move as well, creating a race between both players. The Death Traps, meant to be introduced in the previous game, were added to give the combat more strategy as well as to give more chances to players to win a fight if they are at a disadvantage. The game was originally meant to have other new finishing moves, such as tortures and falling cliffs similar to Fatalities.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: One of the main features of "Deception" was the emphasis on online gameplay, which had yet to become common for console fighting games. A team of engineers took almost a full year to decide if the feature was viable. The "MK" team focused their energies solely on platforms that had strong online functionality available to the end consumer; this led to a greater focus on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions. Because the GameCube games require some re-engineering compared to the other platforms when porting, it was decided to exclude the GameCube from the work of the team until the online hurdles were cleared. Some time after the game's release, Boon commented that he was disappointed that the GameCube version did not feature online gameplay as he regarded it as "the best in the business".


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Details about the game were first confirmed to the general public in the May 2003 issue of "", in which the game was called "Mortal Kombat VI", and an online mode was confirmed. On February 6, 2004, Midway registered the domain names mkdeception.com and mortalkombatdeception.com. When Midway Entertainment was asked if "Mortal Kombat: Deception" was the official title, the developers gave no answers at that time. Later that month, Midway released the first trailer from the game, confirming this title.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: "Mortal Kombat: Deception" was released for the PlayStation 2 (PS2) and Xbox in North America on October 4, 2004, and in PAL territories on November 19, 2004. While the game is known as "Mortal Kombat: Mystification" in France, other countries did not change its original name. A GameCube version was later released exclusively in North America on March 1, 2005.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Two versions were released for both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles: the standard edition for both systems, a "Premium Pack" for the PS2, and "Kollector's Edition" for the Xbox. The "Premium Pack" and "Kollector's Edition" include a metal trading card and a bonus disc containing a history of "Mortal Kombat", several video biographies of characters, and an "arcade perfect" version of the original "Mortal Kombat". The Xbox version cover art features either Scorpion, Raiden, Baraka or Mileena, while the PS2 version uses the character Sub-Zero.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: In October 2005, the game was redistributed as a Platinum Hits title on the Xbox and as a Greatest Hits title on the PS2, coming in new packaging and sold for a discounted price. "Deception" is also included along with "" and "" in the compilation "Mortal Kombat Kollection", which was released on September 29, 2008 for the PS2.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: "Mortal Kombat: Unchained" is the title of the PlayStation Portable version of "Mortal Kombat: Deception", developed by Just Games Interactive. "Unchained" denotes its portability free of cables. The game was released on November 13, 2006, in North America; November 24, 2006, in Europe; and December 9, 2006, in Australia.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: "Unchained" includes all the characters from the GameCube version, and four more characters — Blaze, Frost, Jax and Kitana — from "Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance" that are exclusive to the PlayStation Portable version. Three of the four characters have only one Fatality and no Hara-kiri in contrast to other characters, most likely because that was all they had in "Deadly Alliance". Exclusive to the "Unchained" version is the Endurance mode, where players can compete against a constant wave of opponents. The system's wireless ad hoc network functionality can be used for multiplayer games. Characters who remain hidden in the other versions appear unlocked by default in "Unchained"; producer Shaun Himmerick explained that the staff wanted to show players characters that were difficult to obtain in "Deception", such as Liu Kang. Although Midway did not develop the game, they helped Just Games Interactives optimize their code and the Wi-Fi feature, as they wanted to keep the frame rate very high.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: During its release week, "Mortal Kombat: Deception" shipped one million units, surpassing sales of and becoming the fastest-selling game in Midway's history. A year later, the game had shipped 1.9 million units worldwide.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Prior to the game's release, GameSpot named it the best fighting game of E3 2004. It was also the winner of the 2004 GameSpot Top Spike TV Video Game Awards in the category of best fighting game. In GameSpot's Best and Worst of 2004, "Deception" received the award for best fighting game. The PlayStation 2 version was a runner-up in IGN's PS2 Best of 2004 Awards in the best fighting game category, and won the Readers' Choice. On February 1, 2005, "Deception" received the fighting game of the year award at the 8th Annual Interactive Achievements Awards. "Deception" was nominated for the "Game…Sequel Fighting" award by the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers, but lost to "Dead or Alive Ultimate". In the "Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition 2015 Ebook", the game was recognized for being the first fighting game to be given an online mode.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Metacritic had 81 favorable reviews out of 100 for both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions; the GameCube version received 77 favorable reviews. It won GameSpot's 2004 "Best Fighting Game" award.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: Louis Bedigian of GameZone praised the interaction with stages as one of the best parts of the game, commenting that it adds more strategy to the combat. He praised the return of "classic characters", commenting on their new designs and how different their attacks are. Jeremy Dunham of IGN wrote that it was the best game of the "Mortal Kombat" series. He also stated that the removal of special move buttons, which caused too much damage to an opponent, was one of the developer's best decisions. With the special moves removed from the fights, and the addition of Breakers, players are now able to stop any combo. However, he called character designs in "Deception" "robotic" in comparison to other fighting games such as the "Dead or Alive" series or "Virtua Fighter 4". The soundtrack was also criticized for having "basic sound effects". GameSpot's Greg Kasavin commented that the fights have been highly improved with the addition of new fighting styles which: "is clearly inspired by kung fu movies". Although he stated the fights were not perfect and noted they could end in a few seconds due to the interaction with the arenas, he liked how painful and funny some moves looked. TeamXbox's Dale Nardozzi praised the characters' animations and movements, adding that the soundtrack: "sets the tone perfectly for your basic, disembowelments, decapitations, and impalements."


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: The Konquest Mode received mixed opinions. Dunham liked how the Konquest Mode explains the storyline from the game. Conversely, Kasavin commented that the Konquest Mode "is the weak point from the game" and described it as "ugly", lacking good voice acting and graphics. However, he noted that one of the "few nice touches" in Konquest was "hitting anybody you want". He added that the mode had to be completed if he wanted to unlock characters. Bedigian complained that the Konquest is the biggest flaw of the game, criticizing the storyline, the trainings, and voice acting. However, Nardozzi found the mini-games to be very entertaining if played online.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: In contrast to the Xbox and PS2 versions, the GameCube port received lower scores from publications. It has been criticized for the lack of an online mode and pixelated picture quality on the unlockable videos & cutscenes, though 1UP.com still praised it. Although the addition of Goro and Shao Kahn was well-received, GameSpot opined that the other ports were better, while also commenting on Goro's appearance, which looks "anemic". In his review, GameSpy's Miguel Lopez wrote the GameCube version "is far from the best version of the game" and advised players to use another port to play.


title: Mortal Kombat: Deception

text: "Mortal Kombat: Unchained" received an average of 70 from 14 reviews from Metacritic. Jeff Haynes from IGN mentioned problems with the controls and criticized the long loading times.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: Keir Starmer became Leader of the Opposition in the United Kingdom after being elected as Leader of the Labour Party on 4 April 2020. He appointed his Shadow Cabinet on 5 and 6 April.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: Following the Labour Party's defeat in the 2019 general election, its leader Jeremy Corbyn stepped down and triggered a leadership election that would elect a new party leader and a new Leader of the Opposition. Six candidates declared for the election, with three receiving sufficient nominations to advance to the ballot. Keir Starmer, MP for Holborn and St Pancras and Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, was elected over Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: Six Shadow Cabinet members are also part of a Shadow COVID-19 committee, created in 2020 and tasked with responding to the current coronavirus outbreak. Chaired by party leader Keir Starmer, the committee includes:


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: On 25 June 2020, Rebecca Long-Bailey was sacked as Shadow Secretary of State for Education for sharing an interview with Maxine Peake containing an allegation that Mossad had trained the US police to use the knee-on-neck restraint technique that was used in the murder of George Floyd, described by the Labour leader as "antisemitic conspiracy theories". She was replaced by Kate Green, who in turn was replaced by Karen Buck in her previous role of Shadow Minister for Social Security, renamed from Shadow Minister for Child Poverty Strategy.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: On 8 May 2021, Angela Rayner was sacked as Chair of the Labour Party and National Campaign Coordinator after the party's poor performance in the 2021 United Kingdom local elections. She was later moved to Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office on 9 May 2021. Also on 9 May 2021, Anneliese Dodds replaced Rayner as Chair and removed from the role of Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. In turn, Rachel Reeves replaced Dodds as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, and so left the role she held, the Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, open for Rayner to be appointed to. Along with this, Opposition Chief Whip Nick Brown, left the Shadow Cabinet and was replaced with Opposition Deputy Chief Whip Alan Campbell.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: on 22 June 2021, former MP and Starmer's political secretary Jenny Chapman (ennobled in 2020 as Baroness Chapman of Darlington), was made Shadow Minister of State, sitting in the shadow cabinet, to shadow David Frost, Lord Frost.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: In a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle on 29 November 2021, Yvette Cooper returned to the frontbench as Shadow Home Secretary. Pat McFadden joined the shadow cabinet as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury as did Peter Kyle who became Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Charlie Falconer, Kate Green, Luke Pollard and Nia Griffith all left.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: Most members of the Shadow Cabinet had their portfolios changed, with Lisa Nandy moving from Foreign Affairs to Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (A combination of Housing and Communities and Local Government). Ed Miliband became the revived portfolio of Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero, with the Business and Industrial Strategy part of his former portfolio going to Jonathan Reynolds. David Lammy took on Foreign Affairs and was replaced as Shadow Lord Chancellor by Steve Reed. Nick Thomas-Symonds became Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, replacing Emily Thornberry who became Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales. Bridget Phillipson became Shadow Secretary of State for Education, Wes Streeting became Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Jonathan Ashworth became Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Lucy Powell became Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Jim McMahon became Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Louise Haigh was made Shadow Secretary of State for Transport and Jo Stevens was made Shadow Secretary of State for Wales.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: The Shadow Secretaries of State for Mental Health and for International Development were demoted to shadow ministers, but still sitting in the shadow cabinet, at a rank similar to Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Preet Gill became Shadow Cabinet Minister for International Development under the Shadow Foreign Secretary and Rosena Allin-Khan became Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health under the Shadow Health Secretary.


title: Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer

text: The position of Shadow Secretary of State for Housing was combined with Communities and Local Government to become the Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to shadow the government department of the same name. The positions of Shadow Secretary of State for Young People and Democracy, Shadow Secretary of State for Child Poverty and Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights and Protections were all abolished. The Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy role was split into Shadow Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero and Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Industrial Strategy.


title: Liz Fraser

text: Elizabeth Joan Winch (14 August 1930 – 6 September 2018), known professionally as Liz Fraser, was a British film actress, best known for being cast in provocative comedy roles.


title: Liz Fraser

text: Fraser was born in Southwark, London. Her year of birth was usually cited as 1933, which she gave when auditioning for her role in "I'm All Right Jack", because the Boulting Brothers wanted someone younger for the part. In fact she was three years older, as she confirmed in her autobiography, "Liz Fraser ... and Other Characters", published by Signum Books in 2012. Her father was a travelling salesman for a brewery and her mother owned a corner shop just off the New Kent Road. Their family life was disrupted by the Second World War, when she was evacuated, initially to Westerham in Kent and then, when that was deemed still too vulnerable to bombing, to Chudleigh, a village in Devon. Her father died in May 1942, aged 40, when she was 11.


title: Liz Fraser

text: She went to St Saviour's and St Olave's Grammar School for Girls between the ages of 13 and 17. She then attended evening courses at Goldsmiths College, where she joined a drama group, and the City of London College for Commerce, Book-Keeping, Shorthand and Typing, and won an evening scholarship to the London School of Dramatic Art.


title: Liz Fraser

text: Her first film appearance was in "Touch and Go" (1955), using her birth name, and "The Smallest Show on Earth" (1957) in which she worked with Peter Sellers for the first time. Fraser also appeared in commercial television's first live play "The Geranium" for Associated-Rediffusion. She made an uncredited appearance as June in "Alive and Kicking" (1959), Her breakthrough role was as the daughter of Sellers' character in "I'm All Right Jack" (1959), for which she received a BAFTA nomination as Most Promising Newcomer. She was in several of the early "Carry On" films: "Carry On Regardless" (1961), "Carry On Cruising" (1962), and "Carry On Cabby" (1963), but was sacked by producer Peter Rogers after casually saying the series could be better marketed. She re-appeared in the series in "Carry On Behind" (1975), her salary apparently half of what it had been before.


title: Liz Fraser

text: Her other film appearances include "Desert Mice" (1959), "Two-Way Stretch" (1960), again with Sellers, "The Bulldog Breed" (1960), "Double Bunk" (1961) "Raising the Wind" (1961), "On the Fiddle" (1961), "The Painted Smile" (1962), "The Americanization of Emily" (1964), "The Family Way" (1966), "Up the Junction" (1968), "Dad's Army" (1971), and a string of sex comedies: "Adventures of a Taxi Driver" (1976), "Confessions of a Driving Instructor" (1976), "Adventures of a Private Eye" (1977), "Confessions from a Holiday Camp" (1977) and "Rosie Dixon – Night Nurse" (1978).


title: Liz Fraser

text: Fraser was also known for her many appearances in British television series, including "Hancock's Half Hour", and the "Avengers" episode "The Girl from Auntie" where she guest starred opposite "Carry On" regular Bernard Cribbins. As Elizabeth Fraser, over a period of nearly six months, she appeared in numerous editions of the Associated-Rediffusion soap opera "Sixpenny Corner" (1955–56). She appeared on Benny Hill's late-1950s TV shows, and in a single sketch in the 23 December 1970 episode of his Thames TV series. This episode was in black and white (owing to the "Colour Strike" by ITV technicians, who wanted to be paid extra for working with the then-new colour TV technology), and hence the sketch was not included in any of the half-hour syndicated episodes of "The Benny Hill Show". However, it is included in the Volume 1 box set of the complete "Benny Hill Show", issued by A&E and Fremantle.


title: Liz Fraser

text: Fraser also starred as Gloria Simpkins in the radio sitcom "Parsley Sidings" alongside Arthur Lowe and Kenneth Connor from 1971 to 1973.


title: Liz Fraser

text: She played Mrs Brent, the mother of a missing girl, in the television production of Agatha Christie's "Nemesis", starring Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, in 1987. Another role was in the "Backtrack" episode of the British police series "The Professionals", as Margery Harper, a glamorous woman who fenced stolen property in her shop.


title: Liz Fraser

text: Her other television work included "Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)", "Crown Court", "Citizen James", "Robin's Nest", "Rumpole of the Bailey", "Last of the Summer Wine", "The Bill", "Foyle's War", "Birds of a Feather", "Minder" and "Holby City".


title: Liz Fraser

text: Fraser married Peter Yonwin, a travelling salesman, in November 1958, but the marriage soon broke down and they were divorced. She married her second husband, Bill Hitchcock, a TV director, in January 1965 at Harrow Register Office. They agreed not to work together, but this changed in 1972 when she appeared in the Rodney Bewes sitcom "Albert!", which Hitchcock co-directed, and again later in the same year, when she acted in "Turnbull's Finest Half-Hour", a comedy series starring Michael Bates and produced by Hitchcock. Hitchcock died from a pulmonary embolism in February 1974, at the age of 45. Fraser was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978 and 1979, undergoing a lumpectomy the first time and having reconstructive surgery at the Marsden in 1979.


title: Liz Fraser

text: Fraser had a half-brother, Philip, 11 years older, the son of her mother from a previous marriage. She supported various charities and was a patron of the London Repertory Company. She was also an enthusiastic and talented poker and bridge player.


title: Liz Fraser

text: She died on 6 September 2018 at Royal Brompton Hospital as a result of complications following an operation.


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: The Promise is a 2021 novel by South African novelist Damon Galgut, published in May 2021, by Umuzi, an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa. It was published by Europa Editions in the US and by Chatto & Windus in the UK.


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: "The Promise" is a family saga spanning four decades, each of which features a death in the family. It concerns the Afrikaner Swart family and their farm located outside Pretoria. The family consists of Manie, his wife Rachel, and their children Anton, Astrid, and Amor.


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: In 1986, Rachel dies after a long illness. Before passing, she expresses her dying wish to Manie that their black domestic servant, Salome, be given ownership of the house in which she resides on the family's property. This promise, overheard by a young Amor, is made by Manie, but he claims no memory of having made it at the wake, and shows no intention of fulfilling it.


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: In 1995, the siblings reunite at the family farm after Manie suffers a fatal snakebite, with Anton having spent 10 years living a transient lifestyle after deserting the army in 1986, Astrid now married with twins, and Amor having lived in England for several years. The will does not make provision for Salome, and instead makes the three co-owners of the land. Anton moves back in to the farmhouse, and assures Amor he will follow through on the promise.


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: In 2004, Anton is in a loveless marriage with his childhood sweetheart, Desirée, and heavily in debt, while Astrid is married to her second husband and Amor is working as a nurse in an HIV ward in Durban, where she lives with her long-term girlfriend. Despite Amor's appeals, the promise has not been honoured, and Astrid and Anton continue to resist her. Secretly, Astrid has been having an affair with her husband's business partner, and after being denied penance by her priest during confession, is murdered in a hijacking. Before her funeral, Amor makes a final appeal to Anton to fulfil their father's promise, but when she refuses to support his plan to sell some of the land on their farm, the matter is unresolved, and Amor returns to Durban, never to see Anton again.


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: In 2018, Anton has sunk into alcoholism and deep depression due to his failed marriage, impotence, trauma over the killing of a civilian in the army, and the feeling that he has wasted his life. One night, after getting into a fight with Desirée in a drunken stupor, Anton commits suicide. Amor, now living in Cape Town after leaving her girlfriend and her job in Durban, is finally informed of his death by Salome. Now the only surviving member of her family, she gifts the now-derelict family farm to Desirée, minus Salome's house, which she legally transfers to her, finally fulfilling her mother's promise. She also gives Salome her share of her father's inheritance, which she has refused to touch up to this point.


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: Galgut's modernist style and narration have been compared to the tradition of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Jon Day of "The Guardian" characterised the novel's narrator as occupying "an indistinct space, halfway between first and third person, drifting from tight focus on a single character to a more piercing, detached view, often within a single paragraph. There's plenty of free indirect discourse, and sections written in something approaching Joycean stream of consciousness."


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: The moral failings of the Swart family has been interpreted as being an allegory for post-apartheid South Africa, and the promise of White South Africans to Black South Africans. Jon Day wrote that "as members of the family find reasons to deny or defer Salome's inheritance, the moral promise – the potential, or expectation – of the next generation of South Africans, and of the nation itself, is shown to be just as compromised as that of their parents."


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: "The Promise" was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize. Galgut is the third writer from South Africa to win the Booker, following Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, who has won twice. Galgut was previously shortlisted twice for the Prize: first in 2003 for "The Good Doctor" and again in 2010 for "In a Strange Room". The novel was also longlisted for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: "The Promise" received favourable reviews, with a cumulative "Rave" rating at the review aggregator website Book Marks, based on 11 book reviews from mainstream literary critics. In a rave review for "Harper's Magazine", Claire Messud called Galgut an "extraordinary" novelist, writing, "Like other remarkable novels, it is uniquely itself, and greater than the sum of its parts. "The Promise" evokes when you reach the final page, a profound interior shift that is all but physical. This, as an experience of art, happens only rarely, and is to be prized." James Wood of "The New Yorker" praised Galgut's narration, writing, "Galgut is at once very close to his troubled characters and somewhat ironically distant, as if the novel were written in two time signatures, fast and slower. And, miraculously, this narrative distance does not alienate our intimacy but emerges as a different form of knowing."


title: The Promise (Galgut novel)

text: "The Promise" was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books selected by a panel of experts, and announced by the BBC and The Reading Agency in April 2022, to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II in June 2022.


title: Andrei Rublev

text: Andrei Rublev ( , also transliterated as "Andrey Rublyov") was a Muscovite icon painter born in the 1360s who died between 1427 and 1430 in Moscow. He is considered to be one of the greatest medieval Russian painters of Orthodox Christian icons and frescos.


title: Andrei Rublev

text: Little information survives about his life; even where he was born is unknown. He probably lived in the Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, near Moscow, under Nikon of Radonezh, who became hegumen after the death of Sergius of Radonezh in 1392. The first mention of Rublev is in 1405, when he decorated icons and frescos for the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Moscow Kremlin, in company with Theophanes the Greek and Prokhor of Gorodets. His name was the last of the list of masters, as the junior both by rank and by age. Theophanes was an important Byzantine master, who moved to Russia and is considered to have trained Rublev.


title: Andrei Rublev

text: Chronicles tell us that together with Daniel Chorny he painted the Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir in 1408 as well as the Trinity Cathedral in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius between 1425 and 1427. After Daniel's death, Andrei came to Moscow's Andronikov Monastery where he painted his last work, the frescoes of the Saviour Cathedral. He is also believed to have painted at least one of the miniatures in the Khitrovo Gospels.


title: Andrei Rublev

text: The only work authenticated as entirely his is the icon of the Trinity (c. 1410, currently in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow). It is based on an earlier icon known as the "Hospitality of Abraham" (illustrating ). Rublev removed the figures of Abraham and Sarah from the scene, and through a subtle use of composition and symbolism changed the subject to focus on the Mystery of the Trinity.


title: Andrei Rublev

text: In Rublev's art two traditions are combined: the highest asceticism and the classic harmony of Byzantine mannerism. The characters of his paintings are always peaceful and calm. After some time his art came to be perceived as the ideal of Eastern Church painting and of Orthodox iconography.


title: Andrei Rublev

text: Rublev died at Andronikov Monastery between 1427 and 1430. Rublev's work influenced many artists including Dionisy. The Stoglavi Sobor (1551) promulgated Rublev's icon style as a model for church painting. Since 1959 the Andrei Rublev Museum at the Andronikov Monastery has displayed his and related art.


title: Andrei Rublev

text: The Russian Orthodox Church canonized Rublev as a saint in 1988, celebrating his feast day on 29 January and/or on 4 July.


title: Andrei Rublev

text: In 1966, Andrei Tarkovsky made a film "Andrei Rublev", loosely based on the artist's life. This became the first (and perhaps only) film produced in the Soviet era to treat the artist as a world-historic figure and Christianity as an axiom of Russia's historical identity, during a turbulent period in the history of Russia.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Les Diaboliques (, released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends) is a 1955 French psychological horror thriller film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse and Charles Vanel. It is based on the novel "She Who Was No More" ("Celle qui n'était plus") by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The story blends elements of thriller and horror, with the plot focusing on a woman and her husband's mistress who conspire to murder the man. The film was the 10th-highest grossing film of the year in France, with a total of 3,674,380 admissions. The film also received the 1954 Louis Delluc Prize.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Clouzot, after finishing "The Wages of Fear", optioned the screenplay rights, preventing Alfred Hitchcock from making the film. This movie helped inspire Hitchcock's "Psycho". Robert Bloch, the author of the novel "Psycho", stated in an interview that his all-time favorite horror film was "Les Diaboliques".


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: A second-rate boarding school in Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine, in the Paris metropolitan area, is run by the tyrannical and cruel Michel Delassalle. The school is owned, though, by Delassalle's teacher wife, the frail Christina, an emigrée from Venezuela. Michel also has a relationship with Nicole Horner, another teacher at the school. Rather than antagonism, the two women have a somewhat close relationship, primarily based on their apparent mutual hatred of Michel. He is cruel to the students, beats Nicole, and mocks Christina about her heart condition.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Unable to stand his mistreatment any longer, Nicole devises a plan to get rid of Michel forever. Though hesitant at first, Christina ultimately consents to help Nicole. Using a threatened divorce to lure Michel to Nicole's apartment building in Niort, a town several hundred kilometers away, Christina sedates him. The two women then drown him in a bathtub and, driving back to the school, dump his body in the neglected swimming pool. When his corpse floats to the top, they think it will appear to have been an accident. Almost everything goes according to their plans until the body fails to surface. Michel's corpse is nowhere to be found when the pool is drained. Then, the suit that Michel had been wearing when they drowned him is returned from the dry cleaners. When the proprietor of the dry cleaners also returns a key to a room in nearby hotel that was with the clothes, Christina goes to the room. There the cleaning man tells her that Michel had kept the room for awhile but was rarely if ever seen and stored nothing there.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Nicole sees in the paper that the police have found the corpse. However, when Christina goes to the morgue, she finds it is not actually Michel's body. There, she meets Alfred Fichet, a retired senior policeman now working as a private detective. He becomes involved in the case, much to Nicole's chagrin.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Christina, Nicole and other teachers find a student who claims that Michel has ordered him to rake leaves as punishment for breaking a window. After hearing this, Christina's heart condition grows worse, and her doctors fear she may die soon unless she maintains strict bed rest. When the school photograph is taken, the result seems to show Michel's spectral figure in the window behind the students. Unnerved, Nicole leaves the school; she asks Christina to come too, but she is too ill and afraid.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Christina, overcome by fear, tells Alfred everything. He does not believe her, but he investigates the pool. That night, Christina hears noises and wanders round the school. When she realizes that someone is following her, she runs back to her room. There she finds Michel's corpse submerged in the bathtub, which is full of water. Michel rises from the tub, and Christina has a heart attack and dies. Michel and Nicole have set up Christina from the beginning, with Michel acting as a vengeful ghost to scare Christina to death. However, Alfred hears their celebration and figures out everything, telling them they will get 15 to 20 years, depending on the judge.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The school is closed in the wake of the scandal. As the children and teachers leave, the same boy who had earlier broken a window breaks another. When asked how he got his slingshot back, the boy says that Christina gave it to him.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: It was Clouzot's wife Vera who drew his attention to the Boileau-Narcejac novel. Clouzot read it through the night and optioned the rights in the morning. He and his brother Jean (who took the pseudonym Jérôme Géronimi) spent 18 months adapting the novel. In the book, the action takes place between Enghien-les-Bains and Nantes but Clouzot transposed it to Saint-Cloud and Niort, his own birthplace. He wasn’t particularly interested in the insurance scam that was the criminal motive in the book. He switched the gender of the murderers and invented the private-school setting. Susan Hayward suggests that the gender switch made by Clouzot was caused not so much by censorship considerations (in the source novel, Lucienne and Mireille turn out to be a pair of lesbian lovers) but by his desire to create a sizeable role for his wife. The book has only one principal female character, Lucienne, since the supposed victim, Mireille disappears early on. Vera with her distinctly feminine demeanor was ill-suited for the role of Lucienne (called Nicole in the film). So in Clouzot’s script, Mireille (now named Christina) is the one who has a weak heart, and is the object of manipulation of her husband Michel and his mistress Nicole. Clouzot also followed the convention that the culprits should be exposed by the detective in the end (another departure from the novel where the authors let them get away).


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Clouzot cast Simone Signoret in the role of Nicole. He previously filmed her husband Yves Montand in "The Wages of Fear", and the two couples became friends. The director was also aware of Vera’s limitations as an actress and needed someone to lend her support in such a demanding role. Signoret signed an eight-week contract but the shooting actually took 16 weeks. She ended up being paid for only eight weeks of work despite staying until the end of the filming because she neglected to read the small print. Signoret’s co-star Paul Meurisse also recalls in his memoirs that the actress was further bemused by Clouzot’s constant attempts to find clever ways of lighting Vera's face while muting the light on Signoret so she wouldn't upstage his wife.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Clouzot knew Paul Meurisse back from 1939 when the latter was trying to pursue a singing career. Clouzot then was trying to sell his song lyrics to Edith Piaf, Meurisse's lover at the time. By the late 1940s Meurisse had become an established stage and screen actor, known for the roles of icy and sophisticated villains, and he seemed a natural choice for the role of Michel.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The film featured two Clouzot regulars: Pierre Larquey as M. Drain and Noël Roquevert as M. Herboux. Michel Serrault made his screen debut as M. Raymond, one of the schoolteachers. Charles Vanel—who previously co-starred in Clouzot's "The Wages of Fear"—was cast as the seemingly inept Inspector Fichet.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Clouzot also auditioned 300 children and selected 35. Among them were Jean-Philippe Smet (the future Johnny Hallyday), Patrick Dewaere's brother Yves-Marie Maurin, and Georges Poujouly, who previously received acclaim in René Clément's "Forbidden Games".


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The filming began on August 18, 1954 and finished on November 30 the same year. Clouzot asked his assistant Michel Romanoff to find a suitable filming location for the boarding school. The latter discovered a decrepit chateau in L'Etang-la-Ville between Saint-Cloud and the Bois-du-Boulogne. The building and its surroundings matched the director’s vision perfectly since they projected the desired mood of decay and neglect. The adjacent swimming pool was dirty and full of slime. Clouzot spent five weeks shooting at this location.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The screenplay placed Nicole’s house in Niort, but the actual house used for the filming was in Montfort-l'Amaury, just opposite the building that previously appeared in Clouzot's "Le Corbeau". The morgue scenes were shot in the Institut Médico-légal in Paris. The rest was filmed at Saint-Maurice Studios southeast of Paris which took additional nine weeks.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The cinematographer Armand Thirard used two camera crews to speed up the shooting that was falling behind the schedule. Despite his efforts, the filming took twice longer than the projected 48 days.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Originally the film was to be called "Les Veuves" (‘The widows’) but this was deemed unmarketable. Eleven weeks into filming it was changed to "Les Démoniaques". Eventually it was renamed "Les Diaboliques" but this title was already used for a collection of short stories by the 19th century writer Barbey d'Aurevilly. Clouzot was permitted to use this title but only on the condition if he gave the author a proper mention. He did it by opening the film with a quote from the preface to d’Aurevilly's work: "A portrait is always moral when it is tragic and shows the horror of the things it represents."


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The film created a sensation upon its original release and was a success at the box office with 3,674,380 admissions in France alone. It has often been likened to the films of Alfred Hitchcock; some sources say that Alfred Hitchcock missed out on purchasing the rights to the Boileau and Narcejac novel by just a few hours, Clouzot getting to the authors first. The end credit contains an early example of an "anti-spoiler message."


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Bosley Crowther gave the film an enthusiastic review in "The New York Times", calling it "one of the dandiest mystery dramas that has shown here" and "a pip of a murder thriller, ghost story and character play rolled into one". He added "the writing and the visual construction are superb, and the performance by top-notch French actors on the highest level of sureness and finesse." "The Chicago Daily Tribune" wrote, "If you like a good mystery and can stand it fairly morbid and uncompromising as to detail, this is one of the best offerings in a long time." The reviewer added, "You may suspect, as I did, one of the answers as the film nears its finale, but if you solve it all, you've missed your profession." "Variety" was more critical: “Although this has a few hallucinating bits of terror, the film is primarily a creaky-door type of melodrama. Its macabre aspects and lack of sympathy for the characters make this a hybrid which flounders between a blasting look at human infamy and an out-and-out contrived whodunit." The National Board of Review named it among the best foreign films of 1955, and called it "a genuine thriller—a shocking, satisfying chunk of "Grand Guignol" psychological suspense."


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: British reviews were negative on first release. Milton Shulman in the "Sunday Express" accused the film of "calculated malevolence," and commented that "it is no trick to sicken an audience by such blunt methods as these." C.A. Lejeune in "The Observer" called it "extremely clever and very horrid," and complained about "a vogue at the moment for the horrid in entertainment." Reg Whiteley in the "Daily Mirror" described it as "a suspenseful but sordid slice of French life," and exclaimed: "Just how horrible can films get?"


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: Roger Ebert, reviewing the 1995 re-release, wrote: "The famous plot of the movie usually deceives first-time viewers, at least up to a point. The final revelations are somewhat disappointing, but Clouzot doesn't linger over them. The most disturbing elements of the movie are implied, not seen." "Time Out" commented that the film "makes for a great piece of Guignol misanthropy" where "everyone is in the end a victim, and their actions operate like snares setting traps that leave them grasping for survival."


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, "Les Diaboliques" holds an approval rating of 96%, based on 47 reviews, and an average rating of 8.48/10. Its consensus reads, "Cruel, dark, but undeniably effective, "Diabolique" is a suspense thriller as effective as Hitchcock's best work and with a brilliant twist ending."


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The film gained additional press when, only five years after its release, Véra Clouzot died of a heart attack, aged 46, somewhat mirroring her character in the film, who also had heart problems.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: "Les Diaboliques" is now considered a classic of the horror genre and film in general. Kim Newman wrote in "Empire": "The horrific mystery has lost only a fraction of its power over the years, though literally dozens of films (see: "Deathtrap", "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte", "Games" etc.) have borrowed part or all of its tricky storyline. This was one of the first movies to depend on a twist ending which forces you to reassess everything you thought you had been told earlier in the film." The British Film Institute included it in their list of the 100 Best Thrillers of All Time, calling it "a compelling, grisly thriller... capped by an unforgettable twist ending." "The Guardian" listed is as No 19 among the 25 best horror films of all time.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The scene in which Christina's husband emerges from the bathtub ranked #49 on Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments".


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: In 1964, TV writer/producer/director Joseph Stefano was evidently inspired by this movie to do a pilot for a thriller anthology series for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). Called "The Unknown," the pilot failed to take off. So Stefano rewrote and reshot it—adding fantasy elements in the process—as an episode of "The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)" called "The Forms of Things Unknown." Both versions starred Vera Miles as Kassia Paine, Barbara Rush as Leonora Raymond, and Scott Marlowe as their sadistic blackmailer-returned-from-the-dead, Andre Pavan.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The 1967 film "Games", written by Gene R. Kearney and directed by Curtis Harrington, and starring James Caan and Katharine Ross, has a different basic situation, but similar twists at the end, and again features Simone Signoret as the corrupt woman of mystery.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: British filmmaker Jimmy Sangster cited it as a major influence on his writing and directing, stating: "most of my 'psycho' type movies ... were derivative of each other and they all went back to my original inspiration: "Les Diaboliques". I'm not the only one to follow that path. I guess I just did it more than most."


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: An American version of "Les Diaboliques", titled "Reflections of Murder", was made by ABC-TV in 1974 with Tuesday Weld, Joan Hackett, and Sam Waterston. In 1993, another made-for-television movie remake was made; this one was titled "House of Secrets", and it starred Melissa Gilbert. In 1996, the film was remade again as "Diabolique", adapted by Don Roos, directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik, and starring Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani in the leading female roles, with Chazz Palminteri as the husband and Kathy Bates as the detective.


title: Les Diaboliques (film)

text: The film was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection in July 1999 and was then re-released on DVD and Blu-ray in May 2011. The latter release features selected-scene commentary by French-film scholar Kelley Conway, a new video introduction by Serge Bromberg, and a new video interview with novelist and film critic Kim Newman.


title: Dissociative

text: Dissociatives, colloquially dissos, are a subclass of hallucinogens which distort perception of sight and sound and produce feelings of detachment – dissociation – from the environment and/or self. Although many kinds of drugs are capable of such action, dissociatives are unique in that they do so in such a way that they produce hallucinogenic effects, which may include dissociation, a general decrease in sensory experience, hallucinations, dream-like states or anesthesia. Some of these substances, which are nonselective in action and affect the dopamine and/or opioid systems, may be capable of inducing euphoria or symptoms which are more akin to the effects of certain “hard drugs” or common drugs of abuse. This is likely why dissociatives are considered to be addictive with a fair to moderate potential for abuse, unlike psychedelics. Despite some dissociatives, such as phencyclidine (PCP) possessing stimulating properties, most dissociatives seem to have a general depressant effect and can produce sedation, respiratory depression, nausea, disorientation, analgesia, anesthesia, ataxia, cognitive and memory impairment as well as amnesia.


title: Dissociative

text: The effects of dissociatives can include sensory dissociation, hallucinations, mania, catalepsy, analgesia and amnesia. According to Pender (1972), "the state has been designated as dissociative anesthesia since the patient truly seems disassociated from his environment." Both Pender (1970) and Johnstone et al. (1959) reported that patients under anaesthesia due to either ketamine or phencyclidine were prone to purposeless movements and had hallucinations (or "dreams") during and after anaesthesia. Some patients found the hallucinations euphoric while others found them disturbing.


title: Dissociative

text: At sub-anesthetic doses, dissociatives alter many of the same cognitive and perceptual processes affected by other hallucinogenic drugs such as mescaline, LSD, and psilocybin; hence they are often contrasted and also considered hallucinogenic. Perhaps the most significant subjective differences between dissociatives and the classical hallucinogens (such as LSD and mescaline) are the detaching effects, including: depersonalization, the feeling of being unreal, disconnected from one's self, or unable to control one's actions; and derealization, the feeling that the outside world is unreal or that one is dreaming.


title: Dissociative

text: Many dissociatives such as ketamine are used as anesthetics for surgery or pain relief in medical contexts such as in hospitals. However, due to possible psychotomimetic reactions they are sometimes used reluctantly. Certain morphinan dissociatives such as Dextromethorphan are also used in sub-psychoactive dosages to suppress coughing.


title: Dissociative

text: Ketamine is also currently being studied and is showing promising results as a possible fast-acting antidepressant It may also function as a possible palliative treatment for C-PTSD and chronic pain.


title: Dissociative

text: Some dissociative drugs are used recreationally. Ketamine and nitrous oxide are club drugs. Phencyclidine (PCP or angel dust) is available as a street drug. Dextromethorphan-based cough syrups (often labeled DXM) are taken by some users in higher than medically recommended levels for their dissociative effects. Historically, chloroform and diethyl ether have been used recreationally (as was nitrous oxide, at laughing gas parties).


title: Mireille Darc

text: Mireille Darc (; 15 May 1938 – 28 August 2017) was a French model and actress. She appeared as a lead character in Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film "Weekend". Darc was a Knight of the Legion of Honour and Commander of the National Order of Merit. Alain Delon was her longtime co-star and companion.


title: Mireille Darc

text: Born Mireille Christiane Gabrielle Aimée Aigroz in Toulon, she attended the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Toulon and moved to Paris in 1959.


title: Mireille Darc

text: Darc's debut came in Claude Barma's television drama "Du côté de l'enfer" (aka, "La Grande Brétèche", 1960). Her first leading role came in another production for French television, Jean Prat's "Hauteclaire" (1961). She starred in Jean-Luc Godard's film "Weekend (Week-end", 1967) as Corinne, her highest profile role for international critics; as Christine in "The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire", 1972) and "The Return of the Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (Le retour du grand blond", 1974) and alongside Alain Delon and Louis de Funès in several films: "Pouic-Pouic" (1963), "High Lifers (Les Bons Vivants" (1965), "Jeff" (1969), "Borsalino" (uncredited, 1970), "The Love Mates (Madly", 1970), "Icy Breasts (Les Seins de glace", 1974), "Death of a Corrupt Man (Mort d'un pourri", 1977), "Man in a Hurry (L'Homme pressé", 1977), and the television series "" (2003).


title: Mireille Darc

text: In the 1980s, Darc's career was interrupted by open-heart surgery following a car accident, in which she was seriously injured, and her separation from Alain Delon after fifteen years together. She quit her film career, but she returned to television in the 1990s. In 2006, French President Jacques Chirac awarded Darc the Legion of Honour.


title: Mireille Darc

text: In 2013, Darc underwent further open heart surgery, and during 2016 she suffered several hemorrhages. She died on 28 August 2017 in Paris in a coma at the age of 79.


title: Worker cooperative

text: A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision-making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which management is elected by every worker-owner who each have one vote.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Worker cooperatives rose to prominence during the Industrial Revolution as part of the labour movement. As employment moved to industrial areas and job sectors declined, workers began organizing and controlling businesses for themselves. Worker cooperatives were originally sparked by "critical reaction to industrial capitalism and the excesses of the industrial revolution." Some worker cooperatives were designed to "cope with the evils of unbridled capitalism and the insecurities of wage labor".


title: Worker cooperative

text: The philosophy that underpinned the cooperative movement stemmed from the socialist writings of thinkers including Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. Robert Owen, considered by many as the father of the cooperative movement, made his fortune in the cotton trade but believed in putting his workers in a good environment with access to education for themselves and their children. These ideas were put into effect successfully in the cotton mills of New Lanark, Scotland. It was here that the first co-operative store was opened. Spurred on by the success of this, he had the idea of forming "villages of co-operation" where workers would drag themselves out of poverty by growing their own food, making their own clothes and ultimately becoming self-governing. He tried to form such communities in Orbiston in Scotland and in New Harmony, Indiana in the United States of America, but both communities failed.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Similar early experiments were made in the early 19th century and by 1830 there were several hundred co-operatives. Dr William King made Owen's ideas more workable and practical. He believed in starting small and realized that the working classes would need to set up co-operatives for themselves, so he saw his role as one of instruction. He founded a monthly periodical called "The Co-operator", the first edition of which appeared on 1 May 1828. This gave a mixture of co-operative philosophy and practical advice about running a shop using cooperative principles.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The first successful cooperative organization was the consumer-owned Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, established in England in 1844. The Rochdale Pioneers established the ‘Rochdale Principles’ on which they ran their cooperative. This became the basis for the development and growth of the modern cooperative movement. As the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution was forcing more and more skilled workers into poverty, these tradesmen decided to band together to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford.


title: Worker cooperative

text: With lessons from prior failed attempts at co-operation in mind, they designed the now famous Rochdale Principles, and over a period of four months, they struggled to pool one pound sterling per person for a total of 28 pounds of capital. On 21 December 1844, they opened their store with a very meager selection of butter, sugar, flour, oatmeal, and a few candles. Within three months, they expanded their selection to include tea and tobacco, and they were soon known for providing high quality, unadulterated goods.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The International organization representing worker cooperatives is CICOPA. CICOPA has two regional organizations: CECOP- CICOPA Europe and CICOPA Americas.


title: Worker cooperative

text: When the current cooperative movement resurfaced in the 1960s, it developed mostly on a new system of "collective ownership" where par value shares were issued as symbols of egalitarian voting rights. Typically, a member may only own one share to maintain the egalitarian ethos. Once brought in as a member and after a period of time on probation usually so the new candidate can be evaluated, they would be given the power to manage the coop without "ownership" in the traditional sense. In the UK, this system is known as common ownership.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Some of these early cooperatives still exist, and most new worker cooperatives follow their lead and develop a relationship to capital that is more radical than the previous system of equity share ownership.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In the United States, there is no coherent legislation regarding worker cooperatives nationally, much less Federal laws, so most worker cooperatives make use of traditional consumer cooperative law and try to fine-tune it for their purposes. In some cases, the members (workers) of the cooperative in fact "own" the enterprise by buying a share that represents a fraction of the market value of the cooperative.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In Britain, this type of cooperative was traditionally known as a "producer cooperative"; and while it was overshadowed by the consumer and agricultural types, it also made up a small section of its own within the national apex body, the Cooperative Union. The 'new wave' of worker cooperatives that took off in Britain in the mid-1970s joined the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM) as a separate federation. Buoyed up by the alternative and ecological movements and by the political drive to create jobs, the sector peaked at around 2,000 enterprises. However, the growth rate slowed, the sector contracted, and in 2001 ICOM merged with the Co-operative Union (which was the federal body for consumer cooperatives) to create Co-operatives UK, thus reunifying the cooperative sector.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Since 2006, Co-operatives UK's Worker Cooperative Council wrote and updated a worker co-operative code, the booklet that "sets out what anyone should expect and should work together to achieve, as a member of a worker co-operative".


title: Worker cooperative

text: In 2018, Google announced a $1 million grant to a platform cooperative development kit in collaboration with 5 pilot cooperatives, which are all worker-owned.


title: Worker cooperative

text: According to an analysis of all businesses in Uruguay between 1997 and 2009, worker cooperatives have a 29% smaller chance of closure after controlling for variables such as industry. In Italy, worker owned cooperatives that have been created by workers buying a business when it is facing a closure or put up to sale have a 3-year survival rate of 87%, compared to 48% of all Italian businesses. A 2012 study of Spanish and French worker cooperatives found that they “have been more resilient than conventional enterprises during the economic crisis." In France, the three year survival rate of worker cooperatives is 80%-90%, compared to the 66% overall survival rate for all businesses. During the 2008 economic crisis, the number of workers in worker owned cooperatives in France increased by 4.2%, while employment in other businesses decreased by 0.7%.


title: Worker cooperative

text: A 2006 study found that wages on co-ops pay in Italy were 15 to 16 percent lower than those that capitalist firms paid on average, and were more volatile, while employment was more stable. After controlling for variables, such as schooling, age, gender, occupation, industry, location, firm-size, user cost of capital, fixed costs, and deviations in its real sales, this changed to 14 percent. The authors suggest this might be due to worker cooperatives being more likely than capitalist firms to cut wages instead of laying off employees during periods of economic difficulty, or because co-op


title: Worker cooperative

text: workers may be willing to accept lower wages than workers in capitalist firms. A study looking at all firms in Uruguay concluded that when controlling for variables such as industry, firm size, gender, age and tenure, workers employed in a worker-managed firm earn 3 percent higher wages compared with similar workers employed in the conventional firms. However, this wage premium declines significantly with increasing pay and becomes negative for top earners. According to research by Virginie Pérotin, which looked at two decades worth of international data, the tendency for greater wage flexibility and employment stability helps explain why some research observes higher and others lower pay in worker cooperatives relative to conventional businesses. A study by "The Democracy Collaborative" found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70 to 80 percent.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In the Mondragon Corporation, the world's largest worker cooperative, the pay ratio between the lowest and the highest earner was 1:9 in 2018. The ratio is decided by a democratic vote by the worker-members.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In France, the pay ratio between the highest and lowest paid 10% of the employees is 14% lower in worker cooperatives than in otherwise similar conventional firms.


title: Worker cooperative

text: According to Virginie Pérotin's research which looked at two decades worth of international data, worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses. Another 1987 study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. A 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.


title: Worker cooperative

text: According to a study drawing on a questionnaire from the population of the Italian province of Trento, worker cooperatives are the only form of enterprise that fosters social trust between employees. A survey conducted in Seoul suggests that in conventional firms, employees become less committed to their job as their work becomes more demanding; however, this was not the case in worker cooperatives. In the US, home health aides in worker cooperatives were significantly more satisfied with their jobs than in other agencies. A study from 2013 about home aid workers found that "Home health aides at the worker-owned, participative decision-making organization were significantly more satisfied with their jobs than those at other agencies." One 1995 study from the US also indicates that “employees who embrace an increased influence and participation in workplace decisions also reported greater job satisfaction” and a 2011 study in France found that worker-owned businesses “had a positive effect on workers’ job satisfaction.” One 2019 study indicates that “the impact on the happiness of workers is generally positive”.


title: Worker cooperative

text: A 1995 analysis published in Ecological Economics suggests that "cooperatives will tend to use natural resource inputs more efficiently and will be less growth oriented than corporations."


title: Worker cooperative

text: Many definitions exist as to what qualifies as a workers' cooperative. CICOPA, the International Organisation of Industrial, Artisanal and Service Producers’ Cooperatives, gives an 8-page definition in their World Declaration on Workers' Cooperatives, which was approved by the International Co-operative Alliance General Assembly in September 2005. Below is the section on the basic characteristics of workers' cooperatives:


title: Worker cooperative

text: Workers' cooperatives also follow the Rochdale Principles and values, which are a set of core principles for the operation of cooperatives. They were first set out by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in Rochdale, England, in 1844 and have formed the basis for the principles on which co-operatives around the world operate to this day.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Even though there is no universally accepted definition of a workers' cooperative, they can be considered to be businesses that make a product or offer a service to sell for profit where the workers are members or worker-owners. Worker-owners work in the business, govern it and manage it. Unlike with conventional firms, ownership and decision-making power of a worker cooperative should be vested solely with the worker-owners and ultimate authority rests with the worker-owners as a whole. Worker-owners control the resources of the cooperative and the work process, such as wages or hours of work.


title: Worker cooperative

text: As mentioned above, the majority—if not all—of the workers in a given worker cooperative enterprise are worker-owners, although some casual or wage workers may be employed with whom profits and decision making are not necessarily shared equally. Workers also often undergo a trial or screening period (such as three or six months) before being allowed to have full voting rights.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Participation is based on one vote per worker-owner, regardless of the number of shares or equity owned by each worker-owner. Voting rights are not tied to investment or patronage in the workers' co-operative, and only worker-owners can vote on decisions that affect them. In practice, worker co-operatives have to accommodate a range of interests to survive and have experimented with different voice and voting arrangements to accommodate the interests of trade unions, local authorities, those who have invested proportionately more labor, or through attempts to mix individual and collective forms of worker-ownership and control.


title: Worker cooperative

text: As noted by theorists and practitioners alike, the importance of capital should be subordinated to labor in workers' cooperatives. Indeed, Adams et al. see workers' cooperatives as "labor-ist" rather than "capital-ist":


title: Worker cooperative

text: "Labor is the hiring factor, therefore the voting and property rights are assigned to the people who do the work and not to capital, even though the worker-members supply capital through membership fees and retained earnings...Any profit or loss after normal operating expenses is assigned to members on the basis of their labor contribution."


title: Worker cooperative

text: Nevertheless, recent developments in the co-operative movement have started to shift thinking more clearly towards multi-stakeholder perspectives. This has resulted in repeated attempts to develop model rules that differentiate control rights from investment and profit-sharing rights. Workers' co-operatives have often been seen as an alternative or "third way" to the domination of labor by either capital or the state (see below for a comparison). Co-operatives traditionally combine social benefit interests with capitalistic property-right interests. Co-operatives achieve a mix of social and capital purposes by democratically governing distribution questions by and between equal controlling members. Democratic oversight of decisions to equitably distribute assets and other benefits means capital ownership is arranged in a way for social benefit inside the organization. External societal benefit is also encouraged by incorporating the operating-principle of cooperation between co-operatives.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In short, workers' co-operatives are organized to serve the needs of worker-owners by generating benefits (which may or may not be profits) for the worker-owners rather than external investors. This worker-driven orientation makes them fundamentally different from other corporations. Additional cooperative structural characteristics and guiding principles further distinguish them from other business models. For example, worker-owners may not believe that profit maximization is the best or only goal for their co-operative or they may follow the Rochdale Principles. As another example, worker cooperatives’ flattened management structure and more egalitarian ideology often give workers more options and greater freedom in resolving work-place problems.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Profits (or losses) earned by the worker's cooperative are shared by worker-owners. Salaries generally have a low ratio difference which ideally should be "guided by principles of proportionality, external solidarity and internal solidarity" (such as a two to one ratio between lowest and highest earner), and often are equal for all workers. Salaries can be calculated according to skill, seniority or time worked and can be raised or lowered in good times or bad to ensure job security.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Worker cooperatives have a wide variety of internal structures. Worker control can be exercised directly or indirectly by worker-owners. If exercised indirectly, members of representative decision-making bodies (e.g. a board of directors) must be elected by the worker-owners (who in turn hire the management) and be subject to removal by the worker-owners. This is a hierarchical structure similar to that of a conventional business, with a board of directors and various grades of manager, with the difference being that the board of directors is elected.


title: Worker cooperative

text: If exercised directly, all members meet regularly to make—and vote on—decisions on how the co-operative is run. Direct workers' cooperatives sometimes use consensus decision-making to make decisions. Direct worker control ensures a formally flat management structure instead of a hierarchical one. This structure is influenced by activist collectives and civic organizations, with all members allowed and expected to play a managerial role. Such structures may be associated with political aims such as anarchism, libertarian socialism, distributism, and participatory economics.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Some workers' cooperatives also practice job rotation or balanced job complexes to overcome inequalities of power as well as to give workers a wider range of experiences and exposure to the different jobs in a workplace so that they are better able to make decisions about the whole workplace. The Mondragon Bookstore & Coffeehouse (now defunct) is a good example of a workplace that used this practice.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The term 'worker collective' is sometimes used to describe worker cooperatives which are also collectives: that is, managed without hierarchies such as permanent manager roles.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Common ownership is practiced by large numbers of voluntary associations and non-profit organizations as well as implicitly by all public bodies. Most co-operatives have some elements of common ownership, but some parts of their capital may be individually owned.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The principle of common ownership was codified in UK law in the Industrial Common Ownership Act 1976 which defines a "common ownership enterprise" as:


title: Worker cooperative

text: a body as to which the registrar has given, and has not revoked, a certificate stating that he is satisfied—


title: Worker cooperative

text: The principle is typically implemented through inserting two clauses in a company's memorandum of association, or an industrial and provident society's rules:


title: Worker cooperative

text: British law has been reluctant to entrench common ownership, insisting that a three-quarters majority of a company's members, by passing a "special resolution", have the right to amend a company's memorandum of association. This three-quarters majority above applies to most limited companies, except that it is possible since 2006 to entrench altruistic dissolution in an industrial and provident society registered as a "community benefit society" ("bencom"). This statutory asset lock is not available to societies registered as 'bona fide' co-operatives. However, such entrenchment has also been written into the community interest company (CIC), a new legal status that was introduced in 2005.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In a world of predominately traditional businesses, Worker Cooperatives have developed a wide variety of financing methods over time in order to survive and thrive in the market. Cooperative businesses often employ multiple forms of financing together as each technique tends to be unsustainable on its own.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Internal Capital Accounts (ICA's), also known as Member Buy-Ins, are shares of capital distributed equally and exclusively to workers. They act as a mandated buy-in loan to the cooperative that generates financial return over time in the form of interest. ICA's are typically equal to a specific term's wages, like an annual salary, that is given a fixed rate of return that is not directly tied to the cooperative's losses or profits.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Cooperatives in low-income communities often raise donations to assist workers in meeting the ICA Buy-In requirement, as in the case of the Mariposa Food Coop. This method of financing is one of the most prominent due to its high rates of success in maintaining financial stability for cooperatives. When the cooperative allocates profits, a significant portion are paid back to the workers through these capital accounts. The Mondragon Corporation utilizes a 10-20-70 system, in which 10% of profits are placed into community development and infrastructure programs, 20% back into corporate reserves, and 70% into individual capital accounts.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In certain cases, like the Mumbai Tiffin Box Supplier's Association in India, Member Buy-In's allow cooperatives to become completely financially independent from other sources of investment.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Committed Capital, also known as Preferred Stock, are shares of capital offered to external accredited investors that are not a part of the cooperative. In order to maintain workers' ownership over the firm's decisions, these external investors have limited to no voting rights within the cooperative. Committed Capital often have non-guaranteed rates of return. However, Equal Exchange, a U.S.-based worker cooperative, offers preferred stock that still ensures at least a 5% return rate even during periods of economic recession.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Because the communal ownership model of cooperatives makes it difficult for investors to determine the credit and reliability of their investments, they often rely on close analysis of the structure, management, and experience of each cooperative in order to decide in which one to acquire stock.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In many countries, the state provides loans or direct funding for worker cooperatives' production, community programs, and investments. Government funding is especially important in assisting newly developing cooperatives in securing finances for the initial stages of business.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In Spain, the Basque Government assists in financing cooperatives within the Mondragon Corporation and for many of Mondragon's education and healthcare programs. Additionally, the Basque Government financially assists Mondragon in acquiring declining capitalist businesses and transitioning them into worker cooperatives.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The Indian government provides financing, often in the form of loans, to new cooperatives. The government of Kerala and the Khadi Development and Village Industries Commission in India often provide initial loans for cooperatives in order to help them eventually transition into relying primarily on Internal Capital Accounts.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In 1978, the UK government set up the National Cooperative Development Agency and in subsequent years common ownership was promoted as a model to create employment, leading approximately 100 local authorities to establish cooperative development agencies. The Industrial Common Ownership Act authorized the Secretary of State for Industry to make grants and loans to organizations that assisted common ownership and cooperative enterprises. Grants were made to the Industrial Common Ownership Movement and the Scottish Co-operatives Development Committee, while loans were administered through Common Ownership Finance Ltd. However, this section was repealed in 2004.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The Italian Government, through the Legge Marcora (Marcora Law) provisions of 1985, reformed in 2001, has established a financing mechanism of patient capital for creating worker cooperatives, social cooperatives, and for worker buyouts of firms that are in trouble or that have retiring owners, especially for traditional businesses that require extra financial assistance while transitioning or converting into cooperatives. Originally, this state investment was equivalent to three times the collective internal capital account investment from workers. As of 2001, the state investment is on a 1:1 ratio with workers' capital contributions.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Canadian worker cooperatives also rely on government funding to finance their early development. State sources of finance, which often come in the form of grants, include the Quebec Local Development Centre, the Co-op Development Initiative, and the Young Entrepreneurs program.


title: Worker cooperative

text: When the owner of a traditional business decides to resign and transition the ownership of the firm into a workers' cooperative, they often provide initial financial investment. However, this typically is not a sustainable form of capital investment and cooperatives often use it to begin business and then transition to depend on other forms of finance. Examples of this method of financing include Select Machines, Inc., Metis Construction, A Slice of New York, and Rock City Roasters.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The transition process often takes several years and is executed in 5 stages. First, the selling owners must evaluate if a transition is an appropriate step for the business and must consult with advisors and employees regarding new leadership changes. Second, the selling owner must employ specialists to determine the legal and financial logistics of the transition. Third, a transition group or the selling owner must organize the new managerial structure, business practices, and ownership policies. Fourth, legal contracts are signed to establish the new management while methods of finance are drawn upon to jumpstart the newfound cooperative. Fifth, an adjustment period occurs in which training is provided for workers regarding new business policies.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Most finance firms that specialize in providing capital for worker cooperatives are Cooperative Funds and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI's). CDFI's often do not supply the majority of finance for cooperatives, but act as collateral for other forms of investment and/or as support for another form of finance. Additionally, many cooperatives utilize external finance for improvements to their physical capital in order to improve productivity. Several U.S. CDFIs include the Cooperative Fund of New England, the Common Wealth Revolving Loan Fund, the Shared Capital Cooperative of Minneapolis, and Capital Impact Partners.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In France, worker cooperatives contribute funds to the SOCODEN (Société coopérative de développement et d’entraide), a cooperative financial institution that finances developing and struggling cooperatives. Additionally, this fund provides collateral for other sources of funding and subsidies for interests on loans for these cooperatives.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Direct Public Offerings (DPO's) are loans or donations generated either socially by communities or individually by both accredited and non-accredited investors. The voting rights that this investment produces for the community or investor varies depending on the cooperative and offering type. This form of financing is especially popular with cooperatives that provide services to local communities. One of the primary attributes of DPO's that attract cooperatives is that by advertising investment opportunities to local communities, the firm not only generates financial capital but it also employs an efficient method of advertising that keeps the community engaged in the firm's products and success. For cooperatives undergoing an ownership transition, DPO's are often a source of financial support to the initial loan of the retiring owner. Examples of firms that have utilized Direct Public Offerings for financial support are Real Pickles and the CERO Cooperative.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Many worker cooperatives utilize surplus profits to provide loans or establish offering funds in order to support other developing or struggling cooperatives. These funds are also used as collateral for other forms of finance by cooperatives in need. Examples of Peer Financing in the U.S. include the Evergreen Cooperatives, the Share Capital Cooperative, and the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In Italy, large cooperative federations utilize excess profits to develop peer financing funds that not only financially assist other cooperatives, but are also used for workers' training programs and for research into cooperatives.


title: Worker cooperative

text: France's worker cooperatives, otherwise known as Société coopérative et participative (SCOPs), are required to allocate a small portion of profits to a financial fund for other French worker cooperatives in cooperative federations.


title: Worker cooperative

text: A very significant early influence on the movement has been the Scott Bader Commonwealth, a composites and specialty polymer plastics manufacturing company in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, which its owner Ernest Bader gave to the workforce in installments through the late 1950s to early 1960s. Contrary to the popular concept of common ownership organizations as being small organizations, this is a high-technology chemical manufacturer whose turnover has exceeded £100 million per annum since the early 1990s with a workforce of hundreds. In London, Calverts is an example of an established worker co-operative with a policy of pay parity. From the collective movement, one of the most successful ventures is probably Suma Wholefoods in Elland, West Yorkshire.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The advocacy of workplace democracy, especially with the fullest expression of worker self-management such as within workers' cooperatives, is rooted within several intellectual or political traditions:


title: Worker cooperative

text: Workers' cooperatives are also central to ideas of autonomism, distributism, mutualism, syndicalism, participatory economics, guild socialism, market socialism and libertarian socialism, among others.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The idea of achieving economic democracy through worker ownership on a national scale has been argued by economist Tom Winters, who states that "building a cooperative economy is one small step on the journey to reclaiming the wealth we all collectively create."


title: Worker cooperative

text: Economists have modeled the worker cooperative as a firm in which labor hires capital, rather than capital hiring labor as in a conventional firm. The classic theoretical contributions of such a "labor managed firm" (LMF) model are due to Benjamin Ward and Jaroslav Vanek.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In the neoclassical version, the objective of the LMF is to maximize not total profit, but rather income per worker. But such a scenario implies "perverse" behavior, such as laying off workers when output price rises so as to divide increased profits among fewer members. Evidence supporting such behavior is lacking, however; a review of the empirical economics literature is found in Bonin, Jones, and Putterman. But alternative behavioral models have been proposed. Peter Law examined LMFs that value employment and income. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen examined pay according to work and according to need. Nobel Laureate James Meade examined behavior of an "inegalitarian" LMF. Worker cooperatives tend to have a more compressed wage distribution, which can potentially turn off high-ability workers, potentially causing the cooperative to suffer a "brain drain" as they leave to seek higher wages elsewhere, though this effect is less of an issue in a cooperative with a less compressed wage distribution.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Generally, the evidence indicates that worker cooperatives have higher productivity than conventional companies although this difference may be modest in size. Research indicates that employee ownership can improve company performance, increase firm stability, increase survival rates and reduce layoffs during a crisis, though the effect is small and only an average, meaning it is not necessarily guaranteed to bring benefits. A 2016 metanalysis concluded that employee ownership had a small positive effect on firm performance but no effects on efficiency or growth-related outcomes. However some researchers have argued that while cooperatives can have higher performance in some circumstances, there is generally little difference in performance between cooperatives and conventional firms and that ultimately they are, on average, just as productive as each other. Economists have explained the clustering of worker coops through leagues or "supporting structures" Regions where large clusters of worker cooperatives are found supported by leagues include Mondragón, in the Basque region of Spain, home of Mondragón Cooperative Corporation and in Italy, particularly Emilia-Romagna. Leagues provide various kinds of scale economies to make coops viable. But as leagues need coops to start them the result is a chicken or egg problem that helps explain why few coops get started. Research has suggested that the primary appeal of a cooperative for its members is in security of employment, as workers can actually become decoupled from a cooperative's ostensible worker ownership (due to a mixture of interests and the more individualistic values of more recent workers), making secure employment, particularly in economically precarious times, a major draw. While it has been suggested that cooperatives could be a solution to unemployment, research indicates that this is unlikely to be the case.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Worker cooperatives do not seem to differ in innovation or management capabilities from conventional firms. Workers at cooperatives tend to report higher levels of involvement in their tasks, more positive evaluations of supervisors and greater fairness in their perception of the amount of wages they received and methods of payment. Employment in worker-owned firms tends to be more stable than conventional firms, which fluctuate more. This was attributed to conventional firms fixing wages and having to lay off employees during times of economic difficulty, as workers would not accept a wage cut since they could not guarantee restoration of their original wages at a later date, requiring workers to be laid off instead. In a cooperative, workers can accept a wage cut since they know they can restore it at a later date. Cooperatives have a higher survival rate than traditional firms, which seems to be down to greater employment stability and willingness of workers to make adjustments to allow the firm to survive, rather than other possible explanations like greater productivity or financial strength. Worker cooperatives and conventional firms tend to have similar wages after controlling for other possible variables, with any wage differentiation being due to other characteristics aside from firm organization.


title: Worker cooperative

text: If the workers are not satisfied with their work and participation, they can express their disengagement with higher rates of absenteeism.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Managers can refrain from proposing controversial, needed changes if they feel that they would be rejected by the workers.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Worker co-operation is well established in most countries in Europe, with the largest movements being in Italy, Spain, and France.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The European Cooperative Statute, which has been in force since 2006, permits worker cooperatives to be created by individuals or corporate bodies in different EU countries. It is a loose framework that devolves much detail to the national legislation of the country in which the European Cooperative Society (ECS) is registered. It permits a minority of shares to be held by 'investor members' which are not employees.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Workers' associations were legalized in 1848 and again in 1864. In 1871, during the Paris Commune, workshops abandoned by their owners were taken over by their workers. In 1884 a chamber of workers' cooperatives was founded. By 1900 France had nearly 250 workers' cooperatives and 500 by 1910. The movement was to rise and fall throughout the twentieth century, with growth in 1936, after the Second World War, between 1978 and 1982 and since 1995.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In 2004 France had 1700 workers' co-operatives, with 36,000 people working in them. The average size of a co-operative was 21 employees. More than 60% of co-operative employees were also members. French workers' co-operatives today include some large organisations such as and . Other cooperatives whose names are generally known to include the magazines "Alternatives économiques" and "Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace", the driving school ECF CERCA and the toy manufacturer "Moulin Roty".


title: Worker cooperative

text: Pencavel et al. (2006) found that in the north of Italy, the area where the most co-ops are located, employing around over 4% of the labour force, actually paid their workers 14% less than capitalist firms and their wages were more volatile. This was after controlling for various variables, such as schooling, age, gender, occupation, industry, location, firm-size, user cost of capital, fixed costs, and deviations in its real sales. The cooperative movement in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, successfully melds two divergent philosophical currents: Socialism and Catholicism. With more than a century of cooperative history, the region includes more than 8,000 cooperatives.


title: Worker cooperative

text: One of the world's best known examples of worker cooperation is the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation in the Basque Country.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party's enthusiasm for worker cooperatives was at its highest in the 1970s and 1980s, with Tony Benn being a prominent advocate. The principle has also found some support from the more radical wing of the Liberal Democrats, such as from Michael Meadowcroft.


title: Worker cooperative

text: A small number of such co-operatives were formed during the 1974 Labour Government as worker takeovers following the bankruptcy of a private firm in a desperate attempt to save the jobs at risk. However the change in ownership structure was usually unable to resist the underlying commercial failure. This was true in particular of the best known, the Meriden motor-cycle cooperative in the West Midlands which took over the assets of the ailing Triumph company, although there were instances of successful employee buy-outs of nationalized industries in the period, notably National Express. Meanwhile, many more worker co-operatives were founded as start-up businesses, and by the late 1980s, there were some 2,000 in existence. Since then the number has declined considerably.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Co-operatives are typically registered under either the Companies Act 2006 or the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 (IPS), though other legal forms are available. A number of model rules have been devised to enable cooperatives to register under both acts; for workers' cooperatives, these rules restrict membership to those who are employed by the workplace. Most workers' co-operatives are incorporated bodies, which limits the liability if the co-operative fails and goes into liquidation.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The largest examples of a British worker cooperatives include, Suma Wholefoods, Bristol-based Essential Trading Co-operative and the Brighton-based Infinity Foods Cooperative Ltd.


title: Worker cooperative

text: In Israel, worker cooperatives emerged in the early 20th century alongside the Kibbutz, the collective farming movement. The Kibbutz is a cooperative movement that was founded on Zionist ideas, with the intention to cultivate land and increase the number of Jewish settlements. By the 1970s, the Histadrut (Israel Labour Federation) controlled a significant number of corporations, including Israel's largest bank—Bank Hapoalim (literally the Worker's Bank). By the 1990s, the Histadrut had lost its power and influence and many worker cooperative corporations were sold or became public companies. Israel's biggest public transportation company, Egged, is still a workers cooperative. However, Egged employs workers who are not cooperative members and are paid at a lower wage than worker-members.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives is the only organization in the U.S. representing worker cooperative interests nationally. Offering a voice on national level, promoting the worker co-operative model, uniting co-ops at conferences and providing a base of support and technical assistance to the worker co-operative community.


title: Worker cooperative

text: The Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy and Western Worker Co-operative Conference hold conferences every other year for their respective regions. In addition, there are national and regional nonprofit organizations that focus on providing technical support and assistance to both create new worker cooperatives (start-ups) and conversions of existing businesses into worker cooperatives, usually when the business owner is retiring and wants to sell the company. These organizations include Democracy at Work Institute (created by the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives), Cooperative Development Institute, Ohio Employee Ownership Center, Vermont Employee Ownership Center, Rhode Island Center for Employee Ownership, Project Equity, and others.


title: Worker cooperative

text: Cooperation Jackson is a federation of cooperatives based in Jackson, Mississippi, which seeks to build worker-owned coops and other locally operated institutions.