In this inside look at worker
cooperatives, Joan Meyers challenges long-held views and beliefs.
From the outside, worker cooperatives all seem to offer alternatives
to bad jobs and unequal treatment by giving workers democratic
control and equitable ownership of their workplaces. Some contend,
however, that such egalitarianism and self-management come at the
cost of efficiency and stability, and are impractical in the long
run. Working Democracies
focuses on two worker cooperatives in business since the 1970s that
transformed from small countercultural collectives into thriving
multiracial and largely working-class firms. She shows how democratic
worker ownership can provide stability and effective business
management, but also shows that broad equality is not an inevitable
outcome despite the best intentions of cooperative members.
Working
Democracies explores the
interconnections between organizational structure and organizational
culture under conditions of worker control, revealing not only the
different effects of managerialism and "participatory
bureaucracy," but also how each bureaucratic variation is
facilitated by how workers are defined by at each cooperative. Both
bureaucratic variation and worker meanings are, she shows, are
consequential for the reduction or reproduction of class, gender, and
ethnoracial inequalities. Offering a behind the scenes comparative
look at an often invisible type of workplace, Working
Democracies serves as a
guidebook for the future of worker cooperatives.