A World Without Bosses?

[Guest guest]

A World Without Bosses?

A handful of Northern California collectives take cues

from an innovative Basque cooperative in Northern

Spain. But can they really make a difference?

As pizza counter guys go, Willie is unusually

cheerful, especially for the middle of a lunch rush

that, by all rights, should be tailing off. At

half-past one on a spring Tuesday, a line of hungry

customers is snaking out The Pizza Collective

storefront on Berkeley's Shattuck Avenue, the ovens

are gusting heat into the kitchen and flushed workers

in aprons and tennis shoes are darting about in what

appears to be barely organized bedlam. This is not the

best time for an interview, I think, as I make my way

to the front. But 's face breaks into a huge

smile of welcome, he greets me like an honored guest

and I am ushered to a table with a delicious slice of

organic vegetarian pizza.

Thin and quick, with guileless blue eyes and Tiggerish

enthusiasm, the 28-year-old father of two has good

reason to be happy. He's making close to $30 an hour,

gets medical benefits for his family, enjoys four to

five weeks paid time off each year and believes

passionately in his work. Not the work of making

pizza, particularly, but the work of running, along

with 38 other people, a thriving worker-owned

cooperative built on the principles of democracy and

economic fairness. " I have a personal mission, "

confesses. " I want to see more cooperatives. "

Worker's Paradise?

It's easy to see why is a tireless proselytizer

who has worked to establish three spin-off coops, the

Arizmendi bakeries in Oakland, San Francisco and

Emeryville. To anyone who has slogged through a

wage-slave job or had a domineering boss, a

collectively run cooperative sounds like a workers'

paradise. It has no hierarchy and no supervisors

because everyone is an owner. Everyone makes the same

amount of money and everyone is responsible for making

the business work. Everyone does all the jobs. No one

gets summarily fired. Decisions are made by consensus.

At the end of the year, some money goes to charity and

some is invested back into the business. The rest of

the profits, instead of enriching one or two

individuals, are returned to all the worker-owners --

a rising tide lifting many boats.

This level of emotional and financial investment

creates a radically different attitude toward work,

says, one emphasizing personal responsibility

and flexibility. " If we don't have a boss and I tell

you to turn out the lights when you leave, you're

going to do it because it means more money for all of

us, " says. " But if someone is breathing down

your neck, you might not. "

He says he used to work at a big-box retailer.

" Corporate America, okay? They don't treat you like

human beings. They treat you like robots. Your opinion

is not appreciated. "

Terry Baird, 59, a member of the Arizmendi ative

on Oakland's Lakeshore Drive since it opened in 1997,

jokes (or not) about the effect of this. " If you work

here and go somewhere else, you're kind of wrecked for

the traditional work environment, " he says. " The first

time you say to your boss, 'Let's vote on this,'

they're gonna look at you funny. "

There's something else about cooperatives. In an

economy with a lot of coops, the number of well-paid,

self-directed workers would mean a larger, wealthier

middle class, and therefore a healthier community. The

goal is a society in which all people, not only the

fittest, enjoy economic security.

The Pizza Collective and its parent coop, the Cheese

Board, recently brought in a member in his sixties.

" And it was, well, this is physical work. Do we want

to bring in an older person? " recalls. " But he

helps us, we help him, we help his family -- and

that's one less family left to the wolves of Corporate

America. "

The Miracle of Mondragon

In the United States, some 300 business concerns

operate as worker-owned collectives, according to the

National ative Business Association. Some are

relatively high-profile, like the Eugene, Ore.-based

Burley Design Corporation, which manufactures

distinctive yellow-and-blue bike trailers for

children. Most, however, are local, and they are few

and far between. Here, the worker-owned society is a

dream, but in the Basque country of northern Spain

it's become a reality.

The Bay Area’s Arizmendi cooperative bakery/pizzerias

take their name from a remarkable young Basque priest

who ignited a movement from the rubble of Spain’s

ruinous civil war. A defeated revolutionary who had

entered the priesthood, Arizmendiarrieta

arrived in the Basque town of Mondragon in 1941 and

soon set up a technical school where he taught the

skills necessary for Spain’s reconstruction. There he

also taught Catholic Social Doctrine, with its

emphasis on human dignity and better conditions for

laborers.

In 1956, a handful of Arizmendi's students, determined

to put those principles into action, opened a

worker-owned stove factory. Three years later, they

opened a credit union, and the seeds of the Mondragon

ative Corporation were born. Today the 500-plus

cooperatives that make up the MCC employ 72,000 people

(about half are worker-owners, with more in the

pipeline as membership catches up to rapid growth).

The group posted 15 percent growth in profits last

year to reach $612 million. It pours money into

education, incubates new cooperatives, and provides

worker benefits and collateral so members can buy

houses.

When visited Mondragon several years ago, he was

stunned by the collective response to a fire that had

leveled a refrigerator factory. The refrigerator

factory workers were given jobs in other coops, even

though that would almost surely mean lower profits for

everyone at the other coops. " They're so unselfish in

the way they run their business, " marvels.

The Cheese Board, which started in 1967, and the Pizza

Collective, which opened in 1990, are attempting to

replicate the MCC on a very small scale. They have

helped establish the three Bay Area Arizmendis through

training and recipe sharing, but each coop functions

independently. They all, however, shovel four percent

of gross profits back into the Arizmendi Association

-- seed money to help start other coops and cushion

economic blows.

A World Without Bosses

All the Arizmendis have needed help in learning to

function as collectives. Not all cooperatives are

collectives. Sunkist, for example, is a typical

agricultural cooperative; it consists of a number of

citrus growers who market their products as a group

under the Sunkist label. A collective, on the other

hand, is a flat organization with no hierarchy, no

fatherly arbiter to say: " You're right, and you're

wrong, " which means people have to cooperate. Which is

hard.

Bruzoni, who at 50 has been at the Cheese Board

for 15 years, acknowledges that the $18 an hour the

members make, plus the $9.99-per-hour profit-sharing

bonus everyone got last year, is attractive.

" Twenty-eight dollars an hour sounds like a great

amount of pay, especially for what we're doing, " she

says. " But there are certain people who would want to

work in a cooperative and certain people who wouldn't.

It can be very frustrating. "

Without exception, all the people interviewed for this

story said the hardest thing about their jobs was

learning to get along with others in an environment

where no one -- or everyone, really -- is the boss.

For one thing, big decisions at these businesses must

be made by consensus (that means everyone must agree

that they can live with whatever is decided), and the

only opportunity to do this is at monthly board

meetings. Consequently, it takes a long time to get

anything done. " It took us three years to write a

book, " says Bruzoni, who co-authored The Cheese Board

Collective Works along with several other members.

" Anywhere else, it would have taken a year and a half,

but we kept having to check with the coop. "

The gritty problem of personality conflicts is also

wearing. Medina, 27, describes joining the

Pizza Collective as " the most stressful thing I've

ever done in my life. " It was during her six-month

probation period that some personality conflicts

emerged. Knowing that any member could single-handedly

block her bid to join, made the pressure that much

worse. " It was so tough. I felt like I was totally

under a microscope. I remember going home to my

husband and crying and saying, 'Oh my God, this person

doesn't like me.' "

Since most people join a collective for a long period

of time -- the $1,000 buy-in at the Cheese Board and

Pizza Collective is meant to foster commitment --

there's a sense that the relationships cannot be

escaped. That seems to force people to figure out how

to get along. " This place will humble you, " says

, " because a lot of people aren't willing to say,

'Hey, can you cut pizza for me today?' to someone they

had an argument with yesterday. "

Then there is the more deeply personal issue of

self-motivation. " Everybody thinks they don't want to

have a boss, " says Baird of the Oakland Arizmendi.

" But what they haven't thought about is they don't

want to be a boss, either. That is maybe the most

revolutionary aspect to what we do here. People have

to become in charge of themselves, and not everybody's

equipped to do that. "

atives, especially the collectively run variety,

are a rarity. Even in the Bay Area, as progressive as

it is, there is only a handful. This begs the question

of whether they can make a difference.

Baird has given this some thought. " Sometimes I

wonder, what is the meaning of all this? " he muses. " I

enjoy the work, and I can live on the pay. But is it

really gonna change things? And I think it does. When

I read biographies about exceptional people, it never

comes from nowhere. Parks wasn't just some lady;

she was active in the civil rights movement. So yeah,

I think we do good work. We do work we like and in a

democratic fashion, and maybe it rubs off on people. "

Traci Hukill is a freelance journalist based in

Monterey, Calif.

http://www.alternet.org/story/23201/

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