Amid "Constitutional Crisis," Bernie Sanders Urges Workers to Seize Means of
Production
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
By Kate Aronoff, In These Times | News Analysis
When employees have an ownership stake in their company, they will not ship
their own jobs to China, Bernie Sanders said in a recent statement.
"When employees have an ownership stake in their company, they will not ship
their own jobs to China," Bernie Sanders said in a recent statement. (Photo:
Mark H. Anbinder)
The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind, politically speaking. Most
of it has to do with the onslaught of chaos that followed Donald Trump's
abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey -- a move political scientists
agree is off the spectrum of normalcy in the history of the American
presidency. Before his termination, Comey was leading an investigation into
the Trump team's alleged ties to the Russian government. Keith Ellison,
deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has said "we are
witnessing a constitutional crisis." Calls for impeachment are in the air,
along with a good deal of conspiracy theorizing.
In sum, the republic as we know it may be its closest yet to tatters. Enter:
Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont and the country's most popular
politician. He -- alongside Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy, from Vermont,
Kirsten Gillibrand, from New York, and Maggie Hassan, from New Hampshire --
is encouraging workers to take control of the means of production.
This isn't some right-wing conspiracy theory, but the intended result of two
bills introduced to relatively little fanfare last Thursday. The first, the
WORK ("Worker Ownership, Readiness and Knowledge") Act, would direct more
than $45 million in funding to state-level employee ownership centers, aimed
at providing training and technical assistance to current and prospective
worker-owners. A second piece of legislation would establish something
called the US Employee Ownership Bank, via $500 million in funds for
low-interest rate loans and financial assistance for workers who want to buy
out the businesses where they work and either incorporate them as
worker-owned cooperatives or establish employee stock ownership plans
(ESOPs), which give workers an ownership stake in their company.
"By expanding employee ownership and participation, we can create stronger
companies in Vermont and throughout this country, prevent job losses and
improve working conditions for struggling employees," Sanders said in a
statement. "Simply put, when employees have an ownership stake in their
company, they will not ship their own jobs to China to increase their
profits, they will be more productive, and they will earn a better living."
Notably, a provision outlined in the second bill would give employees the
first crack at taking over their workplace if owners move to offshore their
jobs, according to John Duda.
Duda works for the Democracy Collaborative, a research institute that
supports cooperative development. He also helped found the worker-owned cafe
and bookstore Red Emma's in Baltimore, Maryland.
"I think it would be a game changer both in terms of accelerating
worker-ownership, and discouraging companies from pursuing a race to the
bottom in terms of looking for cheaper wages overseas," Duda said about the
legislation.
Cooperative ownership has a long history in the United States, Duda
explains. The earliest champions of organized labor in America pushed for
cooperatives as a means to shore up employee control over the workplace. As
a document officially adopted by the Knights of Labor in 1878 put it, "The
recent alarming development and aggression of aggregated wealth ... render
it imperative ... that a check should be placed upon its power and upon
unjust accumulation, and a system adopted which will secure to the laborer
the fruits of his toil." Later, New Deal initiatives like the Rural
Electrification Administration provided start-up funds for people in rural
areas to create cooperatives, with rural electric cooperatives now meeting
11 percent of the country's demand for electricity. Civil rights leaders
from Ella Baker to Fannie Lou Hamer would also cut their teeth in
cooperative self-help programs.
Today, companies from Cabot Creamery to REI are cooperatives of one form or
another. And Publix Super Markets and Wawa convenience stores are just two
of many major firms in the United States that offer their employees ESOPs.
Worker-owned cooperatives, by contrast -- governed by the principle of "one
worker, one vote" -- tend to be smaller in the United States than either
ESOPs or producer and consumer cooperatives, but more widespread throughout
South America and Europe. In contrast to the estimated 10.3 million
Americans covered by ESOPs, just over 5,000 people are a part of
worker-owned cooperatives.
Sanders himself is no stranger to cooperatives. He's introduced similar
bills before, and the legislation is partially inspired by the Vermont
Employee Ownership Center, or VEOC, of which Sanders has been a longtime
booster. Speaking to a forum on workers' ownership at Burlington City Hall
in 1985, then-Mayor Sanders said, "Democracy cannot just mean the
opportunity to vote for a Walter Mondale or a Ronald Reagan once every four
years ... If we have a vision as to what democracy is about, it's got to
mean the right of a working person to control his or her job, to have some
say about what's being produced, to sit down with the other workers and say,
'This is what I think we should do.'" (You can watch the full clip here.)
One of the other models for the kind of support programs outlined in the
WORK Act emerged out of the closure of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube factory
in 1977 -- a siren song for the kind of deindustrialization that would
plague the Rust Belt for years to come. Workers, Duda said, attempted to
seize the plant and run it cooperatively in the run-up to the closure. The
effort ultimately failed, but captured the attention of Ohioans interested
in developing cooperative businesses. Started in 1987, the Ohio Employee
Ownership Center (OEOC) has since helped some 90 companies to become
employee-owned, creating an estimated 15,000 employee-owners in the Buckeye
State. A like-minded push in New York City has seen some initial success
after an investment of $1.2 million in worker cooperative business
development efforts in 2014.
"It's hard stuff getting all the legal ducks in a row, getting all the
financing lined up, figuring out how to take advantage of the tax incentives
that exist. Having technical assistance and having grant support for
technical assistance is incredibly key," Duda said.
He wasn't overly optimistic about the bills' chances in Congress, but
thought their introduction represented a step forward in terms of bringing
cooperatives further into America's economic mainstream.
"We have a lot of drama going on, and it's vitally important to pay
attention to," Duda told In These Times, "but we need to not forget that we
are seeing historic levels of inequality. We need to be thinking about
solutions and a transition to a broader-based ownership of the economy that
allows us to tackle that question. We may not be able to pass this
legislation today, but there's going to be a time at which policymaking is
possible again and we need to be ready."
Originally published at InTheseTimes.com.
Kate Aronoff
Kate Aronoff is a writing fellow at In These Times covering the politics of
climate change, the White House transition and the resistance to Trump's
agenda. Follow her on Twitter: @katearonoff.
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