Organised Labour Group

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do not necessarily reflect the views of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center or Kent State University.

COORDINATOR: Vic Thorpe

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After you registered, and when you're ready to start sending messages; the address is: orglabor@cog.kent.edu

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Vic Thorpe's paper to be presented at COG's International Policy Conference in Washington DC, October 9-11, 2002

The purpose of the Organised Labour Group is to exchange practical experience of worker ownership and its impact on union organisation with labour representatives around the world. Does the worker ownership promise of increased local control and greater job security hold true under modern economic conditions? Can worker ownership be a viable alternative strategy to privatisation and corporate globalisation? Is worker ownership a threat or an opportunity to trade union organising? Real life examples of worker ownership - successful and unsuccessful - will be exposed and discussed. Bring your own!

Participants in this group are elected trade union representatives interested in worker ownership in practice. The group will look at examples of worker owned enterprises of many different kinds and will discuss their successes and failures. We will look at cases of full worker buy-outs, partial capital ownerships, ESOPs and cooperative start-ups. We will compare examples that spring from threatened closures, corporate spin-offs, or private owner handovers.

We will also explore the role of the union inside a worker-owned company, again drawing on the direct experience of participants. We aim to distinguish between capital strategies that will bring strength to workers, their organisations and communities and those that are no more than a management ploy to raise short-term productivity at the expense of workers' solidarity.

Together we aim to build a 'best practice' approach that will help signal those circumstances in which capital ownership may provide a viable alternative to current patterns of economic Darwinism. We hope that this process will result in a permanent network of contacts and on-line advice that can help trade union representatives negotiate creative and lasting outcomes for their members facing the impacts of privatisation and globalisation.