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Full Project – The impact of cooperative business towards industrial workers

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CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise 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, and it can refer to a situation in which managers are considered, and treated as, workers of the firm. In traditional forms of worker cooperative, all shares are held by the workforce with no outside or consumer owners, and each member has one voting share. In practice, control by worker-owners may be exercised through individual, collective, or majority ownership by the workforce; or the retention of individual, collective, or majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member one-vote basis). A worker cooperative, therefore, has the characteristic that the majority of its workforce own shares, and the majority of shares are owned by the workforce.

Model of Robert Owen’s visionary project for a cooperative settlement. Owenites fired bricks to build it, but construction never took place.

Worker cooperatives rose to prominence during the industrial revolution as part of the labor movement. As employment moved to industrial areas and job sectors declined, workers began organizing and controlling businesses for themselves. Workers cooperative were originally sparked by “critical reaction to industrial capitalism and the excesses of the industrial revolution”. The formation of some workers cooperatives were designed to “cope with the evils of unbridled capitalism and the insecurities of wage labour”.

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 mulls of new Lanark, Scotland. It was here that the first cooperative store was opened. Spurred on by the success of this, he had the idea of forming “villages of cooperation”, 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.

Similar early experiments were made in the early 19^th century and by 1830 there were several hundred cooperatives. 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 cooperatives for themselves, so he saw his role as one of instruction. He founded a monthly periodically called the cooperator, the first edition of which appeared on 1 may 1828. This gave a mixture of cooperative philosophy and practical advice about running a shop using cooperative principles.

Modern Movement

The first successful organization was the 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.

With lessons from prior failed attempts at cooperation 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 December 21, 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.

The cooperative group formed gradually over 140 years from the merger of many independent retail societies, and their wholesale societies and federations. In 1863, twenty years after the Rochdale pioneers opened their cooperative, the North of England cooperative society was launched by 300 individual co-ops across Yorkshire and Lancashire. By 1872, it has become known as the cooperative wholesale society (CWS). Through the 20^th century, smaller societies merged with CWS, such as the Scottish cooperative wholesale society (1973) and the South Suburban cooperative society (1984).

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 symbolic of egalitarian voting rights. Typically, a member may only own one share to maintain the egalitarian ethos. Once brought in as a member, after a period of time on probation usually so the new candidate can be evaluated, he or she was given power to manage to coop, without “ownership” in the traditional sense. In the UK this system is known as common ownership.

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.

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.

In Britain this type of cooperative was traditionally known as a producer cooperative, and, while it was overshadowed by the consumer and agriculture types, 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 cooperative union (which was the federal body for consumer cooperatives) to create cooperatives UK, thus reunifying the cooperative sector.

In 2008 cooperatives UK launched the worker cooperative code of governance, an attempt to implement the ICA approved world declaration.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The cooperative modern movement began in England in the 19^th century, there were many years of experimentation, which many of them failed to attempt it, before successful cooperative was established the turning point came in 1844, when the first successful cooperatives called the Rochdale socity of equitable pioneers was established in Rochdale city, an individual town close to manifested.

Okonkwo, (1989:6) describe the cooperative movement as “an invention of necessarily originating from the evils of the industrial revolution to alleviate their pitiable condition.

It is a fact that the Rochdale pioneers organized their society in the industrial revolution 1750-1850 when factory owners or capitalist exploited workers retaliated with toilet unemployment was high life wages were extremely low, often below subsistence level. Wages were so low that child labour was common, children working to supplement the income of their parents.

Workers had to survive on weekly wages of six pence skilled workers may be paid two shilling a week. Life has had that the decade become known as “the hungry forties”.

During this hungry forties shop-keepers on their own part make profits through adulteration of goods they sold workers hired in over crowed charities under the most in sanitary conditions. They worked for more than (12) hours a day in ill ventilated factory building design to look prison houses and under conditions they were close to slave labour. The anti-social effect of the industrial revolution resulted in widespread poverty and destitution on charity, while other died of mal-nutrition disease and starvation.

In this respect, notable people like Robert Owen in England William King, Charles Fouries, Loris Blan both of France and Ernest Bader these were great pioneers of industrial cooperatives in the world most of them were factory owners who formed at capitalism turn their factory into cooperative organization to enhance the quality and working relationship of both the employers and employees. Industrial employees were most at times converted into cooperative communities to find together, work together, share together and help one another.

The aim of these great pioneers was to totally eliminate the exploitation of the workers by owners of capital and to permit the workers to reap fully the fruits of their labour that is reason cooperatives are reaping fully the of not of the labour.

That is why cooperative are regarded as weapons to fight capitalism diversify the economy of a nation all over the world workers are known to have had long history of exploitation. From thir employers and the business as community under the capitalistic society, as the saying have it that necessity is the mother invention workers then with the motivation of some social reformers.

Notable Robert Owen (1771-1858) and or William King (1786-1865) had no choice other than to cooperative in order to protect themselves, therefore, cooperative society can be regarded as the weapon to oppress an economic system.

In the above basis, cooperative movement was inspired by the following deals which include self help, self reliance, self independence, climates of exploitative middlemen equality, fairness service, justice and equity or economic relations, Onuoha (1986).

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEMS

Workers in a typical industrial company are often required to carry out revalorized work for a long period. With the aim of achieving a certain production target every day.
The worker’s salary are often regular and some of them may have no other alternative other than to seek for services of extortionist money lenders at cut the not rate of interest just to make ends meet.
The relationship between the workers and the management is more or less official with little or no room for other personal of the workers.
The employees of such an organization have no choice other than finding a means for better interaction among themselves.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The specific objectives are to find out;

If Anammco workers is in line with other similar establishment operate any kind of cooperative.
The objective of such cooperative society.
The existence of such association in the establishment (Anammco).

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This question inspired the researcher to carry out this study. The research questions the researchers need to carry are as follows;

Is there any relationship between cooperative business towards industrial workers?
What the constraints militating against carrying out a cooperative business before engaging in a venture?
Did those who carried out industrial works, engage the services of consultants expect or did they do it themselves?
Do people know that the impact of cooperative is necessary for successful operation of business or industrial concern?

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

A cooperative is a voluntary organization formed primarily to serve the interest of members. This interest is usually economic and in addition at times, social in the first instance people must be socially linked by circumstance, such as same work place, which means makes it a fertile ground for group formation to thieve.

Out interest is to examine how the existence of multi-purpose cooperative in the company contribute to the economic well being of their members finding of this research work believed, well be a useful guide to the employees of other companies who are contemplating forming an organization stand to benefit from the findings.

1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of the study is already in the proposed research topic “the impact of cooperative society to the over well-being of industrial workers, a case study of Anammco multi-purpose cooperative society limited.

This study covers Anammco multi-purpose cooperative society limited as primary target and also some selected cooperative members. A multi-purpose cooperatives society by definition involve engagement in more than one activities engaged by the Anammco multi-purpose cooperative society limited.

1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

Research work by its nature requires finance in other words, money is required to gather relevant reference materials, type of completed works as well as to meet up with other contingencies.

Another limiting factor is likely to be time. Time is very essential in any research work the more the project, the likely some vital information could be left out, because of the rush to meet up with the time schedule.

The third and perhaps the major limitation is the attitude of the respondents workers especially those working in a big company such as Anammco, from the work ethics are not always free with information. In other words, it may not be easy to elicit the necessary information from the members of the society, especially within the work environment.

All these factors have been taken into full consideration there possible negative effects notwithstanding, the research would be dutifully carried out to meet up with required standards.

1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS

The definition of some the basic terms as used in the next are as follows;

Cooperative Society: This is an association of person who have voluntarily joined together to achieve a common end through the formation of a democratically controlled organization making contribution to the capital required and accepting a fair share of the risk and benefits of the understanding in member actively participate.

Industrial Workers: These are workers employed and working in a particular company.

Manufacturing: Is he production of goods and services for house needs and or industrial needs they make use of factors of production such as land, labour, capital and management.

Anammco: Anambra State motor manufacturing company. It is joint ventures between federal government of Nigeria and Deimler Benz Ag/Mercedes of Germany.

Cooperative: This means common association of prisons for common benefits.

Equitable Distribution of Surpluses: This means that the economic and result arising out of the operation of a society belong to the members of that society and shall be distributed in such a manner as would avoid one member gaining at the express of interest.

Each for all: This is the condition that obtained in any genuine cooperative, which means the desire to seek freedom and salvation not for oneself alone, but for others.

Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society: The term multi-purpose denotes that the society is legally qualified to carry on more than one function (business activity).

Rochdale: The small town where cooperatives was found.

Movement: This has been defined as “the sense of actions and endeavours of a body of persons for a specific objectives i.e. the pursuit of an ideal.

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