What follows is the information that I have submitted in support of my application to serve as a Worker-Owner Director of the Weaver Street Market/Panzanella Co-operative:Current profession or occupation
Hot Bar cook in the Southern Village store. Active worker-owner with Weaver Street Market/Panzanella, concerned with ensuring that owners, customers and workers are the source of all authority in our co-op.
Previous profession or occupation
I was trained as a lawyer, and practiced in the UK and the US, concentrating on progressive social advocacy. For example, I spent several years in a historically disadvantaged region of Appalachia, assisting in establishing a community law practice for working people.
I developed a secondary career as a values-driven community business consultant and company director, again in both the UK and the US. I specialized in troubleshooting for businesses that were experiencing serious financial or organizational difficulties.
That meant mediating disputes, opening new channels of communication and creating values-based strategies that encouraged the Boards of those companies to understand that the most important assets of any enterprise are fulfilled workers and happy consumers.
In 1996, I decided to leave behind my conventional corporate career to focus instead on social entrepreneurship and my creative pursuits (writing, composing and occasional stand-up comedy) – which is what brought me to Weaver Street in 2005.
Current community involvement
Weaver Street Market Co-operative’s governance process – as a concerned worker and owner, seeking first-time election as a Board Director. Our return to genuine profitability (free of crippling long-term debt) and authentic co-operative values is a huge task, allowing little room for other community involvement.
At the moment, I monitor our co-op’s corporate office and its Board of Directors, and advocate in respect of the impact of their decision-making on worker conditions, in part through the medium of my blog: www.weaverstreetgeoff.blogspot.com.
Previous community involvement
I have taken an active role in my local community since the age of 16, gaining experience which I believe will help me, on your behalf, to negotiate the complexities of our governance process, and to create space for all of our voices to be heard more clearly.
I have been a City Councilor and Council Committee Chair, a Special Needs School Governor, and I served on the Development Committee of Carrboro/Chapel Hill’s WCOM radio co-operative – so, I know how to engage in consensus governance in a way that encourages all points of view to receive a fair hearing.
I was a progressive social campaigner at the national level in the UK and the US (with special emphasis on poverty and immigration rights), and a broadcaster on WCOM – so, I’ve had the opportunity to work with others to assist them in expressing their concerns in a way that makes a difference.
I was an actor and Board Chair with a community theatre in North Georgia, wrote the By-Laws for a US domestic violence non-profit, and served on Weaver Street’s Elections Task Force – so, complex policy-making and intricate group dynamics don’t overwhelm me; actually, I really love working to bring both together so that the end result always serves people, and not the other way round.
Why would you like to serve on the Board of Directors?
I love our co-op, and I want to give something back. But I think we have lost our way. I believe that the only way to return us to sustainable profitability, and to being an authentic co-op where every voice matters, is to get new blood onto our Board. If you elect me, I will work consensually with the Board to:
a) Erase Weaver Street’s remaining long-term debt of some $8 million. Not by asking workers to work harder – we’re already working as hard as we can. But by changing the gameplan that says that we need to maintain a crippling debt burden of $8 million.
Once the need for the debt is gone, we workers will no longer have to struggle to repay the debt nor to find the $1 million a year to pay the bank interest on that debt.
That money will be available instead to invest in more staff and better resources. So that we can improve work conditions, food production, customer service and sales.
And so that the co-op can fully restore to us workers our hours, our proper pay levels and our dividends – along with the fulfilling work experience promised to us in our co-op’s Mission Statement.
b) Strengthen the monitoring powers of the Board of Directors, so that it is better able to persuade the corporate office to be more responsive to owners, customers and workers.
c) Reform the communication and democratic structures within our co-op, so that we get more accurate information, and so that decision-making is truly collaborative, and not merely imposed from above.
Why not, for example, make our “Market Messenger” an independent, in-store newspaper run by an editorial team of workers drawn from all of the units?
We have become a co-op of many different and separated identities, each with its own distinctive strength. Wouldn’t a reinvigorated and worker-run “Market Messenger” be a great facility for promoting better understanding and a real sense of belonging, while at the same time honoring our individual uniqueness? At no extra cost to Weaver Street Market?
I want to assist in creating the space in our co-op that makes it easier for all the voices to be heard. That ensures that it is not only a small group of people who get to determine the direction of the co-op we all love. And that requires that the corporate office engage in a lot more asking and a little less demanding.
Briefly describe any experience you have had with worker or consumer co-operatives or with other small community-minded businesses
My LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/geoffgilson) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/geoff.gilson) profiles demonstrate a history of successful engagement in the self-empowerment of various small community-minded businesses.
Right now, I am formulating a business plan to help a semi-retired chiropractor re-establish his practice in Hillsborough in a way that allows him to maximize his retirement benefits while creating a lasting holistic enterprise that will benefit our community.
One of my happiest ventures was assisting a co-operative radio station in the UK, owned and run by its workforce, to re-structure itself and win one of the UK’s premier FM broadcasting licenses.
I have always and passionately practiced the belief that the key to any successful and sustainable business is happy and fulfilled workers and consumers.
If our co-op would trust its workers, respect our talents and expertise, and empower us to make our own decisions, rather than stripping us of our dignity, treating us as numbers, and imposing faceless gameplans from above, then we would be truly inspired to achieve genuinely sustainable profit and productivity, along with excellent customer service.
Briefly describe any experiences you have had developing organizational policies or plans that reflect the values of that organization
As a lawyer, management consultant, social entrepreneur and elected official, I have had the good fortune to be able consensually to develop values-based organizational plans with all sorts of different enterprises, whether for-profit, non-profit or governmental.
I wrote an 80-page strategic oversight plan for the Board of Weaver Street back in 2007, called “Informal Intimacy.” It wasn’t adopted by the Board. But not to worry. We can still use it! – www.lulu.com/product/paperback/informal-intimacy/2923970.
Include anything else about yourself that you may like others to know
This election is not about me. It’s about you. I want to know what YOU think, and what YOU want. Please feel free to chat, or to contact me at: geoffgilson@hotmail.com. One last thing about me? I really do enjoy singing karaoke at the WSM/Panzanella Christmas Party!
Posts
