All owners of Weaver Street Market Co-operative (both worker and consumer) will shortly be receiving an Owners’ News talking about the future of WSM, and inviting folks to stand for the Board of Directors.
I strongly urge
folks to stand for the Board. If you are less than happy with what is happening
with WSM, it is no good merely standing on the sidelines. If you do nothing,
then nothing is what you will get. Take a stand, and stand for the Board.
The Owner News also has an Address from
Ruffin Slater, WSM General Manager, in which he suggests that WSM should
increase its impact in our community by becoming bigger. I disagree. I think
WSM has, over the past 24 years, become too bloated, unwieldy and unresponsive.
I believe that WSM can achieve more (and better quality) impact by becoming
smaller. Sort of.
My alternative to
WSM’s corporate office ‘2022 Vision’ would be one that emphasizes a co-operative future based on collective,
consensual, collaborative and intimate alliance, rather than the patronizing
remoteness of continued, trickle-down, enforced, corporate empire-building.
In accordance with
the definition of co-operation preferred by the International Co-operative
Alliance, the making of strategy
(including ‘2022 Vision’) in the somewhat unique worker-consumer hybrid of WSM
should involve two stages: first, consumers deciding what are their common
needs; and secondly, workers deciding how they would prefer to meet those
common needs.
However, some 24
years ago, our current General Manager, Ruffin Slater, and a few chums (this
according to him) decided they wanted to superimpose their own ‘common needs’
onto WSM’s consumers and workers, and build a grand farm-to-fork program in our
region. The idea was to underpin small local farmers by guaranteeing them
consistency of destination for their produce with a chain of professionally-run
outlet stores, supported by a community commissary.
Nothing wrong with
that vision. If given the opportunity, I would have voted for it vigorously. If
I had been given the opportunity. The problem is that then and now Ruffin and
his chums in the WSM corporate office management team, although talking the
language of co-operation, have never trusted the communities in which they have
operated to support that vision democratically. Instead, time and again, they
have sought to enforce their own strategy and tactics with top-down
decision-making and implementation.
Again, I suppose,
nothing wrong with that. If you’re honest about it. There are plenty of
organizations doing good work around our community, in our nation and across
the globe, which are not democratically run. But why then make such a big deal
of WSM being co-operative?
The answer is both
simple and controversial: capital. Putting philosophy to one side for a moment,
if you want to build an empire (and that is what WSM is, and was always
supposed to be), you need capital, public or private. The problem is that at
the end of the day you have to be accountable in some form to that capital.
But Ruffin and his
mates don’t like being accountable. They want, and have always wanted, to be
free to forge their empire without interference, including from those providing
the capital. And they have created a very clever construct to avoid that
interference.
WSM is incorporated
as a co-operative. That means our profits are not taxed, provided they are
distributed as a patronage dividend (which device is only to be found in
co-operatives). Most of that dividend is, in fact, retained as rolling capital.
The dues you first pay when you become an owner are also classed as capital.
WSM can borrow
against that capital on a ratio of three parts debt to one part capital,
although it is more like five parts to one part. That’s how the WSM corporate
office management team managed to borrow $10 million for the last expansion
project in 2007/2008, pretty much with no-one knowing.
Ok. But surely the
WSM corporate office management team, through Ruffin as General Manager, still
has to be accountable to the capital and its original owners, right? Wrong. Not
when you set up a Board of Directors which you control. You think I jest? Let
me take you through that, step by step.
The Board of WSM
has seven serving Directors: two consumer-owner Directors, two worker-owner
Directors, two appointed Directors and Ruffin.
The two
consumer-owner Directors. Not much room for control there. The two
worker-owners Directors, however, are a very different story.
You set the price
for worker-ownership so high ($500) that only a few long-term workers and,
primarily, managers can afford it. You then make sure you put up a management
candidate each election, and use your management payroll vote to elect them.
So, two of those seven Directors are automatically management Directors, and
are directly under your control as General Manager.
The remaining two
Directors are appointed. Essentially by Ruffin. You think I overstate. In 2008,
a consumer-owner who was not a Ruffin stoolie put forward her name to be an
appointed Director. Ruffin forced the Board to sit through three secret
sessions until he got his own man appointed.
So, Ruffin controls
five of the seven Board Directors. And has done from day one. All because he
does not trust other well-meaning folk to support his vision of farm-to-fork
With that control,
he has changed the system so that only the Board can change By-Laws. So that
Special Meetings of owners can be called only with 30% of the ownership in
support (currently, about 6,000 owners). So that he can raise capital, borrow
funds and make strategic decisions without having to be accountable to the
ownership, the consumers or the workers of WSM. However much he pretends to
invite our input to ‘his’ conversation.
I’d stand at
applaud at the sheer tyranny of it all, if it wasn’t so … tyrannical.
And so it is we
come to Ruffin’s ‘2022 Vision,’ which proposes that we build three more stores,
and effectively work our workers ever harder to pay for the new stores.
So what?, you might
say. We hear you, Geoff. But what’s the point of making a fuss, even if we
don’t agree? What’s the point of responding to this consultation exercise, if
it’s all a fake? If the WSM corporate office management team don’t have to
listen? If they will end up making all the decisions on their own, anyway?
Because, if we do
nothing, then nothing is what we will get. If we decide at the very beginning
that we have no power in the co-op Ruffin himself tells us is half-owned by
workers and half-owned by consumers, then we, not Ruffin, we have rendered
ourselves powerless. And we are not powerless. Not so long as we have voices.
And remain the folk who keep this co-op running and in profit. It isn’t Ruffin
and the WSM corporate office management team who make 25% of our produce, sell
it and buy it. It’s you and me.
So, find your
voice. Gather your thoughts. And engage in this consultation exercise, which
Ruffin has commenced with this summer’s edition of Owners’ News. And
let’s ensure that we are heard by the power of our numbers.
What say we come up
with a Vision that takes the structure that Ruffin has already undemocratically
created (much of which has essentially good purpose). Employ truly co-operative
and democratic principles going forward. To engage. To inspire. To enroll the
very best elements of the communities in which we operate. To create a
collaboration of co-operation that expands Ruffin’s farm-to-fork experiment in
a genuinely sustainable and accountable fashion?
It is my opinion
that requires replacing top-down, remote empire-building with trickle-up,
intimate, responsive consensus. Ok. What does that look like?
Go and stand for
about ten minutes in Chatham Marketplace, in Pittsboro (a co-op that WSM helped
to create, without it having to be a part of the WSM empire). Look around. See.
Feel. Breathe. Then, go and stand in like manner in one of the branches of the
WSM empire.
Now. Close your
eyes. Imagine this branch has become its own stand-alone co-op. Where the Unit
Manager has become the General Manager. Whose answer to penetrating questions
is not, I’ll have to check with corporate. But is, let me go and ask Jack, the
Board Chair. He’s right over there, working on the gluten-free demo.
Imagine inventory.
Where we don’t all rush off, leaving a hapless manager to cope on his or her
own. But we all stay after work, crack a couple of beers, and pitch in
together. Where decisions about strategy aren’t taken behind a combination
lock, fifteen miles way. But are made by the water cooler, because a quorum is
always on hand, either working or shopping.
That is the
intimacy of co-operation in action. It’s why it is called ‘co-operation.’ And
not ‘hang-on-I’ve-got-to-call-corporate-and-get-ignored-for-two-months-and-then-wait-for-someone-I-do-not-know-and-never-meet-to-make-the-decision-for-me-without-my-input-ation.’
It is immediate, not remote. It is communal, not condescending. It is
consensual, not enforced.
And we can create
it in this WSM empire right now. By simply deciding that Item #1 of ‘2022
Vision’ will be that WSM becomes a collaboration of separate, stand-alone
unit-based co-op’s, rather than this unwieldy, unyielding, uncaring,
unresponsive monolith that we are at the moment.
And you don’t have
to lose what WSM’s ‘2022 Vision’ endearingly calls the ‘economy of scale.’ You
set up an alliance network of the newly-independent WSM units. A collaborative
association of the stores, the Food House and Panzanella.
What’s more is, by
setting the Food House free, you give it the opportunity to sort out its own
capital problems, perhaps raise more capital, form collaborative partnerships
with other food-producing entities (such as the new Piedmont Food and Agricultural
Processing Center), and explore new opportunities for commercial sales. Thereby
placing it on a much sounder and more sustainable financial footing, than one
which is based on fiddling the books, to pretend that inter-unit transfers are
profit.
In fact, this
alliance of collaboration (let’s call it the Local Food Alliance – LFA) could
be expanded to create a much more powerful regional farm-to-fork system by
including entities such as Chatham Marketplace, Burlington’s Company Shop
Markets, Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, North Carolina Co-operative
Extension, the Sustainable Agricultural program at Central Carolina Community
College, Pittsboro’s Abundance Foundation, local Farmers’ Markets, and so on,
and so on, and so on.
Ruffin and his
mates in the WSM corporate office management team might see this as diluting
the vision. I see it as an overwhelming expansion and enrichment of that
vision. It’s not beyond the realm of imagination.
Ruffin sits on the
Board of the National Co-operative Grocers’ Association, which works along
exactly these lines – through voluntary collaboration. And succeeds in economy
of scale without the need for NCGA to be a uniform, top-down empire.
All of those
special Co-op Deals you see in the stores, all those printed cups, they come
from that NCGA collaboration. And an economy of purchasing power, determined by
separate co-op’s around the country deciding voluntary to create a joint
vision, working together consensually. Ruffin is one vote on that NCGA Board.
He ain’t the Boss. He knows voluntary collaboration between co-op’s works.
We have intimate,
immediate and successful responsiveness at the sharp end. And regional strategy
determined by a collaborative, consensual, energized and democratic
co-operative of decision-makers at the top end.
Now, when WSM’s
‘2022 Vision’ talks of new stores, we can say, ok. But they have to be
stand-alone units. They have to be wanted by the communities in which they will
be established. And they have to be financed by those communities themselves,
without imposing undemocratic burden on other communities. And once
established, they can join the LFA.
If the WSM
corporate office management team insist on setting up more stores under the WSM
brand, then we should insist that only happens once the community in question
has raised the finance to do so. No borrowing. And no imposing the burden on
WSM workers by the backdoor, by making them work ever harder to raise the funds
instead. And absolutely no investment in new stores until the debt from the
2007/2008 expansion has been paid off.
[Mind you, if the
WSM corporate office management team simply plough ahead, ignore our input and
toss financial caution to the wind, I would like it to be known that I’d be
happy to work on the Hot Bar of the new WSM store planned for Barbados. But. I
digress … ]
All of which brings
me neatly to my next proposed alternative to the WSM corporate office
management team’s version of ‘2022 Vision’: the future for WSM workers over the
next ten years.
Unlike the WSM
corporate office management team, I do not think that our co-op (either as
empire or loose collaboration of stand-alone co-operative units) should be
looking for yet more value from workers. I believe that workers should be
looking for more value from the WSM, which our General Manager keeps insisting
we half own.
We workers made
huge sacrifices in the past few years of recession to keep our beloved co-op
afloat – not just worker-owners; ALL workers. We should ALL now reap the
rewards.
There should be no
new productivity demands of workers unless those demands are agreed in advance
by the workers in the Departments affected.
The entry level
wage should be brought in line with the true living wage appropriate foe
central north Carolina – something closer to $11/$12.
There should be an
immediate across the board unmerit-related ‘thank you’ pay increase of $1 an
hour for all staff. Followed by annual pay increases, which, at least in part,
are related not only to individual merit, but also to sales increases within the
individual Departments.
The cost of
worker-ownership should be reduced to no more than $200, the cost to be spread
over as much as five years, with all of the benefits (dividend and voting)
applicable upon payment of the first installment.
And some form of
bonus scheme should be initiated for those workers unable or unwilling to
subscribe to the worker-ownership program. You shouldn’t have to pay to be
rewarded for your labor. Not in a co-op. And you should not have to pay to be a
part of the decision-making process in a co-op that describes itself as a
worker-consumer hybrid.
WSM Employee Policy
already demands that workers be involved meaningfully in all processes that
make major decisions affecting their workplace. But that demand has been increasingly
ignored by the WSM corporate office management team over recent years.
If we are to set
out on a ten year path to becoming a more responsive co-operative – more
responsive to the common needs of both of our consumers and our workers – then
it follows that it is not enough merely to change the structure. We need to
change the mindset.
Frankly, I could
spend another ten pages setting out the proposals I have already made over the
past seven years to improve accountability and democracy within our co-operative,
so as to make it a stronger business and a better co-operative. Check out
the rest of this blog to get an idea of what those proposals are.
But, whether WSM
remains a widely-spread and remotely-managed empire, or becomes a more intimate
collaboration of stand-alone democratic units, it will become more responsive
only if management decides it wants to be responsive. Beginning with this
consultation. Over to you, Ruffin …
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