Skip to main content

Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

What responsibilities do co-op members have?

I want to tackle today what I think is quite a difficult question.  It’s this:  what responsibility do ordinary members of a co-operative have, if their elected directors are not making a very good fist of things in terms of governance and member democracy?

A little while back (and for obvious reasons I’m going to be imprecise and will be fictionalising some things) I went to the AGM of a co-operatively run organisation I’ve been a member of for some time. It has around 6000 members and it operates in the area where I live: let’s imagine that it’s a locally-based consumer co-op.

The AGM pulled in perhaps twenty-five members, if you include the directors and one member of staff who was there. So at least we just met the quorum, which was sensibly set very low.  You can do the sums: about 0.05% of the members were there.

Read the rest at Bibby on Cooperatives

 

Go to the GEO front page

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
CAPTCHA This question is to verify that you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam.

What does the G in GEO stand for?