Countering marginalisation through ‘cooperative democracy’: The case of worker co-ops in Japan

Abstract

Japanese

Korean

While worker cooperatives aim to achieve both solidaristic and social goals, there is less understanding of how the democratic structure of worker cooperatives interacts with an inclusive work environment among differently motivated and empowered workers. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how democratic arrangements in the workplace contribute to the inclusion of marginalised workers through an analysis of Worker Co-ops in Japan—a network of worker cooperatives with roots in a job-creation movement by unemployed workers which has expanded in the realm of care. The study shows how Worker Co-ops have reinterpreted democracy as a cooperative practice of institutionalising the relational conditions for drawing out the perspectives of others and provides insights into how this also enables them collectively to resist dominant societal narratives that contribute to their marginalisation.

Keywords

care democracy Japan worker cooperative

Introduction

Labour market exclusion has been a central social policy concern in post-industrial societies. A dualised labour market between highly skilled professionals on the one hand, and structural unemployment or precarious work among low skilled workers on the other, has multiplied the economic and social marginalisation of the latter (Bonoli, 2005; Esping-Andersen, 1999). Exclusion from work is harmful for individuals, firstly because it directly translates into the risk of economic insecurity, but also because it deprives people of opportunities to develop skills, contribute to society, engage in social cooperation and gain recognition (Gheaus and Herzog, 2016). This article explores, from a bottom-up perspective, how democratic arrangements in the workplace contribute to the inclusion of diverse workers through an analysis of Worker Co-ops in Japan – a network of worker cooperatives with roots in a job-creation movement by unemployed workers.

Since its inception in the 1980s, a central mission of Worker Co-ops has been to enable the social and economic inclusion of people who have fallen outside of traditional employment and welfare structures. This mission can be traced back to Worker Co-ops’ historical roots as a self-help movement by day labourers who were positioned outside of Japan's postwar social settlement based on employment protection for male breadwinners of large firms and their families. Although these labour market outsiders were made invisible from mainstream society, economic downturn since the 1990s has expanded the population of outsiders from the employment-based welfare paradigm (Shizume et al., 2021). In particular, labour market irregularisation and income insecurity have disproportionately affected younger people and women, shattering the image of Japan as a ‘mass middle society’ (Abe, 2023).

While already prevalent, these labour market exclusions became a salient social issue after the 2008 financial crisis, corresponding with the ‘discovery’ of the phenomenon which has come to be called hikikomori. Although the meaning of hikikomori is contested, the term is used to denote acute social withdrawal where one disengages from society by not going to school, work or having relations with others beyond one's family for an extended period (Horiguchi, 2012). An associated concept is futoko, which refers to prolonged refusal to go to school. Although hikikomori was initially identified as a youth problem, especially among men, the generation first identified as ‘socially withdrawn youth’ has since reached middle age. A 2022 government survey found that an estimated 1.46 million people were hikikomori defined as someone without social interaction for more than six months (Cabinet Office, 2022). In the backdrop of the Covid 19 pandemic, the most cited reason for social withdrawal was exit from work, and among those between 40 and 69 years old, more than half were women.

Like many other countries, Japan has turned to third sector organisations to provide services in local communities to tackle such ‘new social risks’ involving those on the borders of traditional work and welfare arrangements. While government-nonprofit partnerships can lead to the cooptation of the latter by state or market forces (Graefe, 2001), several empirical studies have found that third sector organisations sometimes manage to retain their identity despite a marketised environment (Connelly et al., 2011; Kim, 2015).Worker Co-ops in Japan have also expanded in relation to policy frameworks while striving to ‘reclaim’ work by remaining true to their original mission to fulfil community needs as well as create an inclusive workplace. Thus, there is emerging scholarship on how Worker Co-ops contribute to the social and economic inclusion of marginalised workers such as those with mental and learning disabilities, experiences of hikikomori or futoko, alcohol and drug use and other accumulated disadvantages interacting with contemporary socioeconomic structures (Kubo, 2020; Otaka, 2017).

Nevertheless, there are few empirical studies that focus on how the democratic organisation of worker cooperatives contributes to an inclusive work environment. Given the centrality of democratic governance for the organisational form of a worker cooperative, this question is significant for understanding how to arrange work in ways that enable the social and economic participation of marginalised workers. This article aims to fill this gap by drawing on an empirical study of Worker Co-ops. Based on in-depth interviews of worker-members, it examines how ‘democracy’ is practiced among differently situated and motivated workers, as well as how these practices contribute to countering social marginalisation in society at large.

Democracy and worker cooperatives

The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) defines a cooperative as ‘An autonomous organization of people united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically operated business’. Among different kinds of cooperatives, a worker cooperative is one where its members consist of the workers of the cooperative enterprise (Webb and Cheney, 2014). Thus, one of the defining organisational features of worker cooperatives in relation to other economic enterprises is its democratic decision-making structure. In a worker cooperative, ultimate authority resides in a general assembly of worker-members based on a one-person, one-vote basis (Dufays et al., 2020). This decision-making structure reallocates power between labour and capital so that cooperatives ‘reverse the conventional situation of the commodification of labour (i.e. the labour hired by capital) by putting capital at the service of worker-members’ objectives’ (Dufays et al., 2020: 975–976).

Much of the existing literature has focused on the tensions between the economic and democratic goals of worker cooperatives, with some finding that democratic governance can have positive effects on economic productivity, efficiency and resilience (Ben-Ner and Jones, 1995; Birchall, 2012; Burdín and Dean, 2009). Meanwhile, a notable development of worker cooperatives is their expansion in the social service sector, reflecting the growing emphasis on ‘contribution to the community’ within the wider cooperative sector in response to contemporary needs (Berry and Bell, 2018; Majee and Hoyt, 2009; Matthew and Bransburg, 2017; Webb and Cheney, 2014). In contrast to existing studies that highlight the conflict between worker cooperatives’ dual goals, several empirical studies indicate that democratically organised care is a better alternative to marketised care, both in terms of service quality and working conditions (Berry and Bell, 2018; Matthew and Bransburg, 2017). The thought is that reflecting plural voices is conducive to the pursuit of social and environmental goals beyond profit-maximisation and leads to more just outcomes for workers (Battilana et al., 2022).

Yet, despite recognition of the importance of democracy for meeting both solidaristic and social goals, there is less understanding of how democratic organisation intersects with diversity and inclusion along social and demographic dimensions (Battilana et al., 2022; Meyers and Vallas, 2016). In fact, studies that show how democratic structures and practices strengthened solidarity among participants involve members who have similar social backgrounds—white, middle class—and/or already share strong democratic and egalitarian commitments (Kokkinidis, 2015; Langmead, 2017). An important exception is Joan Meyers (2022) and Meyers and Vallas (2016) study, which shows how a worker-owned enterprise's hybrid representative and participatory decision-making structure can produce organisational narratives that resist structurally constructed narratives surrounding race and gender. Yet, there is more to learn about how democratic arrangements contribute to solidarity among workers who are diverse in terms of their social positions, commitments, needs and vulnerabilities.

Power, democracy and countering structural injustice

As a theoretical framework to interpret the empirical study, this section organises notions of democracy according to different conceptions of power. Because the organisation of power is a key feature of democracy, analysing how Worker Co-ops practice democracy in terms of different conceptions of power is useful for clarifying how it relates to an inclusive work environment.

Power is often conceptualised in terms of power over and power with. The idea of power over is associated with Robert Dahl's (1957: 202–203) formulation of power as ‘a relation among people’ such that ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do’. By contrast, power with is often linked with Hannah Arendt's (2023[1969]) understanding of power as the ability to achieve collective outcomes with the assistance of others. From a liberal perspective, democracy is a decision-making procedure which equally distributes power over—the power to impose one's will on others—among members of a political community (Klein, 2022). By equally distributing decision-making power, democratic procedures give equal respect to people as independent, self-governing agents (Christiano, 2008). In contrast to this liberal definition, democracy can also be interpreted in associative terms as coordinated action among plural individuals to pursue collective outcomes which cannot be achieved alone. Unlike any type of coordinated action, democratic power with presumes unforced cooperation among participants in pursuit of common goals (Klein, 2022).

Existing studies often conceptualise worker cooperatives as productive organisations that equalise power between capital and labour or that ‘empower’ workers. Nevertheless, the different conceptions of power being used are rarely distinguished. On the one hand, studies hold that worker cooperatives distribute power equally among actors. For example, Battilana et al. (2022: 9, 12) argue that democratising work organisations is necessary for ‘achieving a fairer distribution of power’. The idea of power as a distributable good reflects the idea that the one-person, one-vote governance structure of worker cooperatives is a mechanism to distribute power over equally among actors, so that workers can resist arbitrary managerial power.

On the other hand, worker cooperatives originally arose as a movement by marginalised and disadvantaged groups to fulfill their common needs (Battilani and Schröter, 2012). In this sense, democracy is an exercise of power with to improve members’ collective situation in solidarity with others. Worker cooperatives’ collective alteration of power relations has often been conceptualised as a paradigmatic form of prefiguration which directly constructs an alternative reality within a capitalist institutional structure (Cheney et al., 2014; Dufays et al., 2020; Kokkinidis, 2015; Webb and Cheney, 2014; Wiksell, 2020; Wright, 2010). Alongside exercising voice to exert pressure on powerful actors to transform unjust institutions, this kind of bottom-up institution building aimed at reordering social relations has been theorised as another way to counter structural injustice (Endo, 2023; Young, 2011).

Unlike power over, a significant feature of power with is that it cannot be distributed at the individual level because it is enabled through the ongoing cooperation of many people (Klein, 2022: 34). However, as noted in the previous section, worker cooperatives’ solidarity has often assumed cooperation among similarly positioned people to meet common needs or realise shared values. This study aims to explore how democracy as power with is possible among differently situated and motivated workers and how it can contribute to an inclusive workplace.

Background of Worker Co-ops

A movement from the margins

Worker Co-ops, the subject of this study, are worker cooperatives associated with the Japan Workers’ Co-operative Union (JWCU), a national umbrella organisation of worker cooperatives. As of 2022, it had approximately 15,000 workers with an annual turnover of 37.8 billion yen (approx. £195 million, €230 million) (JWCU). Worker Co-ops can be traced back to a job-creation movement by members of a labour union formed by participants of a public works programme. The public works programme was established by the Japanese government in response to mass unemployment in the postwar years and consisted of daily wage work for the maintenance of public infrastructure managed by local governments. Yet, the programme could hardly provide sufficient work for all job seekers. As the retention and concentration of older workers in the scheme became a policy problem, union members founded their own self-organised enterprises (jigyodan) in the 1970s. These became the prototypes of Worker Co-ops. In place of the public works programme, union members sought to gain work commissioned by local governments as private enterprises. To gain legitimacy for their projects, they reinterpreted their work as ‘democratic reformation’ of public projects through promoting workers’ participation and prioritising the needs of local citizens (Kubo, 2020). In 1979, 36 of these grass-roots enterprises joined to form a national federation. Recognising that their aspirations coincided with those of a worker cooperative, they reorganised their national federation as a network of worker cooperatives in 1986.

Worker Co-ops are especially suited for exploring how to organise work in ways that counter marginalisation in contemporary society for the following reasons. First, they developed as a social movement by unemployed workers during the transition to a post-industrial economy (Kubo, 2020). Worker Co-ops were developed, not by commodified labourers seeking to improve their position within the employment relationship, but by people who were excluded from employment itself. In 1960, female participants of the public works programme rose to 39%. Although the scheme did not initially target older workers, by 1960, more than 50% were over 50 years old (Iwata, 2017). Many of these workers were unskilled labourers who could no longer find employment (Miyachi, 2014). The high rates of female, older, unskilled, and single-member households among union members in the midst of rapid economic growth reflect the marginal position of these groups within the ‘company-ist’ and familial institutional structure of this period. Post-industrial pressures have since led to job precarity and corresponding welfare needs for an expanding portion of the population. Yet, employees’ associations have chosen to recalibrate protections for labour market insiders rather than to expand universalistic protections, which has augmented various social exclusions (Shizume et al., 2021). Against this backdrop, Worker Co-ops have sought alternative ways to organise their work by drawing on their own experiences of exclusion from Japan's employment-based citizenship.

Second, Worker Co-ops’ business areas have focused on labour intensive services close to, or within the public sector. Beginning with the maintenance of public facilities, roads and parks, the business areas of Worker Co-ops shifted to hospital cleaning, logistics and building maintenance in the 1980s. Since the late 1990s into the 2000s, they have rapidly expanded their businesses in the social service sector in response to social needs and policy contexts. The start of the long-term care insurance (LTCI) system in 2000 opened up opportunities for third sector organisations to participate as providers of LTC services. Since 2003, Worker Co-ops have been involved in the management of local facilities such as community centres, nurseries, elderly welfare facilities and after school programmes for school children. Since the enactment of the ‘Act on Self-reliance Support for Needy Persons’ in 2013, they have engaged in job preparation and consultation services for those experiencing difficulties in mainstream employment. In addition, they are also providers of ‘after school day services’ for children with disabilities. Today, such community-based social services comprise the largest share of their business.

In sum, Worker Co-ops are precursors both to contemporary exclusions from employment, as well as to the corresponding rise in the importance of care – understood in a broad sense as the work of maintaining the conditions of human life – in the realm of work. Their expansion in the care sector is significant since unlike conventional production aimed at profit-maximisation, democratic arrangements are recognised as particularly suited for producing good quality care (Matthew and Bransburg, 2017). Hence, Worker Co-ops provide valuable test cases of how democratic working arrangements can contribute to social inclusion in the expanding realm of care from the perspective of those who have been excluded from industrial citizenship.

Organisation and governance

Before moving on to the empirical study, this section presents the organisational structure of Worker Co-ops. The ‘Central Jigyodan’, or central business enterprises, comprise the largest member organisation of the JWCU. Established in 1987, the Central Jigyodan group is a network of model Worker Co-ops within the wider JWCU network. The group is organised in regional blocks and business units throughout Japan and is comprised of approximately 10,000 members and 400 business units, with an annual turnover of 20 billion yen (approx. £100 million, €120 million) (Workers’ COOP). Business unit leaders of Central Worker Co-ops (hereafter CWC) are recruited at the central office and take assignments throughout the country with regular transfers. This system enables the group to disseminate and pass on their cooperative values to individual business units. Moreover, the nation-wide scale of the group enables them to pool financial resources and knowledge which contributes to their financial stability. Alongside the CWCs are Local Worker Co-ops (hereafter LWC), which are Worker Co-ops that are formed more spontaneously from local citizens’ initiatives. Although LWCs are organised independently of the Central Jigyodan group, they can receive support and advice from the latter. This structure allows the JWCU to draw on the knowledge and resources of the Central Jigyodan group, as well as on the innovations of more independent, local initiatives.

‘Managing businesses democratically’, alongside contributing to capital building and sharing responsibility, has been formally stated as part of the values and principles of Worker Co-ops by the JWCU. Nevertheless, worker cooperatives lacked a distinct legal entity until the enactment of the Worker Cooperative Act in December 2020. Until then, individual enterprises interpreted and practiced this general principle in their respective ways. The new law stipulates that a fundamental principle of a worker cooperative is that ‘The opinions of members shall be appropriately reflected when conducting the business of the cooperative’ (Article 3, Worker Cooperative Act). Despite legal reasons for the use of this expression, its positive purpose was to emphasise the importance of members’ participation beyond formal voting rights. Although many business units had already been practicing such thick democratic participation on an individual basis, its codification in law has sparked discussions among co-op members about what this means and how to practice it.

Data and methods

The purpose of the empirical study was to explore how Worker Co-ops interpret and practice ‘reflecting the opinions’ of members, and how it shapes members’ social relations. The author first started observing Worker Co-ops’ activities in 2019 by attending formal events organised by the JWCU and exploring their published documents. The main empirical data for this study were collected through semi-structured interviews with a total of 16 members of three different Worker Co-ops operating in the Kansai region of Japan between November 2022 and March 2023. Among the 16 interviews, the first eight were with members of an LWC that the author contacted independently. These were followed by four interviews each with members of two separate CWCs (CWC1 and CWC2) who the author contacted after consulting with the director of a regional Central Jigyodan block. The analysis also draws on insights gained by the author's participation in seminars and events regularly organised by the JWCU in which Worker Co-op members share their everyday practices and experiences.

The business areas of the LWC included elderly care, a day service for school children, and providing job preparation and consultation services for people experiencing difficulties in employment. The main business area of CWC1 was providing afterschool programmes for school children, while that of CWC2 was hospital cleaning, a traditional area of work for CWCs. Nevertheless, there was a strong social service element as most workers besides unit leaders were participants of public job-preparation schemes.

Respondents from the LWC and CWC1 also included workers who experienced difficulties in mainstream employment due to various life experiences. This included being a school dropout or having had periods of futoko or hikikomori, having a physical disability or mental illness. At the same time, the Worker Co-ops in this study are not ‘work-integration social enterprises’ (WISES) which are set up specifically for the purpose of employing people with difficulty in employment. Most workers are selected through a recruitment process based on the job description. Many workers have tertiary degrees related to their jobs, such as in social work or education, while it is not unusual for those with past experiences of being hikikomori to have been to university. Nevertheless, the inclusive ethos of Worker Co-ops leads them to avoid rejecting applicants with complex backgrounds, resulting in a diverse work environment.

Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of the author's university. An information sheet outlining the rights of participants was presented and explained to participants at the beginning of each interview before oral consent was sought. Interviews with members of the LWC and CWC1 were conducted in person at their workplaces, while interviews with members of CWC2 who worked in a hospital were conducted online due to Covid restrictions. The interviews were approximately one hour each and focused on how ‘reflecting opinions’ was practiced, how discussions took place, what issues were discussed, and what was good and bad about their workplace.

Verbatim Japanese language transcripts of the interviews were analysed employing thematic analysis through open coding in search for patterns (Braun and Clarke, 2006). As a result of the coding, a strong relational theme emerged which contrasted with a liberal understanding of democracy among autonomous actors. The analysis mainly draws on responses from members of the LWC and CWC1 since, despite strong social inclusion and care elements, the ‘reflecting opinions’ dimension was not especially salient in responses by members of the CWC2. This may reflect the diversity among individual Worker Coops, the nature of their job in hospital cleaning, as well as the limitations of the online interview format for drawing out the views of members of the job preparation scheme.

Results

Discussions among co-op members take place in formal meetings regularly organised within business units as well as among unit leaders. These consist of weekly meetings to discuss organisational issues directly pertaining to their everyday work, such as what activities to prepare for the children in the afterschool service, while issues that require an organisational response or that should be shared with other units might be referred to a separate leaders’ meeting.

In addition, the CWCs have monthly meetings where both those in leadership positions and regular members discuss issues relating to the entire co-op. According to a member of CWC1, these meetings usually consist of ‘reporting’ by individual units on their activities. However, discussions could involve practical issues such as whether to pay commuting allowance for workers who cycle to work or considering new activities, such as starting a community-run cafeteria.

In addition to unit meetings and leaders’ meetings, the LWC also holds monthly meetings where all members are invited to attend. At the time of the interviews, the LWC had been in the process of finalising a more than year-long process in which members gathered monthly to establish their organisational values and principles. The motivation for starting this discussion partly arose from frustration by some workers who felt that although the wide scope for self-determination afforded to individual workers was generally a good thing, the lack of formal rules and standards sometimes led to a sense of unfairness or irresponsibility. Taking the seven cooperative principles of the International Cooperative Alliance and those of the JWCU as models, the goal was to establish a shared reference point for members to guide their business activities. Reference to these discussions featured repeatedly in the interviews.

Tensions with cooperative practices

Most of the participants in all three Worker Co-ops had not joined them because it was a worker cooperative; most did not initially know what a worker cooperative was and usually learned about the organisational form during their job interview. They were neither particularly motivated nor experienced in actively exercising their voice in the workplace. Most simply applied for a job in their area of interest in a social service sector such as childcare. During the interviews, many respondents referred to their workplace as a ‘company’ rather than a cooperative.

This sometimes led to tensions between the cooperative principle to ‘reflect workers’ opinions’ and the attitudes of the workers themselves. Workers in CWC1 noted the gap between the social movement goals of the Central Jigyodan group and frontline workers busy with their daily tasks. For them, discussions about organisational issues beyond their direct job could feel like additional work. According to one worker,

What I hear a lot is, ‘I came here to do children's afterschool care, and I’m not really interested in cooperative work’. There's probably about 70∼80% of people like that. (CWC1, 2)

CWCs engage in what the JWCU calls ‘social solidarity activities’ which are projects that involve local citizens supported by the Central Jigyodan group. As part of this initiative, the CWC1 runs a project for futoko children by employing a worker specifically for this project, while others are encouraged to participate. While this was recognised as a meaningful activity, respondents expressed difficulties in balancing such activities with their main work or family life. Even if individual workers could be motivated to start a project which fit their own concern or interest, it could still be difficult to gain the active cooperation of others.

Those with more experience or in leadership positions expressed the challenges they face in getting people to express their opinions in the first place. As a Worker Co-op, members have a vote in the general assembly of their co-op. Yet voting did not feature strongly as an aspect of reflecting opinions and was usually mentioned as a formal and abstract right rather than something that was actively exercised. According to a board member of the LWC, ‘They say ‘reflecting opinions’, but it's still a long way to go until reflecting, and expressing is the issue’ (LWC, 9). Thus, the ‘self-governance’ of the enterprise was usually purposefully ‘set up’ and encouraged from above by the co-ops’ leadership. Meetings were constructed so that participants were able and encouraged to voice their opinions. This included asking members to discuss specific topics planned by the board members or paying attention to non-verbal ques such as nodding and facial expressions. An experienced worker noted the importance of ‘picking up’ people's opinions:

You can tell with their facial expressions. So you need to ask them. Is this cooperative work? That assumes having discussions but not everyone is willing to talk. It could be difficult to voice their opinions or they’re not sure of something. The key is not to miss these things and pick them up … to listen, to notice, and look for answers, these things are very important for this job. (CWC1, 1)

Workers’ opinions were actively sought, not only in formal meetings, but also in everyday work environments. It was a pattern among respondents to report that they were proactively asked about their opinions on various issues, which many said was a refreshing, or at least surprising, change from their previous experiences at work.

Becoming part of the story

Thus, the flip side of difficulties in expressing opinions was that reflecting opinions was associated with listening. Listening was closely associated with adopting an open-minded attitude to others’ experiences and perspectives, and was expressed as ‘being accepted’, which was closely associated with ‘not being rejected’ and being ‘without prejudice’. This aspect of listening arose most vividly in responses by members of the LWC in relation to their monthly discussions for establishing the organisational principles of their co-op.

A worker who was new to the LWC said that there were many things she did not understand about the organisation and ongoing discussions concerning the co-op's principles. Nevertheless, ‘even if I make a strange comment, I’m still accepted. In the sense that they don’t reject’ (LWC, 7). A worker with bipolar disorder observed from his experience in previous workplaces that despite strong social prejudice against mentally disabled people, this workplace was ‘a world without prejudice’, which was why he felt able to disclose his condition at this workplace. Such a culture of withholding judgement and shedding prejudice created an environment in which participants could make themselves vulnerable to the scrutiny of others.

Even if they don’t enthusiastically agree, it's like, oh, that's a different perspective, and we think about it together. Basically, for questions that have no answer, like (what is) exclusion, we examine each others’ answers. So it's scary, but that fear only comes from my own pride, and everyone is welcoming, or they’re like let's express our opinions, it's ok to do that. (LWC, 8)

An attitude of listening to others by suspending one's own judgement corresponds to the idea of ‘attentive listening’, which has been associated with an ethic of care (Bourgault, 2020). Attentive listening requires the listener to question their own pre-examined opinions by entertaining the possibility of views which differ from their own. In this sense, ‘reflecting opinions’ differed from the conventional agent-centred idea of exercising democratic voice through expressing one's own opinions as a ‘self-originating source of claims’ (Kittay, 1999). Rather it consisted of a relational interaction which emphasised the attitude of the listener to suspend her own judgements so that others could express their opinions without fear of judgement.

Moreover, the appearance of plural perspectives that this enabled served to reinforce the conditions for workers to exercise their voice. Despite general agreement on the importance of discussing together, these discussions did not necessarily produce concrete decisions. A worker in the LWC who had retired from a private company noted the difference with his previous workplace in the following way.

I think work means that you solve a problem, but here, without solving all the fundamental problems, we just share common concerns, and it's like let's somehow find a way …. By contrast at my previous company, we should solve the problem. In order to solve that problem, let's set these goals. These aspects felt like work, and there was something organised and disciplined as a company. (LWC, 6)

Several respondents across the Worker Co-ops noted that many of their discussions centred on ‘questions with no answers’, which reflects the fact that the goals of a Worker Co-op are more indeterminate than those for a profit-making company.

What is the goal? If profit is the goal, that is the good. We should pursue that goal, and it's clear what's bad. But if it's about the satisfaction of the children and parents, or our working conditions, there are so many things which are indeterminate. (CWC1, 1)

In place of producing concrete decisions, these discussions served as a common space of appearance between worker-members. For the LWC, the original purpose of having discussions about their organisational principles was to identify and establish a common framework to guide their business activities.

That was the original aim, but since it's about how we ourselves want to work, it's easy to say your opinions. There's no answer, right? It's like you yourself are the right answer. It's just an opinion about your own view, so many opinions come out. In that sense, I realised that it's important to have a theme for the discussion. Then, by having many opportunities for discussion, this becomes an opportunity to know the other person …. Knowing that person means that your relationship with that person changes. Once the relationship changes and you know the other person, it creates an environment where it's easier to say your opinions. So discussions regarding the principles itself changed into an undertaking to shape (the conditions for) ‘reflecting opinions’. We thought that the outcome of the principles and values were the most important thing, but having the discussions itself has evolved into an important dimension. (LWC, 5)

This quote shows that the most important outcome of the discussions was not necessarily the actual principles that were agreed on. Rather, the discussions were important as a process through which participants revealed themselves to others through their opinions. For this purpose, it was important to set open-ended themes which were conducive to the appearance of plural perspectives. Sharing a space of common appearance and mutual interaction related LWC members to each other in ways that established and reinforced the relational conditions for them to voice their views about their common affairs. By being able to express their opinions, participants could become part of an interactive web of mutual interaction that enabled them to ‘become part of the story’ in a way that was not always possible in their previous workplaces.

Creating a different story with others

‘Reflecting opinions’ was also a process through which members could create their own collective narrative without being defined by society. Some of the respondents expressed their experiences of difficulty in adjusting to dominant social rules and ways of doing things in the past. One worker spoke of his experience of having been a ‘social hikikomori’.

They can go outside. They can work a bit. But they might not be able to stay in a permanent job. A totally thoroughgoing hikikomori stays holed up in the house. They can’t go outside. They sit still in their room. They have no contact with the outside world. A social hikikomori can go outside. They can talk to people to a certain extent. Most of these people are social hikikomori, but working, work is a high hurdle. In the past, I used to go to meetings for hikikomori. What everyone ultimately struggles with in the end is working. Holding a position in society, establishing your position. Shouldering responsibility. (LWC, 8)

This statement reflects how work is a sphere in which the ‘rules of the system’ operate most forcefully. Withdrawal can be interpreted as a form of resistance to playing by the rules.

Another worker who had previously worked as a contract-based teacher in a public school also expressed her struggle to adjust to established rules which prevented her from interacting with students according to her own educational values.

It could be the culture of the school, or some rules in the school that were made in the past, or some implicit assumptions. There were many of these and I had to struggle to adjust to all of these … that was quite hard for me. (LWC, 4)

By contrast, a feature of the LWC was that ‘everything would be made anew’. Although this was partly because the business unit that the respondent joined was still new in years,

‘It felt like we were going to think about how we’re going to do this together, and it felt like I was also going to be one of the people who was going to make this together …’ (LWC, 4)

Respondents from CWC1 who were somewhat ambivalent about the democratic goals of the Worker Co-op also appreciated the freedom and autonomy allowed to workers, especially regarding how to undertake their primary job of afterschool care provision. In fact, respondents from both the LWC and CWC1 reported that their workplaces lacked established rules to the extent that it was almost burdensome since everything fell on their shoulders.

The idea of creating a collective narrative that differed from the dominant one can be interpreted as a kind of ‘constructive resistance’ to dominant structures from which some members were marginalised or excluded (Wiksell, 2020). This idea was supported by a quote from an LWC board member who stated that what he wished for was a society in which everyone could define their own happiness instead of suffering by trying to measure up to an established standard: ‘Don’t compare yourself with others, hold your ground, and be able to think about what's your own happiness. Otherwise, we’ll all kill ourselves’ (LWC, 9). Instead of struggling to adjust to the dominant system, the LWC offered a setting in which each member could be one of the actors who would create a different story together with others. This was a collective and cooperative undertaking in the sense that it involved establishing the shared conditions for the appearance of plural perspectives that enables people with diverse needs and experiences to participate in an interactive process of mutual effect, which they too could influence. Thus, an LWC member reflected that Worker Co-ops were for the ‘weak’, not the strong.

In a Worker Co-op, each person has one vote and you can reflect your opinions and have agency over your work. Then, I think it looks like it's for enlightened people. But my view is that it's more about making a workplace where the weak can come together and work more comfortably. (LWC, 5)

Moreover, the sense of resisting by creating an alternative reality together was a reason why some members could work together with people who have different needs and vulnerabilities:

I think of it in the context of punk rock. For me, it's punk. This way of thinking about an organisation. For the weak to stand up to create their own happiness, I think it's punk, and I think it's cool. (LWC, 9)

Discussion and conclusion

Democratic management with formal voting rights is a defining organisational feature of worker cooperatives. Yet, the interviews show that most Co-op members were not initially motivated nor experienced in practicing democracy in the workplace. Moreover, in line with the inclusive values of the Worker Co-op movement, these co-ops included workers whose backgrounds made it difficult for them to work in mainstream employment. What kind of ‘democracy’ is practiced among such diverse workers and how does it contribute to an inclusive work environment?

The dominant, liberal conception of democracy respects people's equal status as self-governing individuals by equally distributing power over others in making collective decisions (Klein, 2022). Yet, care theorists have long argued against the liberal assumption of equally situated autonomous individuals who compete to pursue their respective life plans (Kittay, 1999). They argue that autonomy should be understood in relational terms since people's capacity to develop and exercise their autonomy is enhanced or impeded by the social relations in which they are embedded in complex ways (Held, 2006; Mackenzie, 2014; Mackenzie and Stoljar, 2000).

Drawing on this insight, we can theorise Worker Co-ops’ practice of ‘reflecting opinions’ as a kind of relational democracy; a practice of realising the relational conditions for people who are differently situated in terms of their needs and vulnerability to form and express their views on common affairs. This involved being attentive to the views of others while withholding judgement and prejudice. Such attentive listening was important for enabling people to express their opinions, especially for those who experienced marginalisation in previous work settings or were not accustomed to voicing their opinions at work. Moreover, this was not only a relational practice in an interpersonal, dyadic sense, but also a collective and cooperative undertaking to create an enabling environment for members to share their views with others by purposefully institutionalising such practices and interactions. In this sense, it might be more appropriate to conceptualise ‘reflecting opinions’ as cooperative democracy. In the case of the LWC, the appearance of plural perspectives which this enabled further reinforced the conditions for participants to be able to voice their opinions and become part of an interactive web of mutual effect and relationships.

But how is this cooperative democracy possible in the first place? As previous studies on worker cooperatives have shown, some respondents reported real tensions in balancing their self-interest with collective ones (Puusa et al., 2016). Providing an inclusive work environment could feel like some workers were forced to ‘cover’ for those who ‘could not work elsewhere’. One answer might come from a conventional understanding of cooperation which emphasises reciprocity for fulfilling mutual needs. This idea was expressed by a respondent who noted that although it's sometimes difficult to work with vulnerable workers, ‘maybe, conversely, I’m going to be helped as well. When I become weak’ (CWC1, 1). In addition, respondents in CWC2 stated that working with people in the public job preparation scheme enabled them to gain a wider perspective and think of others beyond themselves.

While such reciprocity and other-regardingness may well play important roles, cooperation according to the findings of this study was not so much about reciprocity, but about collective empowerment, or power with to achieve collective outcomes with the assistance of others. In short, inclusion is possible because establishing the relational conditions for the appearance of plural perspectives is consistent with all workers’ empowerment to create a shared reality with others. Enabling marginalised perspectives to come into view could enhance each worker's collectively enabled power by broadening the shared experiences and the reality they shape together. Moreover, this power with to create a shared reality was also, at least implicitly, power to change the narrative in society at large. This new reality was one where ‘the weak’ could ‘create their own happiness’ (LWC, 9). In this sense, the collective power to resist the narrative also contributed to enabling diverse members to work together.

These findings resonate with existing studies which interpret the democratic and egalitarian norms and practices of worker cooperatives as a form of prefiguration or ‘constructive resistance’ against the status quo (Kokkinidis, 2015; Wiksell, 2020). Nevertheless, a crucial difference is that previous studies assume already politicised and more or less equally empowered members while participants in this study were more diverse and usually not politically motivated. Yet, by working in the Worker Co-op, they came to gain a sense of doing things differently, especially if they had been marginalised or repressed in a previous work setting, but also simply by becoming aware of a different possibility. A worker who had never questioned her working conditions before reflected that, ‘Now that I think about it, this is how I wanted to work, that's how I feel’ (LWC, 7).

Because the experiences of such collective empowerment and constructive resistance were contingent and implicit, the willingness of members to engage with diverse workers varied across the three Worker Co-ops as well as between individual members. Nevertheless, the findings of this study indicate that spreading cooperative democracy in work could offer windows of opportunity for ordinary citizens who are not politically motivated from the start to imagine new realities and exercise collective power to counter marginalisation in cooperation with others.

Footnotes

Funding

This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI Grant number JP 21KK0030.

ORCID iD

Chikako Endo

Author biography

Chikako Endo is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, University of Osaka. Her research interests lie at the intersection of political theory and social policy, especially regarding issues of democracy, work and welfare. Her recent articles have appeared in Political Studies and Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

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