OUR NETWORK

This page contains information about books, papers, op-eds and more related to the principles of the Democratizing Work project. The information is provided by signatories of the Manifesto, and serves as a horizontal tool for all. As such, we invite you to report any relevant content here.

Initiatives | Events | Books | Research Papers | Op-Eds | Other

INITIATIVES

Un bout du Monde: Get involved with a project to increase democratic governance for the media, starting with the global newspaper Le Monde!

Information is a public good. Un Bout du Monde enables readers as citizens to participate actively in the life of their newspaper, making journalists and readers the guarantors of the independence of their own media. 

This initiative is about:

• Supporting initiatives by journalists or other employees to become shareholders. 

• Defending a democratic governance of media outlets that maintains their independence. 

• Public crowdfunding campaigns aiming to boost the presence of readers and employees in media shareholding through the acquisition of shares. 

• Educational actions and events to safeguard the independence of information, freedom of expression and the existence of a free press. 

Un Bout du Monde is a democratic association that gives all citizens the same voice: one donation, one vote, whatever the resources and contribution of each person. It is a collective, made up of concerned citizens and journalists, which is committed to and strives for the independence of all publications by Le Monde Group and the news media. It is driven by a strong desire to protect the work of journalists from political, lobbyist and economic pressure. It is a community of citizens who love information and who are committed to defending the quality and freedom of the press.

Connection with principles of Democratizing Work:

This initiative is connected to the first principle of democratizing firms. Deep connection with the decommodification of information and democratizing democracy: by making our public sphere more resilient and less influenced by the interests of the wealthiest who concentrate power in their hands through the shareholding of news organizations. 

More information: Website 

Autistic Collaboration Trust

Aut Collab is a community that welcomes all individuals and groups who fully appreciate the value of neurodiversity. If you are looking for an index of collaborative autistic people and neurodivergent ventures, you have come to the right place. Aut Collab acts as a hub for mutual support, and encourages neurodivergent individuals and ventures to connect and establish long-term collaborations. Members of the neurodiversity movement recognise neurodivergent traits as natural variations of cognition, motivations, and patterns of behaviour within the human species. Autistic people committed to collaboration and mutual support are invited to join the Aut Collab community.

Connection with the principles of Democratizing Work:

Discrimination against autistic people is comparable to the level of discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people 50 years ago. The pathologisation of autism has led to what some critical researchers refer to as the autism industrial complex. NeurodiVenture: an inclusive non-hierarchical organisation operated by neurodivergent people that provides a safe and nurturing environment for divergent thinking, creativity, exploration, and collaborative niche construction. NeurodiVerse: minority cultures created by neurodiversity within the human species (a) the universe of NeurodiVentures (b) the set of all neurodivergent people The objectives of the autism and neurodiversity civil rights movements overlap significantly with the interests of those who advocate for greater levels of psychological safety in the workplace and in society in general. In the workplace the topic of psychological safety is relevant to all industries and sectors.

It is time to liberate autism from the pathology paradigm. This can only be achieved if autistic people take ownership of the definition of autism, provide mutual support to each other, and share their experience of human cultures through an autistic lens from a first hand perspective. Autistic people are often noted for their their honesty, their naivety, and their inability to be exploitative. The lack of self-promotional ability is typically at odds with cultural expectations. Aut Collab aims to offer practical assistance and guidance – from autistic and otherwise neurodivergent individuals and ventures to others who are struggling or suffering in a hyper-competitive neurotypical world that systematically pathologises autistic people. Aut Collab operates and supports services and projects that are designed to progress the neurodiversity movement and to encourage the formation of new autistic collaborations and neurodiventures.

More information: Website, Contact organization

EVENTS

27-29 January 2021 – A Real Utopias Project Conference: Democratizing the Corporation

According to the format pioneered by Erik Olin Wright, the lead essay by Isabelle Ferreras, “Democratizing the Corporation: The Proposal of the Bicameral Firm”, will be discussed by scholars from various fields (Tom Malleson, Marc Fleurbaey, Ewan McGaughey, Maximilian Krahé, David Ellerman, Chris Mackin, Sanjay Pinto, Bo Rothstein, Sigurt Vitols, Leonore Palladino, Joel Bakan, Carly Knight, Gregor Murray, Robert Freeland, Carole Pateman, and others). The event is hosted by the Institute for Future Studies, Stockholm, with funding from the Bank of Sweden, and supported by the Havens-Wright Center for Social Justice, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

More information: Contact organizers

26-29 May 2021 – Interdisciplinary Summer Academy, "Sustainable Work"

The international research network “Working Futures” (a joint project of the research center Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History (re:work) and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin) and the Centre Marc Bloch Berlin are organizing a transdisciplinary Summer Academy on the topic of “Sustainable Work”. This Summer Academy will bring together 12 advanced doctoral researchers and early post-doctoral researchers (max. 2 years after PhD) engaged in dissertation research relating to the field of work/labor and sustainability. It will be held in Caputh, Germany, near Berlin.

More information: Event website, Contact organizers

BOOKS

Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century, Princeton University Press, 2020

Open Democracy presents a new paradigm of democracy in which power is genuinely accessible to ordinary citizens. The book defends a new, nonelectoral understanding of democratic representation and proposes centering political institutions around the “open mini-public”—a large, jury-like body of randomly selected citizens gathered to define laws and policies for the polity, in connection with the larger public. The book more generally defends five institutional principles as the foundations of an open democracy: participatory rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency.

Connection with principles of Democratizing Work:

The book fleshes out the institutional meaning of democracy, and suggests an avenue to democratizing the workplace along non-electoral lines, via the use of randomly selected bodies of "lottocratic" representatives. 

More information: Book website

Piero Ammirato, The Growth of Italian Cooperatives: Innovation, Resilience and Social Responsibility, Routledge, New York, 2018

The Italian Cooperative Sector is amongst the largest in the world comprising over 60,000 cooperatives from all sectors of the economy directly employing 1.3 million people. Cooperatives created close to 30 percent of new jobs in Italy between 2001 and 2011 demonstrating that democratic cooperative enterprises can successfully operate in a market economy combining economic success and social responsibility. These offer a viable alternative to profit maximising enterprises and an opportunity to create a more pluralist and democratic market economy. The Growth of Italian Cooperatives: Innovation, Resilience and Social Responsibility comprehensively explains how the Italian cooperative sector has managed to compete successfully in the global economy and to grow during the global financial crisis. This book will comprehensively explain how the Italian cooperative movement has managed to grow into a large successful network of cooperatives. It will examine the legislative framework and their unique business model that allows it to compete in the market as part of a network that includes central cooperative associations, financial and economic consortia, and financial companies. It will explore cooperative entrepreneurship through a discussion of the formation of cooperative groups, start-ups, worker-buyouts and the promotion of entirely new sectors such as the social services sector. Finally, The Growth of Italian Cooperatives examines how cooperatives have managed the GFC and how their behavior differs from private enterprises. It will also analyze the extent to which cooperatives compete while still uphold the key cooperative principles and fulfil their social responsibility. This book is an interdisciplinary study of cooperative development and is designed to inform members of the academic community, government, public policy makers and cooperative managers that are primarily interested in economic democracy, economics of the cooperative enterprise, cooperative networks and economic development, cooperative legislation, democratic governance, job creation programs, politics of inclusion and how wealth can be more equitably distributed.

Connection with principles of Democratizing Work:

The book offers a clear example of an alternative firm to the profit maximizing firm and of a unique cooperative business model that promotes democracy and dignity in the workplace. The initiative is connected to Democratizing Work because: 1) cooperatives are owned and managed democratically by workers (worker cooperatives); consumers (retail cooperatives) or farmers (agricultural cooperatives) and they thus provide an opportunity for members to democratically have a say in the way the cooperative is managed; 2) the profits from these cooperatives are retained in the firms which are then re-invested to create further employment. They also form part of the assets that cannot be distributed to existing members and, as a result, are available for next generations to use. They are thus an inter-generational firm. The wealth created is passed on to the next generation; 3) they are socially responsible and this was demonstrated during the GFC when consumer cooperatives kept prices low; worker co-operatives policies were designed to share work rather than having people lose their jobs; and the cooperative development funds (funded via 3% of cooperative profits) promoted new cooperatives, rescued existing ones, promoted growth and job-creation, and funded the worker takeover of ailing private enterprises; 4) the salary differentials are mostly 3:1 although some have a differentials of 6:1 and very few of 10:1. Much less that those in place in the market; 5) cooperatives are large businesses (some employ thousands of people); they have been successful in international markets; and they usually outlast private enterprises - therefore they are a viable alternative to corporations and are an integral part of a pluralist democratic economy comprising government (at all levels), privately owned, cooperative businesses and social enterprises; 6) cooperatives are present all over the world. I have mainly focussed on the Italian experience because they have the largest number of worker cooperatives but cooperatives have succeeded throughout Europe; Canada: North America; South America, India in all sectors of the economy. Therefore they can promote democracy in the workplace all over the world.

This initiative wanted to let the world know that an alternative form of business that can take care of members, people, the community and all stakeholders is already here. It may not be perfect. It may not suit everyone. But it is successful and it is here and now. Thank you for allowing me to share my work.

More information: Book website, Academic website, Contact author          

Alvin Finkel, Compassion: A Global History of Social Policy, MacMillan/Red Globe Press, 2018

Provides a concise but thorough examination of how humans from time immemorial have cared for (or ignored or made worse) the most vulnerable among them. It's a history of inequalities and labour (and other) struggles for equality of wealth and power.

Connection with principles of Democratizing Work:

The book demonstrates that decommodified labour, widespread bottom-up social organization, and respect/sacralization of the natural world have characterized many and probably most human societies from the earliest times to relatively recently. It also demonstrates that there are many recent examples of societies where this is still true--Vienna in the 1930s, Cuba and Kerala since the 1950s, Mondragon in Spain since the 1950s, remote Indigenous societies across the planet, and spontaneous community experiments across the globe.

The examples provided for different periods - from African and Indigenous North and South American societies before colonialism to the Paris Commune to early Bolshevism to Kerala and Cuba today - link democratization of working lives and other social struggles to political struggles.

More information: Contact author

RESEARCH PAPERS

Gerald F. Davis, “Corporate Purpose Needs Democracy,” Journal of Management Studies, October 2020

The British Academy proposes that some of the manifest failures of shareholder capitalism can be addressed by requiring corporations to declare a purpose – a profitable solution to the problems of people and planet that does not cause additional problems – and creating a set of supporting mechanisms to ensure the pursuit of purpose. Shareholder capitalism has a lot to answer for, arguably including the opioid and obesity epidemics, the hazards to people and democracy posed by profit‐driven tech firms, and catastrophic climate change. Moreover, the forces that orient public corporations toward share price are powerful and pervasive, while public corporations are disappearing in the USA and the UK under the weight of outside pressures. If we want the corporations that remain to behave themselves, the surest path is more democracy: greater worker control from below, and more effective state regulation from above.

More information: Article link

Max Visser, “Recognition and (de)humanization in the neoliberal workplace: Prospects and possibilities”, June 2020

This paper, currently under review with the journal Philosophy of Management, engages in exploring how Axel Honneth's recognition theory may contribute to rethinking notions of humanism and (de)humanization in organizations.

Connection with principles of Democratizing Work:

It directly relates to democratizing organizations, to the extent that full recognition of human capabilities and aspirations in the workplace does not sit well with the authoritarian 'private governments' that many organizations nowadays pose. Further, it directly relates to decommodifying labor by critically analyzing degrading work practices at Amazon from a recognition perspective. It is directly connected to management and organizations, two important areas of economic life.

More information: Article link, Contact author

OP-EDS

Margaret Somers, “Even the Republican ‘skinny’ relief bill failed. How is such unnecessary suffering justified?” The Guardian, 14 September 2020

This is a critical historical explanation of the Malthusian roots of the refusal to extend unemployment benefits to 30 million American workers. I ask how is it that extra money incentivizes the rich to become paragons of moral virtue and economic rainmakers, whereas for working people it incentivizes them to become social parasites and economic saboteurs? How can there be one human nature for the 1%, and another for the rest of us? Armed with these two views of humanity – the rich depicted as noble paragons, working people as inherently indolent and parasitic – conservative social policy continues to declaim the unfounded “truth” that a strong economy depends on inflicting pain on workers while providing government largesse to the rich.

Connection with principles of Democratizing Work:

I have been writing and publishing on Karl Polanyi for over 40 years. Everything I write is informed and driven by the crime of commodification, and of the imperative to decommodify labor. This OpEd explains the philosophical justification for keeping working people hungry and in pain as an insurance policy to ensure a "productive workforce." At the same time, I have long argued that only democratizing the economy and the workplace in particular ("private governments") is the solution to fictitious commodification. My argument for the urgency of "Predistributive democracy" applies directly to both the workplace and the political realm. More importantly, the workplace is political, and that is what needs to be stressed. The binary between the two is false; the economy is an instrument of political power, and constituted by the political realm just as the political realm is occupied by the economic.

More information: Contact author

OTHER

Post-Corona Starts Now (online course)

Times of Corona are times of change. Hence, post-Corona is not only a crisis, but also a moment to explore new pathways for our societies towards greater equity, environmental sustainability and democratic participation. This free online course brings together academics, trade unionists, human and labour rights advocates and policy makers from around the world to discuss policy solutions to the most pressing issues exposed by Covid-19. It also offers the opportunity to discuss an agenda for change.

Connection with principles of Democratizing Work:

The course discusses many of the themes of the Manifesto: democratising decision making; strengthening public services, democratising work and protecting the planet. A summary of the policy proposals is included here.

More information: Contact organizers