Worker Co-operatives

Production co-operatives organized by means of the union of workers. In the 1980s, a form of co-operative tinged with strong workers’ democracy arose in Europe and the United States, and has gained popularity in Europe and the United States since 2010. The article May Day: Workers of the World Unite and Take Over—Their Factories, published on the website of The Guardian on May 1, 2015, stated: The economic meltdown unleashed by the 2008 financial crisis hit southern Europe especially hard, sending manufacturing output plunging and unemployment soaring. Countless factories shut their gates. But some workers have refused to accept the bankruptcy of enterprises and spontaneously organized workers’ co-operatives to take over enterprises. In France, an average of 30 mostly small companies a year, from phone repair firms to ice-cream makers, have become workers’ co-operatives since 2010. According to the statistics of CICOPA, the umbrella body of co-operatives in Spain, in 2013 alone, about 75 Spanish enterprises were taken over by their former employees, accounting for about half of the enterprises taken over in Europe. In 2014, representatives of factories taken over by workers held a conference in Marseille, attracting more than 200 representatives from more than 10 countries. The phenomenon of the rapid development of workers’ co-operatives has become an important field of academic research.

In the early days of the founding of New China, there were also forms of co-operatives with workers as the main body, mainly represented by workers’ co-operatives in Hunan. In the early days of the founding of New China, the national economy was in a period of recovery, a thousand things waiting to be done. Although the workers and masses have been politically liberated, their economic life was still difficult and a large number of workers were unemployed. After the establishment of trade unions in various parts of Hunan Province, with the support of the Party and the government, it was an important task to set up various kinds of economic industries, to resettle and relieve unemployed workers, and to safeguard the interests of the workers and the masses in consumption. At that time, trade unions at all levels in Yiyang Special Administrative Region started with the establishment of workers’ consumption co-operatives and actively did practical things for the masses of workers, and by the end of 1950, in addition to workers’ consumption co-operatives at the municipal level in Yiyang, counties and some larger towns had also set up workers’ consumption co-operatives of a certain scale. Starting from 1954, according to the relevant policies of the Central Government, these economic and industrial sectors have been transferred to the relevant government departments for management, and were only restored in the early 1980s.