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Letter: Co-op concerns

Posted on August 11, 2010August 11, 2010 by Staff

As an active worker-owner with Weaver Street Market cooperative, there is no one who wants to hear good news about The Weave more than me. Provided it is genuine good news. And in that regard, the 2010 Report of the WSM board of directors gives rise to certain concerns.

I am concerned as to whether or not the reported $300,000 profit for 2010 takes into account the $1 million in bank interest that needs to be paid (each year) on our continuing $8 million long-term debt.

I am concerned that there is no announced plan for tackling the remainder of that long-term debt other than continuing to ask the co-op’s workers to work harder for less – which the board of directors and the corporate office of WSM have done these past three years.

And I am concerned that there is no meaningful appreciation of the fact that it is the sacrifice and hard work of those same workers that has been the primary cause of any financial turnaround in Weaver Street.

Two years ago, the annual meeting of WSM’s owners supported my call for a Financial Review Committee to devise options for dramatically reducing the debt, rather than simply demanding year after year that the co-op’s workers work harder for less. The board ignored the expressed wishes of their owners and refused to form the committee.

If we were to erase our long-term debt (and the annual interest payment of $1 million), we would be able instead to invest that $1 million in improved product and customer service, and we would no longer have to go on making impossible demands of our already overstressed workers.

GEOFF GILSON
Weaver Street worker-owner

1 thought on “Letter: Co-op concerns”

  1. Maggi Walden says:
    August 12, 2010 at 1:20 pm

    As a consumer-owner, and friend of many other consumer owners, I applaud Geoffrey’s airing of these concerns and I’d like to add a few of my own. A co-op is a co-op because it has a sincere and demonstrable mission to use the aggregated intentions, needs and purposes of many people – both producers and consumers – to provide, effectively and as cheaply as possible and in a communitarian way – for the needs and purposes of those people. On a side note, it also is a legal entity which is required to fulfil that mission. Over the last three years, we owners have seen our dividends removed, we’ve been forbidden any effective forum to respond or contribute to decisions, and we have watched as the morale of the workers in our stores appears to have plummeted. Most egregiously, in my opinion, we have observed the Board of this co-op (and the general manager, an employee who – did anyone notice? – is also a member of the board) continue to spout platitudes about the ‘ we’ that ‘own’ and operate this co-op (look at every piece of their marketing material) whilst actively blocking and limiting any possible way in which the ‘we’ who actually DO own this co-op from having our say in either responding to how things are, or saying how we would like things to be, or even talking to each other about our concerns, in this co-op. Much is made of the Carver model of governance. All I can say to the Board, and to the general manager (who in my view is wrongly a member of this Board, and Carver would agree), is that there is absolutely no sign of Carver’s influence here. It’s a shambles, and it’s a sham. A man who wants to run this co-op as his personal fiefdom, under the guise of a co-op, is being permitted to do it without challenge. And worst of all, the people who should benefit from their commitment to this co-op, the people who are told that they will – the owners, the workers and the consumers – simply don’t. The consumer-owners have lost their dividend for their investment. The worker-owners have too, and on top of that are overworked, underpaid, disempowered and muzzled. The consumers are paying some of the highest prices in the area and are likely to go elsewhere. I watch my investment in this should-have-been-great enterprise go down the moral, ethical and financial drain. The real question is, who’s winning while I lose? Whose agenda is being served here?

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