Jointly authored by Sylvia Raskin and Natalya Pemberton
When workers and cooperative businesses recognize, advocate, and design mechanisms to fulfill human, worker, and cooperative rights, it creates ideal conditions for workers to live into their cooperative responsibilities.
A Framework of Rights and Relationships
A rights framework asserts that in order to enjoy safe and satisfying work, workers must be able to exercise their basic human rights. For example, everyone has a right to be treated with dignity, respect, and fairness in the workplace. Only when people can exercise these basic human rights can they participate fully in their job.
Rights are inherent to the individual and cannot be taken away, even if other individuals, organizations, or institutions do not respect or take responsibility for those rights. Responsibilities, on the other hand, are a social compact that an individual makes with a group about how rights can best be demonstrated. Responsibilities correspond with rights: they help balance the empowerment of freedoms with the complexities of interdependence. For example, the right to freedom of speech may have, in a well-functioning society (or co-op) a corresponding responsibility not to say things that are not true. When workers enact their cooperative rights and responsibilities, the co-op as a social institution grows in its ability to respect, protect, fulfill rights in the organization as well as in larger society.
Rights are fulfilled through a dynamic and ongoing partnership between laws, institutions, and individuals. Most governments have formally ratified the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Institutions including businesses, co-ops, governments, nonprofits, and community-based groups have an important role to play in eliminating barriers to exercising one’s rights. Cooperative businesses who view themselves as social institutions have a unique role to play in fulfilling human and worker rights because the right to govern social institutions are based on recognition of human rights.
Institutions have a responsibility to:
Respect the right of individuals by eliminating barriers to the enjoyment of that right. For example, according to Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to desirable work and to join unions. Co-ops can respect workers’ desires to form and join unions by engaging in negotiations with union leaders. To respect the cooperative worker's right to hold the co-op governing body accountable, co-ops can make board meetings open to members or distribute meeting notes.
Protect the rights of individuals by enforcing norms and procedures to prevent violations of rights. For example, designing and enforcing a culture of safety and quickly reporting any workplace injuries to the proper authorities. To respect the cooperative worker's right to privacy in communications, co-ops can safeguard employee performance reviews or other sensitive information.
Fulfill the rights of individuals by taking active steps to put in place programs and services to enable people to enjoy their rights. For example, co-ops can fulfill the human right to fair compensation and working hours by providing living-wage jobs. By meeting member needs for quality employment, the co-op can fulfill human rights, worker rights, and cooperative worker rights.
A Cooperative Worker’s Bill of Rights
Under the umbrella of human rights, the Cooperative Workers’ Bill of Rights lists several categories of rights and responsibilities that are critical for building and maintaining an ownership culture. This Cooperative Worker Bill of Rights was inspired by a variety of materials, including the ICA cooperative principles and values, cooperative thought leadership by authors like Brett Fairbairn, Margaret Scholl, and Art Sherwood, and innovation in business thinking by Gifford and Libba Pinchot.
Training worker owners with a rights-based approach prepares them to:
Know their rights;
Exercise their rights;
Advocate for their own and others’ rights; and
Understand mechanisms that ensure rights are fulfilled.
Try Co-op Curricula Module 1: Democracy in the Workplace: Rights & Responsibilities, to explore the essential rights and responsibilities in your co-op.