WORKER COOPERATIVES: AN ALTERNATIVE FOR DECENT, SUSTAINABLE AND INCLUSIVE WORK

Abstract

This work presents a reflection on the singular legal status of the working partner in worker cooperatives. Among the purposes and mission of the ICA, included in the “Strategic Plan 2020-30”, is the need to pay more attention to the dignity of work as one of the pending challenges. Consequently, combating unequal working conditions for the working partners, seeking a legitimate equalization to working conditions and recognized rights for employed workers, constitutes a plausible goal to be achieved within its lines of action for this decade; Failure to do so could be considered an attack against the cooperative principles and values, enshrined by the ICA and included as an annex to ILO Recommendation 193, from which one of the central pillars of the social and solidarity economy is extracted, which is, the approach of the people-centered economy. The corporate nature that Spanish law grants to the contractual relationship between the working partners and the cooperative does not prevent us from recognizing the inexorable connection that these working partners have with the field of labor relations. The exclusion of such workers from the workplace is not based on the peculiarities of the service they perform or on their subjection to the company, but responds to a specific option of legislative policy motivated by the presumption that the cooperative pursues objectives based on solidarity, democracy and mutualism. On the other hand, the heterogeneous regional legislative framework that derives from the competence framework of the Spanish Constitution does not favor the configuration of an adequate legal status for the worker members of associated work cooperatives. However, all this should not constitute a justification for not guaranteeing equal and decent working conditions for the working partners. It is inadmissible that the working partners enjoy less favorable working conditions than those that would correspond to them if they were employed. The very competitive pressures of the market in which these cooperatives operate, together with the lack of guarantees regarding their working conditions, constitute a favorable framework for “self-exploitation”. Hence, the necessary intervention in the key of guardianship to guarantee minimum standards of labor protection and homogeneous working conditions for these worker partners; and this, regardless of the fact that within the current legislative framework we cannot formally qualify it as an employment relationship stricto sensu. In order to achieve these objectives, the synergies derived from regulations at the international level must be taken advantage of, within the framework of the ILO, as well as in the context of community-level initiatives that enhance the social economy. Specifically, it is necessary to take advantage of the momentum in favor of cooperatives as alternatives that generate decent work and contribute to sustainable development, with stable, safe and inclusive jobs. This framework will serve to carry out a decisive impulse to the consolidation of labor standards for the working partners of the associated work cooperatives. On the one hand, the concept of decent work, configured within the ILO, constitutes the legal bastion to jointly and unitaryly address minimum regulatory standards, applicable to all working people, in particular, to the group that concerns us, the working partners. On the other hand, the supports of the European Union to this sector, as the axis for the social and economic reconstruction of the EU; particularly, the implementation of a legal Statute for the European social enterprise in order to create the “European Label of social economy” should favour the consolidation of “good labor practices” within the framework of associated work cooperatives. On the other hand, at the national level, the public authorities play a fundamental role in the objectives described, not only by reinforcing the implementation of adequate labor standards through public policies that qualitatively value these social advances, but also by carrying out effective periodic controls that verify their effectiveness and, consequently, imposing appropriate sanctions for non-compliance. Public policies in this sense would lay the foundations for carrying out legislative reforms in this line, following some of the measures already contemplated at the regional level, such as, for example, the equalization of corporate advances to the salaries provided for in the corresponding collective agreement. It would be desirable for such practices to be extended to other working conditions. Similarly, gender equality policies should be favored, promotion of employment for young people or vulnerable groups, or also, measures for reconciling family and professional life that are effectively translated into joint responsibility of both parents, etc. And this, in addition, to other policies in favor of “green employment” and renewable energies, which are respectful with the planet. All of this would contribute to the associated work cooperatives effectively representing an alternative of decent, sustainable and inclusive work, in accordance with the purposes of the ICA. On the other side, we must emphasize that the recognition of certain minimum labor standards for the working partners, not only would it combat “self-exploitation” of the working partners, but would also help to combat the “false cooperativism”. It is known that recourse to cooperativism does not always respond to the objectives and principles that inspire it, but that some business initiatives use it as an alternative to circumvent labor legislation, since the cooperative framework can offer them greater profitability, reduction of salary and social costs, as well as, fewer controls and demands on the power of business management, and likewise, less or no union control. These practices, located within the framework of the illegal transfer of workers, are not only contrary to the purposes of social utility and principles that inspire cooperativism, but also contribute to generating unfair competition, which ultimately and ultimately results in negatively on the people who provide service in such entities. Finally, we must highlight the undoubted progress that has taken place in the field of collective rights of worker members as a result of the recent pronouncements of the Supreme Court on the matter. It is clear to admit that the working partners can legitimately harbor alternative interests that are strictly labor-related that go beyond those of the corporate relationship, for whose defense the channels of participation in the governing bodies of cooperatives derived from their condition of partners may be notoriously insufficient. The differences of interests between the working partners and the cooperative intensify as the size of the cooperative increases, where members are further removed from the governing and management bodies, represented in the Governing Council. The recognition of the right to freedom of association in the context of the working partners of associated work cooperatives, carried out by the Supreme Court, opens possibilities for union action, both individually and collectively. In the absence of the recognition of other channels of representation for the promotion and defense of the interests of the working partners in the framework of the provision of services, the union channel deploys all its resources in the field of these cooperatives, which undoubtedly it has to translate into an engine of change and progress in the recognition and exercise of labor rights. Also in this matter, it is necessary to take advantage of the normative impulses in the supranational sphere. We refer, on the one hand, to the important contribution that the ILO can make in its work of control regarding the compliance and application by the States of the fundamental labor conventions to the working partners of the associated work cooperatives, particularly, in in relation to ILO Convention 87, “Convention relative to freedom of association and protection of the right to organize”. And, at the community level, we must highlight Directive 2003/72/EC of the Council, of July 22, 2003, which completes the “Statute of the European cooperative society with regard to the involvement of workers” in which mechanisms for information and consultation of workers and, therefore, for collective participation are established. All of this is paralleled by the collective dimension of labor rights that we are analyzing.