"Student Unions - the co-operative hubs of tomorrow"

An article about the co-operations and students dropped into my reader from Politics for People. It's quite a brief article but I found it interesting it raises a few points relevant students, specifically how co-operation could be introduced into universities.

The current economic downturn is going to make it harder for students to support themselves throughout their education. It is more important than ever that students are at the heart of the services that their unions offer. It has been widely acknowledged that, working with the co-operative movement, student unions could be developing a co-operative model of student housing, where students could have democratic control in the way that their student residence is run. Apathy is a huge challenge when it comes to getting the vast majority of students to use their vote in student union elections and the indicators show that this is because they don’t see how elections directly affect them. By giving students a real say in their living arrangements, we can show how being involved in the wider politics of the student union can also affect their student experience.

I am still very proud of my union and the opportunities and services that it offered me whilst I was a student. However I share a progressive dream with others in the co-operative movement that in the future student unions can go even further down the path of becoming co-operative hubs for the needs of their students. Why couldn’t the union act as a credit union for the use its students to help them through the hard times? Why shouldn’t students be given a dividend if they are regular customers of student union shops and other services?

Good news for Co-operators

Via Politics for people comes an article indicating that the Chancellor is in favour of encouraging mutualisation:

Alistair Darling will next month signal strong support for mutual savings banks and building societies when he sets out a white paper on strengthening Britain’s financial system.

The chancellor has spoken warmly about the mutual model, embodied in institutions such as Nationwide, which tend to run a less risky business model, based on savings and lending. The Treasury is assessing potential legal or regulatory changes to help mutuals ahead of the white paper.

...

Although Mr Darling accepts that some mutuals can be run just as badly as banks such as Northern Rock, he believes they are less likely to use “extreme” funding models or to depend so heavily on wholesale money markets. Building societies have only 20 per cent of the mortgage market, down from 59 per cent before the wave of demutualisations sparked by the Building Societies Act of 1986.

...

a spokeswoman for the Building Societies Association said that the time was ripe for an expansion of the sector, given that its model tended to lead to cheaper borrowing rates. “Customers are fed up with the plc banking model, this is a good time for alternative models.”

This is excellent news, mutual lending groups are more ethical and more democratic than businesses working on other lending models. They are also less reckless when it comes to borrowing and lending. A characteristic that leaves them less vulnerable to the kind of market down turn that pushed the Northern Rock to the wall.

As anyone who has spent five minutes talking to the Club Secretary this year will know out of the few banks not to make a loss in the previous year only one high street bank increased its profit. The Co-operative Bank.

Nice one Alistair!

Eat a poppadom - help a women’s cooperative

There's a story on the BBC about a co-operative in India that empowers women, who received very little education, to use their skills to create a source of income. The ability to generate income and the associated financial independence is an effective way to tackle problems such as domestic violence and gender inequality. So I think that it's great that schemes like this exist.

From the article:

Mumbai-based businessman and entrepreneur Sushil Jwarijka explains: "Lijjat papads are a perfect example of how a sustainable business can be built, providing large-scale employment to rural women, who are illiterate but skilled.

"And when such skills are given an organisational structure on a co-operative basis a long term sustainable model assures success."

Related to this story is Kiva, which is a website that allows people to make micro loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. It's very interesting so i reccomend that you check it out.

[This story came via the F-Word Blog.]

Yet more good news for Fairtrade

By way of Politics for People comes news that Cadbury is to switch its entire line of chocolate to Fairtrade. This is obviously not just good news to those of us who believe in co-operative values but also especially to the cocoa farmers of Ghana.

This is excellent news and goes to show the strength of fair trade. The extra income should be a boost for development in Ghana, and fair trade is the best way to ensure that money goes to the people that have worked for it, and who deserve their fair share.

The Fairtrade mark is aimed at securing a better deal for developing market commodity producers, and is used on a range of products such as coffee and bananas. UK Fairtrade sales reached an estimated retail value of 700 million pounds in 2008.

...

Ghana, the world's second-biggest producer of cocoa after the Ivory Coast, produces around 5,000 tonnes of Fairtrade cocoa, but the Cadbury deal should triple that to 15,000 tonnes annually. There are an estimated 700,000 cocoa farmers producing Ghana's second most valuable commodity after gold.

I see Ghana also produces gold, which makes it a doubly good week for them.

Good News

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has encountered ethical issues when purchasing ingots of gold. How do you know that your gold is ethically sourced? Well now you can know. There is now Fairtrade Gold [From Politics for People].



On a serious note it does seem like a good thing:

..."Gold miners have jobs that are among the most arduous in the world. They spend long hours underground with little or no safety equipment, working with poisons such as cyanide and hewing the precious metal out of the ground for wealthy Westerners."

The international Fairtrade movement is working with 1,000 small artisanal miners in South America, with the intention of having it available for sale later this year. Supporting the miners won't just improve their income, health and conditions. The partners also intend to reduce the polluting impact of mining.

A better way...?

This is pretty much just a cross post from Politics for People, they have posted an excerpt from an interview that Sophi Tranchell, the boss of Divine Chocolate had with Real Business. In which she discussed the future of business and the advantages of a co-operative system.

On Politics for People they highlighted on quote regarding the construction of Heathrow's Terminal 5 as compared to a major renovation of a John Lewis store:

"I remember when John Lewis completed a £100m refurbishment of its landmark Sloane Square store, which involved dropping in a new escalator system into the building through the roof. Not only did the retailer keep the store open during trading hours, but it made more money that year than the previous year. Why did that work while projects such as Terminal Five were such utter disasters? It was because every employee in that store wanted it to work; they’d all been consulted and informed. And they knew that if the company performed well, they’d do well."

It is quite a striking contrast, and the difference in the two models is perhaps better summed up by another comment she made about the Co-operative business model as a whole:

"The dominant model of business over the past ten years clearly hasn’t worked,"

...

"So what model does work? While banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds have been crippled in this climate, ethical banks like The Co-operative or Triodos are doing just fine. While retails such as Zavi and Whittard of Chelsea were hurled into administration, employee-owned companies such as John Lewis, Tullis Russell and Loch Fyne are going great guns.

If you judge success as being based simply on profit, as has been the prevailing practice of most businesses, the last couple of years has shown the strength and resilience of the Co-operative business model. When you put on top of that the ethical practices and fair profit distribution of co-operatives their superiority as a business model becomes clear.

"The Co-op a brief history"

Over at A Comrade in Ellon our Club Secretary has posted the first (of possibly many) of a series of posts concerning the Co-operative Party. So if you want to learn more about the history of the Co-operative movement you should go and check it out.

Blogorama V: Politics for People

[To find out more about the Co-operative Party visit their website. Membership is only £15, with a reduced rate of £5 for young members (under 26), you can join here.]

As you may or may not know several of us here at the Labour Club are not just members of labour, we are also members of the Co-operative Party. And since the Scottish Co-operative Party Council is this Saturday in Glasgow I thought it would be appropriate to have a Co-operative blog as the subject of Blogorama V.

Politics for People in their own words:

Unofficially blogging for the Co-operative Party, part of the global co-operative movement. We work with the Labour Party to influence its policies towards more co-operative solutions.

We believe in individual empowerment and self-help. We believe that a better share of this planet's wealth between Northern and Southern hemispheres and a greater respect for our environment will help us build a sustainable, safer and progressive society.

I hope that you'll agree that those are extremely laudable goals to pursue and values to promote.

As has been said here before, the current economic situation, caused in large part by the recklessness of profit seeking corporations, is a clear demonstration of the benefits of mutuality. Of companies that are held responsible for their actions by the people whose money allows them to operate in the first place. Politics for People recently reported on the Co-operative Party in Wales launching a document concerning the recent credit crunch (emphasis mine):

Yesterday the Co-operative Party and Wales 20:20 launched a new document, "Co-operative Values in a Credit Crunch Wales". "Difficult times call for new ways of thinking" is the key message from the authors, Karen Wilkie and Robbie Erbmann of the Co-operative Party. With co-ops and building societies, not least Principality Building Society, thriving and attracting new customers, they put forward a vision of a Welsh economy remade with co-operative values.

Huw Lewis AM, a Labour Co-operative Assembly Member, wrote the foreword for the pamphlet, saying, "I’ve been a proud member of the Co-operative Party for over 20 years, and the proposals in this pamphlet explain why. The movement has never stopped bringing forward radical, yet workable ideas. With the onset of the recession policy makers have a duty to look closely at these excellent proposals which underline co-operative values, matching innovation with pragmatism."

One point I think cannot be emphasised enough is the success of Co-operatives in the current economic climate. Their responsible and ethical business practices have kept them away from the massive losses (and subsequent bailouts) of the banks.

Politics for People also cover the Co-operative Party's campaigns, including Plan Bee [which we also posted about] the Co-operative Party's brand new campaign to arrest a worrying decline in bee numbers:

The bee is the symbol of the Co-op's membership and, more importantly, a major part of the ecosystem and our food producing system. A third of the food we eat is pollinated by bees. So the news that bees are declining in numbers fast is a major threat to agriculture. It was the subject of a debate at last year's Co-operative Party conference, but hasn't yet hit the headlines. It's time it did.

To address the disturbing issue of bees dying out, The Co-operative - Britain's biggest farmer - has launched Plan Bee. They have launched a ten-point plan to save bees and a campaign where we can all get involved.

I'd like to stress that last sentence, "a campaign where we can all get involved", because I think it illustrates one of the major characteristics of the Co-operative Party and co-operative groups in general, the involvement of members, and in every facet of the organisation and decision making processes of a group. This structure makes co-operative groups more accountable, and thus more prudent in their actions. A characteristic that would benefit a lot of ordinary people if it was spread to more businesses. [If you agree you can join the Co-operative Party and makes this a reality.]

Through its People's Rail campaign the Co-operative Party have worked hard to incorporate a responsible and accountable structure for the governance of Network Rail. As posted here:

This week saw Network Rail's AGM. It was a big milestone in our People's Rail campaign. The Co-operative Party has been calling for a review of the company's governance, and for that review to give the public more power and hold the various levels of governance to account. There was a motion put up by a small number of the members of Network Rail which called for a review: "that members establish a governance 'Review Group' to consider the effectiveness of company's corporate governance practices, with particular reference to the accountability of the Board to its members and of its members to the company’s wider stakeholders."

We knew there would be strong opposition, even though a regular review of governance is difficult to oppose. After all, the UN, the EU and the NHS are among the institutions doing so. But we hoped that the AGM had taken note of the public, politicians and the press who had supported the People's Rail campaign.

And so it turned out, to our great pleasure. Against the odds, members narrowly backed the motion (all other votes were won overwhelmingly). It's good to see that the senior team, who according to reports opposed the motion, have accepted the result graciously and have welcomed the chance to consider the future structure of Network Rail.

The Chair of the Co-operative Party Parliamentary Group, Sarah-McCarthy-Fry MP, made it clear that the campaign will continue until we get the right result for passengers: "This decision represents a vindication of the People's Rail campaign. However, we have to remember this is just the first step of many. Network Rail is still a long way from being accountable to passengers and the public. We will continue this campaign until it is."

If you want a better run rail network in which companies are responsbile for their failings, and the users of the service have a say in what that service should provide then you should learn more about the People's Rail campaign and I would strongly recommend that you consider joining the Co-operative Party.

The best way to progress as people, and as a nation, and as an international community, is through mutual co-operation and making sure that those with large degrees of power are accountable to the majority who don't

Plan Bee

The Co-operative is launching a new campaign this year to spotlight a worrying environmental problem. The disappearance of bees worldwide:

We know that bees produce very lovely honey from nectar, but, more importantly, they pollinate fruit and vegetables – a third of the food we eat in fact.

Bees visit flowering plants to collect their nectar. As they move from plant to plant, pollen is picked up on their fur and deposited on other plants in the process, fertilising them.

To address the disturbing issue of bees dying out, The
Co-operative has launched Plan Bee.

To find out more or get involved, click on the links below:

* Bees: What you need to know
* What you can do to help bees
* Plan Bee: what The Co-operative is doing for bees
* Bee involved: sign-up to our campaign group

It's an interesting issues which I think not a lot of people know about, or if they do know something about it they don't realise the significance of the problem. The Co-operative group is having a film screening of the film Plan Bee in Aberdeen:


For non-Aberdonians there is a list of dates here(pdf).

Date: Friday 13 February 7pm-9pm

Location: The Linklater Rooms, Kings College, University of Aberdeen

Event: Plan Bee

Description: We'll be unveiling our brand new campaign, Plan Bee, and screening a stunning new film, never before shown in the UK, on the plight of the bee.

Bees are dying, in worryingly large numbers, and no one knows for certain why. Last year, in the UK alone, one in three hives was lost. It's a global problem that concerns us all; bees pollinate over a third of the food we eat. Our campaign will address the question of why bees are dying in such large numbers and what we can all do about it.

We've secured the rights to a new film about the shocking disappearance of bee colonies around the world and you can be amongst the first in the UK to see it. Come and learn more about the fascinationg life of bees, the crucial role that bees play and what might be causing these sudden losses.

Following the film you'll have the opportunity to find out more about bee-friendly gardening and collect some free wildflower seeds to sow in your garden or window box.

Event Dates Description: We expect these events to be popular so please reserve your free place(s) early to avoid disappointment. Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.