A billion people belong to businesses where every member gets one vote
About one billion people in 96 countries belonged to at least one cooperative in 2012. The idea is simple: a business owned and run by its members, each with one vote, whether they work there, shop there or sell their harvest through it. Its modern roots include a Scottish weavers' society selling cheap oatmeal.
Cooperatives come in many shapes. Worker co-ops belong to their staff, consumer co-ops to their customers, and producer co-ops such as farm cooperatives pool their members' output. Others band together to buy in bulk, split ownership between groups such as carers and the people they look after, or run a jointly owned website or app. Some are cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives.
In 1761 the Fenwick Weavers' Society in East Ayrshire began selling discounted oatmeal to local workers, later adding savings, loans, emigration help and education. In 1810 Robert Owen and partners bought the New Lanark mill and improved conditions for its workers, and that same year the Rev. Henry Duncan of Ruthwell set up a society so his poorest parishioners could save for illness and old age. In 1845 Samuel Jurkovič founded Spolok Gazdovský, a credit cooperative whose members pledged to live morally and plant two trees in a public place every year.
Friendly societies practised one member, one vote, challenging the notion that only property owners deserved a say. The International Cooperative Alliance, founded in London on 19 August 1895, became the movement's first international body. Cooperatives have also bred innovation: Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, who led research at the Finnish dairy cooperative Valio for 50 years, won the 1945 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AIV silage, and Stanford Federal Credit Union offered internet banking to all its members in October 1994, ahead of every other financial institution.
The model has practical strengths. UK figures show 80% of cooperatives surviving their first five years against 44% for other businesses. In 2013 British retail co-ops put 6.9% of pre-tax profits back into their communities, compared with 2.4% at rival supermarkets. The world's 300 largest cooperatives turned over $2.2 trillion, and since 2002 they have had their own web domain, .coop.
Source: Cooperative
