Kinda but Canada Post and SaskTel are crown corporations which means pipsqueak can sell them like Manitoba sold MTS. A private workers’ co-op (could even be a non-profit) can’t be sold by an ideologue and its workers are likely to keep it sustainable and a good place to work. Theoretically they could vote to sell, but I think that would be unlikely since they would be giving up a lot. But don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer a crown corporation than a foreign grocer.
Mountain Equipment ~~Coop ~~ Company is a sad example of a coop that got sold pretty much out from under it’s membership.
I’d posit the best option would be a crown corporation operated at arm’s length, for the reasons you cite about MTS (and Potash, and Telus, and Petro Canada, etc, etc.) so that the company could remain solvent, but would be relatively immune from the neoliberal addiction to public/private partnerships.
MEC was not a workers’ co-op though. It was a members’ co-op and I don’t even know what the voting structure was - whether it was one member one vote or something else. Simply saying co-op is kinda meaningless but I think the original comment mentioning it meant a workers’ co-op, one-person-one-vote. That’s a specific configuration that creates a democratic workplace which has been shown to be resilient. It mitigates bad decisions being done by a small exec team. I certainly mean this when I say co-op.
I’m mostly in agreement, and would prefer worker-owned co-ops over crown corporations in theory, my only issue is one of scale, and that’s unfortunately where a crown corp wins out, unless UFCW starts opening union co-ops across the country to compete with Loblaws.
Which they should, but UFCW doesn’t have the guts to try
So a publicly “invested” coop. You know like those publicly invested private EV battery plants.
I would make the comparison to SaskTel or Canada Post
Kinda but Canada Post and SaskTel are crown corporations which means pipsqueak can sell them like Manitoba sold MTS. A private workers’ co-op (could even be a non-profit) can’t be sold by an ideologue and its workers are likely to keep it sustainable and a good place to work. Theoretically they could vote to sell, but I think that would be unlikely since they would be giving up a lot. But don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer a crown corporation than a foreign grocer.
Mountain Equipment ~~Coop ~~ Company is a sad example of a coop that got sold pretty much out from under it’s membership.
I’d posit the best option would be a crown corporation operated at arm’s length, for the reasons you cite about MTS (and Potash, and Telus, and Petro Canada, etc, etc.) so that the company could remain solvent, but would be relatively immune from the neoliberal addiction to public/private partnerships.
MEC was not a workers’ co-op though. It was a members’ co-op and I don’t even know what the voting structure was - whether it was one member one vote or something else. Simply saying co-op is kinda meaningless but I think the original comment mentioning it meant a workers’ co-op, one-person-one-vote. That’s a specific configuration that creates a democratic workplace which has been shown to be resilient. It mitigates bad decisions being done by a small exec team. I certainly mean this when I say co-op.
I’m mostly in agreement, and would prefer worker-owned co-ops over crown corporations in theory, my only issue is one of scale, and that’s unfortunately where a crown corp wins out, unless UFCW starts opening union co-ops across the country to compete with Loblaws.
Which they should, but UFCW doesn’t have the guts to try