Constructing Organizational Equality in a Worker-recovered Cooperative

• In Event: 413 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Refereed Roundtable Session. Table 01. Culture and Organizations
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 03. Governance

Abstract

Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a worker-recuperated cooperative in the city of Buenos Aires, this article examines how one work organization constructs and maintains equality in the workplace. The workplace is well understood as a site where social inequalities are produced and reproduced, yet we know much less about efforts to resist such forces. This article builds on a relational model of inequality to analyze how in/equality operates in an alternative work organization. Using the case of Hotel B.A.U.E.N., which was converted from privately-owned enterprise into worker-controlled cooperative, I argue that an examination of efforts to construct better jobs and a more equal workplace uncovers a complex and sometimes contradictory environment where inequality is produced and reduced simultaneously. First, I analyze exploitation and inclusion in the cooperative workplace, arguing that hierarchy and authority reproduce inequality while autonomy and democratic decision-making foster inclusion. Next, I examine how opportunity is both hoarded and distributed in the workplace, arguing that a discursive revaluation of skill, credential and responsibility facilitates a more equal distribution of resources among members of the cooperative. Finally, I argue that both emulation and innovation are active in the cooperative workplace, facilitating an organizational culture based in solidarity that justifies policies that support the working poor. The article concludes with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of equality in transforming the everyday experiences of work.

Author

• Katherine Sobering, University of Texas at Austin