by Several Members of the Shareholder Forum
Recently The Commons printed an article and letters regarding the Putney Coop, changes to their by-laws and involvement with CDS Consulting. As members, we mean – shareholders, of the Brattleboro Food Coop, the assumption is that the Putney Coop is going to become like our coop in Brattleboro. Perhaps not the size, but the management structure, profits and corporate feel.
In August a few disheartened shareholders started the Brattleboro Food Coop Shareholder Forum – for shareholders, by shareholders. We meet on the third Sunday of the month from 5:00-7:00pm in the Coop Community Room. All are welcome.
The forum, by shareholders for shareholders, was to give us a voice. It was created after a troubling situation back in May when six disheartened employees met with two board members to share their concerns about working at the Coop. The board members LISTENED, we emphasize that they LISTENED, being careful not to speak for the board and making it clear that they were only there to listen, and then directed us to bring our concerns to the whole Board. This meeting, between 6 employees and 2 board members, was approved by the union representative. Also, a National Labor Relations Board representative saw no problems with this meeting. To clarify, the meeting did not interfere with union negotiations.
The employees concerns ought to be the concerns of the Board, especially after the workplace murder of Michael Martin by Richard Gagnon. That workplace murder did not occur in a vacuum. Two of our elected board members felt we ought to be heard. It was a reasonable human act, in a cooperative built by and sustained by people: its members and its workers. We all learned quickly that our BFC Board speaks with one voice and listens with one ear. By LISTENING, these two board members ‘broke the Code of Conduct’ (a document that is nearly identical in co-op boards across the country) and felt compelled to resign, otherwise having to accept the notion that they had behaved unreasonably.
This incident is one of many that woke us up to the fact that we do not know what is going on at our Coop. Some questions we are asking at the Forums:
• Is Policy Governance working at our Coop?
• Is it the Policy Governance model or our Board’s interpretation of Policy Governance that is/is not working?
• What is the role and history of CDS Consulting in our bylaws? Our Coop?
• How can a General Manager the highest paid employee (secret salary) working without a job description and able to self report his progress?
• Why are employees not permitted to speak to board members about their concerns?
• What caused the resignation of two board members earlier this year?
• What is the structure of our Coop?
• Do we need a General Manager?
• As a member, how am I being represented by the board of directors?
We are seeking answers and transparencies because we believe in Cooperative principles and we believe in our Coop. We don’t want a Whole Foods – we want to revitalize our Coop and bring back our principles.
Our next meeting is January 25 from 5pm to 7pm in the community room of the co-op, entrance on Canal Street. Typically the forums are held on the third Sunday of the month at 5:00pm-7:00pm, weather permitting. All voices are welcome!
Good!
I’m glad to hear this is happening. For years I questioned the worth of Policy Governance only to be dismissed as if it were a sacred cow and I had no right to question it. If a Board cannot interact with those it supposedly serves, what’s the point of having a Board? And what’s with the endless high-priced consultants? Does anything of value come from these consultancies that repays or justifies the huge expenditures? And why there’s no GM job description and his salary a secret? So many questions.
Serious concerns about our Co-op
As a long-time active member of the Brattleboro Food Co-op, and having had a lifelong commitment to coops and cooperative values, i am very glad that these conversations are taking place. The recent traumas at the BFC have sorely challenged my own commitments, and i know that they have challenged the commitment of many other in our community, and so it is a very good time for an ad hoc group of committed Shareholders (we used to be called members !) to steer the conversation back to the values with which we started.
I agree that a multi-million dollar business – itself a sign of our success in adhering to those early values – cannot be sustained by the values alone, and needs serious business and organizational skills to keep it prospering. But when those necessities start to drown the values, then we know that something is going wrong.
Drowned values have been evident in the recent traumas.
The shock and anguish of a workplace murder occurring in our aisles – one manager shooting his superior, with prior workplace tensions between them – should have been enough to wake us up. It was not. The murder was swept under the rug as an isolated act of a deranged individual (that is true), totally independent of anything else happening in the store or its structure (this could not possibly have been true).
There is a perception, supported by an anecdotal body of evidence, that the Co-op’s management actively hindered the unionization effort, or certainly did not embrace it, and this directly contravenes the values which support workers’ rights – especially that these are our own workers, the staff of our co-op, many of whom are Shareholders themselves, and all of whom are a significant component of our collective efforts to create a comfortable work and shopping environment. This too should have been enough wake us up.
Finally, a trauma much less severe than the other two, but also hurtful, and maybe the thing that is finally waking us up.
Two good Board members needed to resign from the Board in order to remain true to their consciences in the face of having been censured by the rest of the Board. For what? For the transgression of meeting with their constituents when those constituents needed a place to turn with unresolved issues, and respectfully requested their ear.
I do not know if it is too late to make significant changes in the power-structure and organizational-deficits which seem to exist at the Brattleboro Food Co-op. It is a big business, and those structures which seem to have turned us against our values are firmly set, possibly even codified in the By-Laws (when we were not paying attention?) and elsewhere.
But, we sure can try.
And I am glad the the Putney Co-op is paying extra attention to their own situation before they go down the same road.
Dialogue strengthens cooperation
A few board members have participated in these meetings. Because of the board’s “one voice,” policy: The group asked that board members clearly label any comments they make either as their own personal opinion, or if they are speaking for official policy.
The group consensus was that board members should discern between their own opinions and official board policy, and only participate in votes as individuals.
I felt that the board members were sincerely listening, and that there was a feeling of mutual respect. Personally I find the idea that a board member may not speak out in dissent against a board policy to be, eyebrow-raising. But at least the participating board members did agree to avoid too avoid confusion between “official” statements, and personal expression.
If the board and its members wish, they can find value in these dialogues. In a position of leadership, whether management or governing board, it is very easy to become separated from the membership. Despite best intentions, leaders can easily slip into listening primarily to one another. Believing that democracy simply means that the members vote for leaders and then leave everything to those they elected can be a tempting mistake. That is not really the best way for democracy to work.
Dialogue and feedback can help leaders to keep on track. Truly respectful dialogue can build trust and increase cohesion, both of which are foundations of cooperation.
Very Interesting parallel in Boston!
Elizabeth found this story that has some very interesting parallels. Especially note the last paragraph.
Boston’s mayor signed a decree that prohibits city workers from badmouthing the city’s Olympic bid—a move that raises legal questions and could come back to bite him.
If you work for the City of Boston and you’re not 100% keen on the idea of the city hosting the 2024 Olympic games—think of the crowds! the construction!—Mayor Martin J. Walsh wants you to keep all those feelings to yourself.
Boston workers and residents learned this week that Walsh has signed an agreement with the United States Olympic Committee that bans City of Boston employees from speaking negatively about the Games or the bidding process. The decree says:
The City, including its employees, officers, and representatives, shall not make, publish or communicate to any Person, or communicated in any public forum, any comments or statements (written or oral) that reflect unfavorably upon, denigrate or disparage, or are detrimental to the reputation or statute of, the [International Olympic Committee], the [International Paralympic Committee], the USOC, the IOC Bid, the Bid Committee or the Olympic or Paralympic movement. The City, including its employees, officers and representatives, shall each promote the Bid Committee, the USOC, the IOC Bid, U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes and hopefuls and the Olympic and Paralympic movement in a positive manner.
The decree nears iffy legal territory because it’s so broad and seems to apply to all city employees, says Curtis Summers, a labor and employment lawyer from the Husch Blackwell firm. Employees at private companies have few free speech rights except for those related to improving their workplace and guaranteeing their rights as workers. But the Supreme Court in a June 2014 decision clarified the limits public employers can place on their workers’ speech. The court ruled that speech outside the scope of an employee’s duties is protected.
So, Summers says, if a school employee in Boston says that she doesn’t want to deal with tax increases related to the Olympics and the city tries to enforce its decree against her, that could be a violation of her free speech rights. On the other hand, if an employee in the city’s public relations office speaks ill of the Olympics bid, Boston would likely have more enforcement power against those comments since the PR employee’s main responsibility is to speak publicly on behalf of the city.
“The basic principal is that public employees still have the First Amendment right to speak out as citizens on matters of public concern so long as it doesn’t disrupt their ability to do their jobs,” says Sarah Wunsch, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Mayor Walsh defended the decree to The Boston Globe, saying that it’s not his intention to cripple open debate about the Olympics and that he has no plans to reprimand or punish city workers for voicing their opposition to the bid for the 2024 Games. When asked why he signed the decree if that was the case, Walsh said that the agreement was “boilerplate.” The USOC has said that the non-disparagement language is typical of contracts between the organization and bidding cities.
“You can call it boilerplate, but boilerplate has meaning,” Wunsch says. The decree will have a chilling effect on free speech, she says, because it frames supporting the Olympics as positive and being critical of the bid as negative. “If you’re a city employee, you know what [the mayor] thinks.”
The mayor’s office did not return Fortune’s request for comment on the decree’s enforcement and its potential infringement on employees’ First Amendment rights. The USOC also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While the legality of the decree may be in question, here’s something that’s not: it’s usefulness.
If the goal of Boston’s ban on Olympic smack talk is to breed the cooperation needed to win and put on a successful Olympic Games, encouraging employees to bottle up their grievances could deliver the exact opposite effect.
“Having a way to deal with dissent is a concern for companies more broadly; they want people to disagree so they can come up with better solutions and build consensus,” says Adam Cobb, a professor at The Wharton School. The Boston ban “has the potential to be counterproductive,” he says. “If you don’t let [dissenters] voice their concerns, they’ll just sit there mad or quit.” Those left behind will simply be yes-men and yes-women. Sure, they will all be on the same page. And they’ll come up with nothing but the same solution for the same problem, again and again.