My main goal for NBN#2 is to have writing by people beside myself. If this is truly going to serve as a means of communication for the movement, it can't just be Andrew cranking out a few pages of rants and updates. While the response from NBN#0 was better than I expected and I made some valuable new contacts, so far I haven't received any submissions of materials for print. So perhaps each issue can have a topic that was announced in the previous issue. So, with that in mind, I would like to suggest a topic for #2: How do we define a worker co-op?
One of the people that contacted me after receiving NBN#0 was Thomas Gerber of Colorado's Employee-Owned Business Institute. He had been part of a geographically dispersed group that aimed to put out a directory, modeled after the huge and elaborate Directory of Intentional Communities. The Directory Team fell apart last year for a number of reasons, but one of the issues that they had discussed was that of how to define a worker-cooperative. There are a number of gray areas, and these need to be discussed before a directory can be created. Otherwise, it will not be clear what it means to be listed and what is the point (i.e. audience) of the directory. At the risk of reinventing the wheel, this topic should be discussed again by anyone attempting to create an organization of co-ops. There will be more on the Directory Team's efforts in the next issue.
A couple of questions that seem most relevant are 1) Can there be non-owner employees (i.e. temps). If so, what rights should non-owners have, and what percentage of workers must be owners? 2) What amount of difference in pay and in authority can exist among the members of the co-op? There are certainly other questions that should be asked and answered, but these are a start. Please feel free to write a few sentences (or pages) on this subject.
Of course, everyone is encouraged to write on any topic at any time, and unless there is a flood of submissions, all will be printed. I also welcome topic suggestions for future issues. In the interest of getting the next issue out more quickly than this one, the deadline will be October 1 for anything to be printed in NBN#2. Also, it was suggested that there should be something to break up pages of type. For example...
But seriously, do people want graphs, cartoons, or what? Lets have a vote on this, in the spirit of democracy. Or just feel free to submit (relevant) images.
And finally, I hope that no one is put off by how I am presently running the show here. I know it is awkward to have this project run so un-cooperatively and I am open to any ideas about how to get other folks involved in producing this. A rotating editorship is possible, but there would be address problems and I have seen that tactic result in long delays in printing for other papers. So for now I guess I am driving this boat.
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