How do UK worker co-operatives compare to the rest of the world

I seem to be doing a lot of internationally focused blogs at the moment, if anyone wants me to cover a domestic worker co-operative issue, or write one themselves, get in touch.

Ever year Co-operatives UK sends data on worker co-operatives to CECOP (our European Federation). This helps CECOP lobby the EU on behalf of the movement and collectively show our strength. For those interested, here's a summary the information. 

Something to reflect on (if your that way inclined) are the terms social co-operative and artisan co-operative, which are terms we don't use in the UK.  I have loosely defined them below and keep meaning to write a blog on them both. 

None of the figures include social co-operatives as we just don't classify co-operatives in that way. For artisan co-operatives, I've looked for co-operatives of self-employed people that come together in a co-operative to produce stuff/deliver a service. These are usually referred to as consortia co-operatives in the UK but that term also includes consortia of very large buying groups like www.bako.co.uk , agricultural machinery rings etc, so its really isn't comparable.

The 90 collected below are an attempt to record these types of co-operatives and are predominantly: taxi firms like www.dialacab.co.uk (sadly not a member, if anyone can make an introduction...), arts and crafts consortia like: www.woolclip.com and professionals like: www.theverypeople.co.uk, www.uhc.org.uk.

Numbers of organisations

As we do not have data on every co-operative in the UK, this will be an underestimate and should only be used as a general guide to the sector (these figures are always changing as we get new data).

	Worker/  social 1 coops	Artisans coops2	TOTAL
Number of enterprises	392	90	482
Number of enterprises being SME’s3	392	89	481
Number of workers (members and non members)	2140	4002	6142
Total number of members of all types e.g. volunteers, investors	634	4657	7291

1 Social co-operatives are multi-stakeholder (predominantly worker/volunteers) that delivers public services (mainly in Italy).

2 Artisan Co-operatives are consortia’s of self employed people who come together predominantly Arts, Crafts, like pottery etc.

3 Define SME as greater than 250 workers or turnover greater than 50 millions €

Size of Co-operative Economy

Worker co-ops in membership of Co-operatives UK = £129m

Worker co-ops in economy = £146m

Artisan/professional co-operatives in membership = £900,000

Artisan/professional co-operatives in economy = £40.9m 

(predominately down to a few very large taxi firms)
Whole co-operative economy = £33.5bn

Lives and Deaths

185 have been creating since 2005, 101 of them members or affiliated to Co-operatives UK. 

33 have closed down over this period (that we know of).

Gender balance of Directors

Male Directors =565
Female Directors = 429 

Industry Sectors 

CECOP uses an International Industrial Classification Systems, so the figures may not be the same as others  figures I might have published in previous posts. I've attached the Spreadsheet, in Google Doc form here. for the juicy details and sub categories.  Again there is a health warning with this data, as it is our interpretation of information we have available.

ISIC & NACE Codes	NACE Description	Total
A	AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHING	13
C	MANUFACTURING	13
E	WATER SUPPLY; SEWERAGE, WASTE MANAGEMENT	6
G	WHOLESALE AND RETAIL TRADE	62
H	TRANSPORTATION AND STORAGE	19
I	ACCOMMODATION AND FOOD SERVICE ACTIVITIES	16
J	INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION	26
M	PROFESSIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES	106
N	ADMINISTRATIVE AND SUPPORT SERVICE ACTIVITIES	14
P	EDUCATION	33
Q	HUMAN HEALTH AND SOCIAL WORK ACTIVITIES	52
R	ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION	79
S	OTHER SERVICE ACTIVITIES	41

If you have not yet lost he will to live with too many figures, here some tid-bits from the last report from CECOP of how we compare with the rest of Europe:

Number of worker co-operatives in membership of a CECOP member

Country	N° of Co-operatives
Bulgaria	268
Czech Republic	252
Denmark	110
Estonia	3
Finland	70
France	1893
Germany	97
Italy	18151
Malta	28
Poland	340
Portugal	51
Romania	526
Slovakia	90
Spain	25486
UK	170
Total	47535

Industry Sectors (where they have data)

NACE	N° of Co-ops
A AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHING	388
B MINING AND QUARRYING	11
C MANUFACTURING	2452
D ELECTRICITY, GAS, STEAM AND SUPPLY	16
E WATER SUPPLY; SEWERAGE, WASTE MANAGEMENT	167
F CONSTRUCTION	1930
G WHOLESALE AND RETAIL TRADE	995
H TRANSPORTATION AND STORAGE	1409
I ACCOMMODATION AND FOOD SERVICE ACTIVITIES	536
J INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION	872
K FINANCIAL AND INSURANCE ACTIVITIES	26
L REAL ESTATE ACTIVITIES	128
M PROFESSIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES	1966
N ADMINISTRATIVE AND SUPPORT SERVICE ACTIVITIES	2323
O PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION	18
P EDUCATION	1328
Q HUMAN HEALTH AND SOCIAL WORK ACTIVITIES	3196
R ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION	1340
S OTHER SERVICE ACTIVITIES	1011
T ACTIVITIES OF HOUSEHOLDS	25

I hope you enjoy, if you have any questions, comments please get in touch

CECOP General Assembly Brussel's: Part 1

Bob Cannell (Suma) and I attended the CECOP General Assembly earlier this week to represent the UK. This post will give a brief overview of what CECOP is and what the main issues discussed were. I hope you find this interesting and if any worker co-operatives want to get more involved or build links with our European partners please contact me.


CECOP – CICOPA Europe is the European confederation of cooperatives and other employee-owned enterprises that are active in industry, services and crafts, most of them being worker and social cooperatives. It affiliates 25 national federations in 16 EU countries, which in turn affiliate approximately 50,000 enterprises which employ 1.4 million workers and generate an aggregate turnover of around €50 billion.

Big numbers and the UK is a small fish in this pond with France, Spain and Italy all having massive worker co-operative sectors in comparison to us. Mondragon in Spain is their 7th largest Corporate Group....

CECOP's is similar to Co-operatives UK but on an EU level, their primary role is unite all the different national federations and lobby the EU commission and Parliament on our behalf. The main discussions were:

Impact of the Financial Crisis
On the whole, worker co-operatives have faired better during the crisis, particularly more likely to survive and with lower job losses. CECOP has made a point to lobby on behalf of the sector to take advantage of this turn of events. Reason's for why worker co-operatives have faired better include:

• Longer term thinking, re-investment of profits.
• Less reliance on financial markets lower levels of debt (leverage).
• Prioritise good quality and sustainable employment for its members rather than withdrawing wealth from the business.
• Worker Co-operatives tend to focus more on training and development.
• Not so much in the UK but Italy and Spain have a good track record for Co-operatives supporting each other and "clustering" to gain economics of scale and provide services for each other.

Lobbying work and Post-Lisbon EU Strategy (2020)
After the Lisbon Treaty the EU Commission has developed a strategy and priorities for the future, CECOP were involved in the consultation process and has worked hard to lobby and make sure that Co-operatives get treated fairly.

In the UK we don't get any real preferential treatment (in fact it could be argued we get less favourably treated than mainstream business forms). Whereas in other countries like Italy and Spain there are benefits, concessions and tax breaks for co-ops. For example in both Spain and Italy people can use their employment benefits to invest in setting up a worker co-operative that succeeds the previous business that employed them (employee buy-out).

Other Lobbying work includes, working hard to make sure changes to International Financial Reporting Standards do not put Co-operatives at a disadvantage (Whether members investments are treated as Assets or Liabilities for example).

Social Co-operatives and Social Enterprise
In the UK we have taken a different approach to other EU countries when looking to change public service delivery. Italy, Sweden, Spain and France have focused on the co-operative model as the vehicle to deliver these services and be the "social economy"; we have mostly focused on Social Entrepreneur model of Social Enterprise.

"Social Co-operative" is a growing term and a source of new co-operatives (7000 just in Italy alone). CECOP has recently released a book and is working on standardising the term across the EU with the future goal of properly recording them and promoting the model.

Whats a Social Co-operative?
It is always difficult to understand concepts from other countries, but basically a "Social Co-operative" is:

• Multi-stakeholder Membership - users, workers and customers (funders).
• Deliver services of "General Interest" (which is similar, but a tighter definition than our "community interest" test for CIC's, more specifically about public services).
• They abide by co-operatives principles; in Italy they have their own legal form.

What is fascinating for the me is there are definitely Co-operatives in the UK that fall into this category, and there maybe other democratically owned social enterprises as well. Both groups would benefit from understanding and learning from the more developed sector on the continent. 

I don't understand the full import, of this new model, but once CECOP completes their work I will do a bigger article.  This model could be what the new coalition Government is looking for to square the circle between freeing up public service delivery but keeping it accountable.

Relationships with Trade Unions
A big theme of the conference was building links with Trade Unions when dealing with businesses in crisis (particularly relevant in the current economic climate!).  Other than in Wales, where that has been some great examples Tower Colliery).  The UK is miles behind our European colleagues when it comes to Trade Unions and the Co-operative movement working together to turn business in crisis into sustainable worker co-operatives (Particularly France).  There is a myth that worker co-operatives by there nature don't need trade unions. This doesn't seem to be the case with worker co-operatives like Suma being heavily unionised (over 80%).

Other Tid bits
Dealing Business Succession - France, CGSCOP are very good at it.
Bringing Disadvantaged people into employment - Italy, Federsolidarieta are very good at it.

Mostly written while traveling back so apologies for poor prose...