Employment protection regimes and dismissal of members in worker cooperatives

Worker cooperatives in Italy: legislation, prevalence and recent trends

“…In other words, it is confirmed that wages in WCs are more volatile than employment in recessionary cycles, which demonstrates a better ability of WCs to preserve human capital and withstand crises (Burdín, 2014; Borzaga et al. , 2022; Tortia, 2022b). Despite the drops in production volumes, wages and value added due to the pandemic, Italian WCs were able to leverage wage flexibility to prevent job losses.…”

Employee-Owned Businesses’ Responses During the Pandemic: Economic, Non-Economic Goal and Democratic Resilience and Their Link to Ownership, Control and Benefit

“…As a unique, empirical, and comparative analysis of the economic, social and democratic performance of EOBs with differing levels of ownership, this study makes a meaningful contribution to debates about the future of work in a post-pandemic world (Ashford et al, 2020;Leach et al, 2021) and contributes to scholarship on how alternative business models might be a factor in revising capitalism itself (Brown et al, 2019). In particular, it contributes to research considering the "great reset" (Tortia, 2022), to calls to rethink economic systems for more equality (van Barneveld et al, 2020), and to exploration of new approaches to employment relations (Kalmi, 2007). The pandemic was a novel social, humanitarian and economic crisis (van Barneveld et al, 2020) resulting in increased economic inequalities through job losses (ILO, 2020), underemployment (Blundell et al, 2021), production downturns and exhaustion of company financial reserves which "adversely affect their ability to recover once the immediate crisis passes" (Phillipson et al, 2020: 6).…”

“…In support of this argument, job protection and avoidance of lay-offs during the 2008 crisis were found by Birchall and Hammond Ketilson (2009), Smith and Rothbaum (2013) and Ollé-Espluga and Bartoll (2019). Birchall (2013) also found evidence of protection of working conditions despite experience of recession, Tortia (2022) indicates that some cooperatives avoid redundancies through investment in retraining, while McQuaid et al (2012) highlight the well-being effects of EO. While many of the studies of employment protection during recessionary periods focus on worker cooperatives, Kurtulus and Kruse's ( 2017) study of non-cooperative EO also found that lower layoffs were combined with employee training.…”

Valuing co-operation: motivation and reward for producers of education platform content

“…In co-operatives membership rights serve as the boundary of a system, separating internal processes from the environment. These rights are granted to members upon their entry and define their ability to participate equally in decision making based on predefined rules rooted in co-operative values and principles (Tortia, 2022). Voluntary and open membership would allow producers the option to contribute to platform development and levels of engagement that fit with their personal ambitions as presented in chapter eight and Table 8-5.…”

“…Because of the importance of employee members setting the co-operative standards for other types of members (selfemployed) and non-members, it would seem prudent to implement a probationary during which platform employees, aspiring to become members, must demonstrate their character and abilities through their alignment with co-operative values and principles (Wren, 2020). Digital education platforms should aim to attract members with a long term perspective, as this aligns with their anticipation of long term professional growth and increased productivity (Tortia, 2022).…”