Comment from guest #3

Just one more thought. Again, this would probably apply to many co-ops, not just Ann Arbor's.

Assume a worst case scenario. Business is down, and due to unfavorable working conditions, good employees are hard to find. Offering competitive prices gets increasingly difficult as people tighten their purse-strings in a reaction to high energy prices and a difficult job market. The co-op ends up in the red. Sales start to decrease, and people get laid off one by one. The end is near. This is all hypothetical, of course...

What checks and balances are there? What happens if it gets to the point where the money isn't there to support what is perhaps more or less by necessity and history a top-heavy organization, and member drives can't raise enough money to solve the problem?

Does the board actively seek answers and changes? Or is the problem, as has often been done before, attributed to Whole Foods? It seems to me that if (and let's hope this doesn't happen) -- just if -- it were beginning to look like PFC might end up having to shut down for good -- would the board, at a certain point in time, concerned that the PFC might be getting precariously close to the precipice of no return, take decisive action to remedy the situation, or... would the current management go down with the ship?

In other words, is there any conceivably possible situation at any point in the near or far future where the board would make an attempt to change the personnel? Something similar, perhaps to what has just happened with Micheal Brown and FEMA? What are the expectations for a medium-sized natural foods coop? Is it just to barely survive and scrape by, or is it to create a vibrant retail establishment with a consistent rate of growth?

Is there a roadmap of various scenarios, of various growth rates, of various degrees of success and failure? Might moving outside of downtown to a long-term location where there is ample parking and where renting space is not the only option help the bottom line? Could it be that perhaps the only thing that management really dreads is the loss of their own jobs if/when the co-op shuts down? Is anyone in management afraid of getting fired for failing to achieve certain rates of growth; or keeping turnover (which is more expensive than many people seem to think) in check; or maintaining sufficient financial stability to be able to provide ALL employees with a living wage? Certainly something like a living wage ought not be a stranger to something like a natural foods co-op?

Simply put, if a management team here in the US, or anywhere in the world is only concerned about keeping the store afloat, just barely scraping by, and there is no pressure on the management team to maintain rates of growth consistent with information gleaned from in-depth market research, then such co-ops, whether located in Sweden, Australia, or Ann Arbor, will fail to thrive; such co-ops will fail to do as well as they might. Obviously, if the market research suggests that the co-op will not be able to do very well, then it might warrant a serious look at available options.

This is the basic thought that I had just now. How much pressure is being placed on managment to succeed, to do as well as possible? Or is that pressure absent? Maybe I'm wrong, and I hope I am, but I've never seen it anywhere. I have always been under the impression that management is there to stay regardless of how well the store does. Whole Foods has more say-so in regards to PFC's well being than PFC's management does. Is this just the way it is? Or is this simply a result of management not being held accountable? And if this is a phenomenon that is occuring throughout the US, can the solution be found in a major change in the structures that lie at the very heart of the co-op? Is there any real oversight; the kind of oversight one would have if, instead of ten-thousand members contributing $60 each, it was a single individual putting up $600,000 of their own money? Whose money is it that we are talking about? Why is it a struggle to get 10% of the members to vote?

Obviously, it is quite difficult getting thousands and thousands of members to speak with one voice about what they would like to see going on with their money. The money that the memberships represent, which is, essentially, any co-op's "capital", is, in a sense, fragmented. It comes in little bite-sized pieces from thousands and thousands (for some co-ops, millions) of members. Perhaps as a result of this fragmentation, the pressure to work hard and do something productive with that money gets fragmented as well and in the end we end get a fragmented dream; an unrealized vision, of what PFC could really be.

If we step back and get a good look at the big picture, we might realize that if the structure of the retail product member co-ops in this country does not change, they will fail to thrive. They will fail to live up to their potential. Might this have to do with the fact that the membership fees are fragmented between thousands (and in some cases, millions) of members and there isn't any effective framework by which the democratic process can effectively hold the managements accountable to higher levels of professionalism and higher levels of excellence such as those that are typically demanded from publically traded companies or other non-coops? The many thousands of "owners" are simply either unwilling or unable to speak with one voice and demand, at a bare minimum, the type of performance from their investment that, all profit aside, would raise everyone's wages and improve everyone's working conditions.

Certainly, if market research shows that the likelihood of a particular co-op located in a particular area doing well is unlikely, then the co-op ought to disclose that information to its members; its "owners" - the source of its capital. Otherwise, the members ought to expect (and demand) a thriving, vibrant business with a consitent rate of growth. In any case, estimates should be established from in-depth market research, and if those estimates hint at low wages, shoestring budgets, and likely failure of the co-op, options should be considered and members ought to be notified. Just barely scraping by for the purposes of maintaining the job security and relatively premium wages of the managment team is unacceptable. There ought not be second-class employees in any business that claims to care about the earth and its children.

There is risk anytime you do something like start a co-op. One of the risks is that it will fail. Perhaps there is a new risk now, a risk that, before now, none of us has recognized; could this be a phenomenon occuring in co-ops throughout the country? As the job market gets tighter, as corporate neckties allow even less circulation to take place, as working until retirement age for one employer becomes less and less of a reality for most working people today, as the baby boomers begin to place a strain on our social safety net, upper level co-op managers grandparent themselves into stable, cushy positions paying relatively premium wages; positions with freedoms that most working folks could only dream of. Meanwhile, the remainder of the employees drift closer and closer to minimum wage, increasing turnover rates and their associated costs.

So that's really my question; and perhaps it has everything to do with hurricane Katrina and FEMA and Mike Brown, but it's a question that needs to be asked. Who goes over the management team with a fine-tooth comb? Does anyone? Do they go down with the ship? Or does the board set reasonable goals that the management team needs to reach, based on competent market research?

Depending on who you are, and how much you know about the situation, the answer to that question is, unfortunately, quite predictable. The new thing that I now think about is the possibility that this is happening "en masse" throughout the country in natural food and other types of retail co-ops.

God bless.

Comment from guest #2

Just another thought I had. Again, this would probably apply to many co-ops, not just Ann Arbor's...

Assume a worst case scenario. Business is down, and due to unfavorable working conditions, good employees are hard to find. Offering competitive prices gets increasingly difficult as people tighten their purse-strings in a reaction to high energy prices and a difficult job market. The co-op ends up in the red. Sales start to decrease, and people get laid off one by one. The end is near. Hypothetical, of course...

What checks and balances are there? What happens if it gets to the point where the money isn't there to support such a top-heavy organization, and member drives can't raise enough money to solve the problem?

Does the board actively seek answers and changes? Or is it Whole Foods' fault? It seems to me that if (and let's hope this doesn't happen) -- just if -- it is beggining to look like PFC might end up having to shut down for good -- will the board, at a certain point in time where the PFC is getting precariously close to the precipice, take decisive action to remedy the situation, or... does the current management go down with the ship?

In other words, would there be any conceivably possible situation at any point in the near or far future where the board would make an attempt to change the personnel or somehow supplement the current management with real professionals that can create a vibrant retail establishment with a consistent rate of growth?

Is there an "evacuation plan", or a roadmap? Perhaps the only thing that management fears is the loss of their own jobs if/when the co-op shuts down? Is anyone in management afraid of getting fired for failing to achieve certain rates of growth? Keeping turnover (which is more expensive than many people seem to think) in check? Maintaining the financial stability to be able to provide ALL employees a living wage? Certainly something like a living wage ought not be a stranger to something like a natural foods co-op? Or are they just afraid of the store having to close its doors?

This is the basic thought that I had just now. Is there a check, a balance, is there pressure being placed on managment to succeed, to do really well? Or is that pressure not there. I've never seen it anywhere. Is there any real oversight? The kind of oversight one would have if it was a single individual who owned the business? Whose money is it that we are talking about? Why is it a struggle to get 10% of the people to vote? I think part of the problem is that it is very difficult to get thousands of thousands of members to speak with one voice about what kinds of ROI's they would like to see. The money is fragmented in coming from thousands of people, therefore the responsibility to work hard and do something productive with that money gets fragmented as well and we end up with a fragmented dream, or vision, of what PFC could really be. Drug testing? Oh. My. God. What on EARTH are you thinking. A retailer of wholistic, alternative medicine products in a city where the medical marijuana legislation was passed by over 70% of its voters. PFC is not ALL that's left of the counterculture. As a matter of fact, it's not counterculture at all.

Perhaps if step back and get a good look at the big picture, we will realize that if the structure of the retail product member co-ops in this country does not change, they will fail to thrive. They will fail to live up to their potential. I believe this has to do with the fact that the membership fees are fragmented between thousands of people (in REI's case, it's 2 million and counting), and there isn't any framework by which the democratic process can effectively hold the managements accountable to higher levels of professionalism and higher levels of excellence such as those that are typically demanded from companies publically traded companies on Wall Street, for example. The many thousands of "owners" are simply either unwilling or unable to speak with one voice and demand the type of performance that would raise everyone's wages and everyone's working conditions.

It shouldn't be "about" managment. It should be "about" the co-op as a independent entity. A living, breathing, pillar of the community with a life of its own. Like many people, the way I feel is that "I love the co-op". But, I can't stand to shop there because of what is being done to it by the people in charge there. I see what the co-op COULD be, and it makes me sad to see what it has become.

There is risk anytime you do something like a co-op. One of the risks is that it will fail. Perhaps we have identified a new risk now, a phenomenon occuring throughout the country. As the job market gets tighter, as corporate neckties allow even less circulation to take place, as working until retirement age for one employer becomes less and less of a certainty for most working people today, as the baby boomers begin to place a strain on our social safety net - upper level co-op managers grandparent themselves into stable, significantly better than living-wage positions with freedoms that most working folks could only dream of. Meanwhile, the remainder of the employees drift closer and closer to minimum wage, increasing turnover rates and their associated costs.

I would like to one day be able to walk into PFC and feel good about it. Perhaps it will take a crisis for PFC to rise again, having learned its lessons. I certainly hope so.

Comment from guest #1

My orientation period at Zingerman's has been taking a lot of thought time and real time, but it's almost over. I wanted to share three thoughtful comments from a guest here, however.

I was reading about REI -- Recreational Equipment, Inc. -- REI is "the nation's largest consumer cooperative"

I was reading about REI, and I did searches on Google, and so on. I came upon an article, and it had been written by one of the former employees of REI. If I remember this correctly, one day while he was working, an older gentleman customer who had been a long-time shopper of many coops expressed his view (you know, the "listen, sonny, let me give you a bit of wisdom" bit) that in his experience, member co-ops end up being "about" the management.

Just like in A^2. So often, the argument has been between whether or not PFC is top-heavy, disconnected from the "commoners", etc...

My impromptu mini-research session about REI led me to believe that in other words, yes, management makes life as pleasant as they can for themselves by forging strong ties with the board. It's a secret circle. There are also strong ties that have been forged between the management and a small, elite minority of members. Everyone else would be better off working at Sam's Club.

The reason this is not an attempt to denigrate the management of PFC is because it is happening in many, many member coops across the nation (perhaps even the world). PFC is merely experiencing things that are being experienced "en masse" by numerous member coops all over the world.

So it is happening, but it's not really management's fault. Something like that.

Prelude to sign #4

In a quick prelude to sign #4 that the co-op is broken, that it puts only perfuncotory efforts toward educating the public and/or members about food issues, I noticed something indicative of this. I watched someone who actually noticed all of the (very old) pamphlets that are available on tempeh, grains, organic food, etc. try to get one and have to lean precariously over the shopping carts lined up in front of them to snag one, tripping over one of the yellow children's carts in the process. All of the shopping carts are blocking the educational material available to the public. Good luck trying to get a pamphlet farther in to the right.

I'll post a picture of this situation soon, but I felt I needed to post this in order to not forget about it among the mass of signs running through my head.

Today is my last day working at the coop, so I've been immersed in studying for my new job at Zingermans. Look for quite a few new posts in the next week.

I am so livid

Part of my having this in the form of a blog is because I'm going to just post off-the-cuff sometimes. As much as this may be a forum for members and the community, it is my forum. Just as you may post any comment you want, praising or criticizing your day-to-day experiences with the coop, so I will post entries in the same way.

I just found out that one of the key organizers for the union is leaving. I'm not livid because of that, because I'm leaving the coop, for heaven's sake. I am livid because of the reasons behind it. Three weeks after his annual evaluation, an evaluation like any other company has in which a supervisor (in this case Liz, the kitchen manager, a level 5 manager) evaluates the performance of an employee, he is called in and given a list of the problems Liz had with him--mind you, problems that could have been discussed during his evaluation three weeks before. He is told that she will be keeping a close eye on him from now on. He recognized it as retaliation for his openness about the labor issues at the coop (which I haven't listed in my signs list yet). And I do, too. I only have three days to work here, but I am so tempted to walk off the job in solidarity with him. I am so livid.

Let's pause

I have a long list of signs that PFC is broken, but in an effort to keep this reading/conversation at a controllable pace, I'll leave it there for today.

Sign I think PFC is broken #3

Sign #3 - When outside of the coop, members are rarely if ever contacted. The contact members have with PFC outside of the coop is limited to two things, a sales flyer and a bi-monthly newsletter. To the extent of the sales flyer, I'm being courted just as strongly by Kroger, Meijers, and Best Buy, so that hardly counts as a member contact. In regard to the newsletter, that may raise to the level of its own separate sign of brokenness. The newsletter is being used right now as a marketing tool rather than a communication tool to owners of a business, and is a very passive marketing tool at that. It is the very passivity of the communication between PFC and its members that is the strongest sign to me of how broken PFC is.

There exists, supposedly, an online forum for members to communicate with each other and with the management. If you log in to it using "guest" as both your username and password, you will see the level of activity that it generates. This is from a forum which has a link right off of the homepage of People's Food Coop. Yet, in the last board meeting I attended in June, a high priority of the board is for such an online forum to be encouraged. The board members and Carol Collins were too busy fighting with each other over who had responsibility for implementing it to discuss the efficacy of the existing system.

Sign I think PFC is broken #2

Sign #2 - Except once a year, members are never at board meetings. Although members are always welcome to attend board meetings, for whatever reason none of the 5000+ members ever choose to attend. I believe this is directly related to sign #1 and sign #3. Board minutes are supposedly available for all board meetings, but if members rarely stop by a board meeting I'm guessing they rarely stop in for board minutes, either. My basis for this guess is that when Cynthia Edwards, the Director of Outreach & Education, was asked about board minutes she said she had never been asked for those yet. Now one could say she hasn't been asked for those yet because they are available online, but as of today, the online minutes are two months behind and no one has complained about it.

Sign I think PFC is broken #1

Step #1, I'm going to start listing the signs and/or reasons why I've come to believe that PFC is broken. I won't be listing how to fix them yet because that requires some dialogue and some research, but over the next few days a list is going to be generated with each reason having it's own blog entry. Some of the reasons could be interrelated.

Sign #1 - Members are not treated any differently or more special than non-members when shopping at the coop. The only time that a member ever feels like they are a member is at the very end of their shopping experience, at the very end of their check-out experience, when a cashier asks "Are you a member?" in order to track sales. The two exceptions to this could possibly be when one is walking into the store if one notices the information board at the right of the door and the coop-member-only sales items with signs on them in the store.

Those two exceptions are very slight. The information board isn't clearly delineated between member and non-member information and the coop-member-only signs are so unobtrusive in their member-only specificness that many non-members assume the sale sign applies to them.

Although the coop is open to the public, if members are not given a feeling of special status every day they choose to shop at the coop rather than at some other grocery store, then a feeling of community among members will be very difficult to build.

Self-appointed Ombudsman?

This was a comment I received, which I'll reprint in its entirety:

Solomon,

As a PFC member and hard-core co-oper, I support any constructive discussion of flaws and potential solutions in our institutions, and look forward to seeing what you have to say. Looks like you're off to a good start.

Let me make two requests in the meantime:

1. The first person I mentioned the name of this blog to replied, "My god, do they have to dump all over everything?!" You're going to inevitably get the question, over and over, "Why do you hate PFC so much?" Be prepared to answer, over and over, "No, I _love_ PFC, which is why I care enough to do this!" and take pains to make that clear throughout. (So far, so good, imho.) There's a tragically fine line in the blogworld between critique hopefully leading to improvement and making people say, "Yeah! PFC suxorz! I'll never shop there again!"

2. Could you enable comments by people without blogger accounts? Is there an option to allow people to post a name and non-blogger url but not to allow totally anonymous comments? I understand the motivation behind not allowing anonymous comments, but a blogger account is hardly an accountable identity, and I think that forcing that step will discourage some readers from participating.



Murph, thanks for responding. Obviously, I'm just in the beginning stages of this, and I am hoping to incorporate suggestions as they come regarding the structure/tone of this.

In regard to your first point, I'm glad to hear that you came out of the blog feeling that I do care about PFC, because I do. I believe that the people who are running it, who are employed by it, who are members of it, and who are on the board care for it as well. I also think that they are all very busy and creating an honest (rather than a marketing/sales) communication structure for the PFC community is low on the list of priorities. Organizing thoughts and people into a structure, shaking people up, and asking questions are all things I'm good at, and I give those a high priority. Right now I'm seeing myself as an ombudsman, but I'm also going to go the extra step and say what I think needs fixed. (I wonder if being an unofficial ombudsman for the coop counts as volunteer work?)

In regard to your second point, I have only three options: allow anyone to comment, force people to take the 30 seconds to register, or allow only members of this blog to comment. I don't mind anonymous comments, in fact I welcome them. The reason for the registration requirement is because blogs without registration required inevitably fall victim to spammers.

Thanks.

Why do you keep using people's full names?

I'm only using the names of the Management Team of the coop, that small group of six people with ultimate authority to create, remove, or change any policy dealing with the day-to-day operations of the coop. For the same reason that the Board of Directors is public, because members of a public food coop should know the people deciding long-range policies at the coop, those names are public. If I refer to anyone else, at most I will use initials. But the Management Team has too much power to not be held publicly accountable for the state of People's Food Cooperative today. In the interest of fairness, my name is Solomon James.

The Management Team consists of the following individuals:
General Manager
Assistant General Manager
Operations Manager*
Food Service Manager
Director of Outreach & Education*
Human Resource Director*

Three of those members (those with *'s) have changed in the last year, creating a sizable shift in whatever consensus structure may have existed before that.

The tiniest of histories (one month)

In the beginning of June at PFC, three major policy changes and additions involving drug testing, employee wages, and computer use and confidentiality were placed into the hands of PFC employees. These policy changes were also immediately placed into new employee handbooks and distributed to all new employees.

The obvious rallying point for a coop in a hippie town like Ann Arbor was the introduction of drug testing into the culture of PFC. This produced in the matter of three hours about ten formal grievances against the General Manager of PFC, Carol Collins. I wrote the text of the grievances and organized the collection of signatures and was part of the group who presented the grievances to the General Manager.

I didn't realize how much dry tinder was waiting to be sparked into a fire at the coop. By June 6, two off-site meetings were held by employees to discuss the formation of a union at the People's Food Coop. Of the 56+ non-management employees at the coop, about a third showed up to these two meetings. In the last month, interest in the union has grown substantially.

Why? Because PFC is broken and the people who most want to save it, the people who spend more of their lives with it, and the people who are most financially entwined with it are the employees working there right now.

"...get together and organize. Which is to say - learn how to get things done together that we can't get done alone. That's all a union was meant to be" -- Utah Phillips

Who the hell am I?

I'm a member of People's Food Coop.

I'm 36 years old, born on Halloween/Samhain.

I'm Wiccan, though it has become more of a personal spiritual path than a shared religious tradition.

I grew up in a town with no food cooperative whatsoever. That would be Salem, Oregon, population 142,940.

I went to college at Wabash College, got a degree in math. I was in the middle of Crawfordsville, Indiana, population 15,243. No co-op there, either.

Lived in informal cooperatives in Salem after I got out of college for about six years. My interests in food and its impact on society began about then, and I also became vegetarian about that time. By the end of my stay in Salem, I've become vegan.

Moved to New York City, population 8,008,278, in 1999. Moved directly into Ganas, a full-blown commune, although today we call them intentional communities. My interest in exploring countercultural ways to think of community and community building is now at its height, and I'm steeping myself in it (though admittedly not always most effectively or efficiently).

In 2000 or 2001, I start becoming more familiar with a movement called "Slow Food." This movement speaks to the very depths of me. But I don't know what to do with that vibration as of yet.

In 2001, I meet my wife. My wife at that time is a volunteer/resident of the Catholic Worker in New York City, a strong advocate of personalism (also see), and without a doubt the woman with the strongest personal moral compass I know. At the time I was a dreamer wanting to organize non-violent direct action against slaughterhouses and meat packing plants.

By 2002, I've toned down the dreams of my social protesting to joining a food co-op, supporting Community Supported Agriculture, and absorbing what I can about Slow Food. I'm now engaged to be married.

I moved to Michigan in late 2003 to reside in Ann Arbor, population 114,024, because my wife's family lives in Michigan and we wanted to move to a hippie, college town.

The moment I move into Ann Arbor my wife and I join the local food cooperative, People's Food Coop, and I promise myself that I will pursue many of my ideals about food: food as a community builder, food as a medium for criticizing Western middle-class values, food as a tool for identifying corporate industry greed and domination. and food as a method of illustrating ecological issues and defending biodiversity. Food was to be one of the focuses of my newly married life. Married, July 10, 2004.

I fell in love with Zingerman's the first moment I walked in, marvelling at the selections of food grown by artisan farmers treating the earth, the animals, and the food with as much respect as possible in creating their product. I knew that I wanted to work there. I didn't have much food experience on my resume, just in my head.

My personal food philosophies muted and I retained a vegetarian diet, but became non-vegan.

After working as a substitute pre-school teacher for the University of Michigan for a few months, I then worked at Arbor Farms for about half a year.

My wife got a job as a union organizer--GO UPOWER!

Had a wonderful honeymoon exploring Northern Michigan and a little of the Upper Peninsula.

Came back and got a job as a Produce Stocker at the People's Food Coop in August 2004. I told Kevin Sharp, the Assistant General Manager, when he hired me that I wanted to be very involved with the coop and planned to eventually be one of the board members because of how much I believed in the potential of food cooperatives.

I became one of two final candidates for the job of Director of Outreach and Education/Marketing for the PFC, though the choice was not me in the end. I'm told by the management that I was highly qualified and was also told that if Cynthia Edwards, the new hire, was successful in creating a separate non-profit organization from the coop itself, that I would be the new Director of Marketing. I happen to love both marketing and food, so I thought I might have enjoyed the job. As it turns out, because I believe the coop is broken, being rejected for that job was fortunate.

I've worked as a Produce Stocker until today and through June 26, 2005.

My new employer is finally Zingerman's.

Definition of Purpose

People's Food Cooperative of Ann Arbor (PFC) is BROKEN. It is no longer what a cooperative is ideally and it is drifting farther and farther from those ideals. Perhaps that drift is not of its own making, since the organic food movement has been co-opted by Whole Foods, Arbor Farms and a slew of online commercial mail-order companies. So what the People's Food Cooperative used to be, an innovative alternative for a profit-driven, overly capitalist society, has fallen away as its product category has been snatched into the mainstream.

I contend that the creation of a natural food coop in the 1970s was more than just the creation of a way to get cheaper food by joining together to buy in bulk. The culture of the 1970s which was behind the cooperative drive, not just in creating food cooperatives but in creating living cooperatives as well, was countercultural and innovative in its visions. Given that, the PFC of 2005 is broken because it is no longer countercultural, it is no longer innovative, and it has succumbed to the very market forces it tried to speak out against with its very existence 30+ years ago.

This blog is to outline and explore both the particular ways PFC is broken in regard to that vision and to offer up solutions. This is a blog because I want to facilitate that conversation but I don't want to monopolize it. I want the community of PFC members, PFC employees, PFC Board of Directors members, and PFC management to be a part of this conversation: agreeing, disagreeing, adding suggestions.

I also invite the wider community of Ann Arbor and of those interested in cooperatives and the state of food in America and globally to comment on this, because the statements that PFC makes with its purchases, its vocal stands, and its community activism are directed at you. But I think its forgotten that.

Prelude and Apology

At the heart of me, I'm still a mathematician, and I think in mathematical ways. Sometimes that means that I see the world in a way that's too black and white, and that's one of the reasons I always need to be surrounded by people who see in hues and shades and pigments. Luckily, I married someone who can see the nuances and subtleties that I don't. Being a mathematician, I believe that the most complex problems can sometimes be stated very simply, even if they become very complicated and messy when one tears the problem apart. So, forgive me for my simplicities, and have faith that I believe the problems at PFC are complicated to solve. But, they are simple to state.