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Education for worker management and ownership of an inner-city enterprise
Abstract
Inner-city economic development as well as educational reform is essential for empowering poor urban residents to compete in the economy and polity. Increasingly, the notion of local control over economic development, and education to that end, has arisen as a critical concern among theoreticians and practitioners. A model that inextricably entertwines economic control with education is worker-controlled and -owned enterprise. Such enterprises can provide jobs and income for often-unemployed urban residents who have been particularly hard-hit by economic restructuring, recession, and racism. Within such enterprises, poor and low-skilled workers are challenged by and imparted dignity through participation in policy decision-making and work design. A focus on economic development moves the civil rights agenda of the 1960's and '70's to confrontation with contemporary economic and racial realities, while collective (albeit private) control of enterprise challenges conservative, traditional approaches to community economic development. A highly successful home-health care enterprise in New York City which has created a substantial number of high-quality, low-skilled jobs for inner-city residents utilizing the worker-controlled and -owned model was studied. A case-study approach to determine the historical sequence of events was employed. A qualitative methodology involving interviews with individual workers and managers as well as statistically-compiled responses from virtually all workers to determine worker participation and satisfaction was utilized. The enterprise was compared with other traditionally-structured New York City home health care agencies as well as with another worker-controlled and -owned enterprise which was not a home health care agency. The study concluded that the worker-controlled and -owned model can be effective in addressing both urban poverty and poor education. Six essential elements for achieving democratic urban economic development are: (1) job creation; (2) service to local low-to-moderate income constituency; (3) design of challenging, full-time, tenured work; (4) democratization of workplace decision-making and profit; (5) payment of reasonable wages and benefits; and (6) contribution to further community economic development. The model studied introduced worker-ownership only after the enterprise had stabilized out of consideration for poor workers' financial limitations as well as a need for managerial control in establishing a viable enterprise. A nonformal educational method proved highly effective with low-skilled workers.
Subject Area
Vocational education|Labor economics|Labor relations
Recommended Citation
Hoyer, Mary E, "Education for worker management and ownership of an inner-city enterprise" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9233072.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9233072