Worker-owners as an Emergent Class: Effects of Cooperative Work on Job Satisfaction, Alienation and Stress

In light of the recent proliferation of several types of cooperatives in the US and Western Europe, this paper argues that the worker-owners, or cooperators, in these organizations occupy an emergent class position which is structurally different from that of conventional workers or of the petty bourgeoisie, their two nearest class equivalents. We argue that this new class position has implications for the job satisfaction, expectations, alienation and stress associated with work. We bring together empirical findings from our own studies and from other researchers' studies of cooperatives in order to develop some original hypotheses and to provide suggestive evidence concerning the effects of worker-ownership and control on the individual worker-owners. In the end, we argue that although workplace democracy may bring more meaning and sense of community to work, certain structural features of cooperatives also give rise to high levels of personal stress.