BY NOW, MOST of us have been affected by problems with the “supply chain.” It started last year with shelves void of toilet paper, then morphed into a lack of other manufactured goods, including construction materials, cars, and medical equipment.
Other than this being a (sometimes serious) nuisance, why should people of faith take notice? From our perspectives—as a theologian and a developer of worker-owned cooperatives—the broken supply chain throws light on some of our deepest economic and political problems.
The current shortage of goods and services is often attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its roots, however, are in an economic system designed to produce maximum profits for the few rather than the many by outsourcing production. The “few” are called shareholders and the “many” are those who work for a living. While many working people also own some shares, the bulk of profit in this system goes to those with the largest portfolios and majority positions. No wonder U.S. billionaires have gained more than $2 trillion since the pandemic began.
What will it take for the labor of the working-class majority not only to be compensated fairly, but for people to have a voice in shaping their social, political, and economic life? Only the people who work for a living—along with those in capitalism’s permanent reserve of unemployment—have both the interest and the power to organize change. As civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer realized in the U.S. South, “To have a great country, not only will we have to have political power, but we will have to have economic power as well.”
Today, working people’s political voices are heard through actions of organized labor. But economic power is also accruing through worker cooperatives, where ownership, management, decision-making power, and profit distribution are held by workers. Currently in the United States, the highest concentration of worker co-ops is in industries of low wage, “essential” workers, such as food service, home care, and child care. Nearly 60 percent of people employed at worker co-ops identify as people of color and 62.5 percent identify as female.
Times of crisis—such as the current pandemic—are ripe for founding cooperatives, which require collaborative and creative thinking to meet the needs of worker-owners, their communities, and the environment. Co-ops also can respond nimbly to change. For example, Opportunity Threads, a worker-owned sewing co-op in North Carolina, retooled its production to make “personal protective equipment” for health care workers at Cooperative Home Care Associates, a co-op in New York. This is what supply chains could look like.
In 1907, W.E.B. Du Bois released a study on “Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans” that traces the long tradition of worker cooperatives in African American communities. Many are rooted in the values of faith, expressed through the Hebrew prophets, the organizing work of Jesus, and the Pauline communities that rearranged the imperial body politic.
Faith communities and worker cooperatives can be a match made in heaven. Each one revitalizes and deepens shared concerns and values of the other. Our Abrahamic religious traditions as well as changes in the world of labor are shaping deeper forms of solidarity, pushing faith communities to see themselves as not only labor allies but to understand that their congregations consist primarily of working people.
Disrupted supply chains are a preview of the collapse of the neoliberal capitalist “global economy.” Reenvisioning the relationship between church and labor—especially around worker cooperatives—could impact supply chains in a different way: There would be no reason to circle the globe in search of ever-cheaper labor and resources in a race to the bottom. In the process, new visions of faith and the divine, as well as new embodiments of community, politics, and the economy emerge. The result is not only shorter supply lines but deeper relationships for deep solidarity.
Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger is co-director of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development in Nashville, Tenn.
Joerg Rieger is distinguished professor of theology and founding director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University.
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