With the financial meltdown in the USA and its effects on Jamaica, it is time for people to come together to form co-operatives. A co-operative is really a business that is owned by its members equally. For example, all credit unions are co-operatives. Although the loan policy is usually based on shares held, the assets of the business are owned in common. The same goes for the other types of co-operatives that cooperate on some other basis. Co-operatives in Europe came about because of necessity. And that necessity came about because of starvation due to unemployment.

In his political ideology called "Ujaama", the late Julius Nyerere based it on co-operatives and argued that he was simply revisiting African history by expanding the traditionally family-based economic entities. There are several types of co-operatives in Israel including the kibbutzim. Here too, the kibbutzim came out of difficult conditions for Jews in the Russian Empire of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The economic communes of Brazil and in other parts of South America also came out of similar circumstances.

The Rochdale Pioneers started the first modern co-operative in 1844. Twenty-eight workers of cotton mills in Rochdale came together and established the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society in that year. Working conditions were awful - wages were low and they could not afford the high prices of food. By pooling together they were able to buy flour, oatmeal, sugar and butter at a reduced cost.

In Jamaica, there were the people's co-operative banks of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There was also the Jamaica Banana Producers Co-operative with Norman Manley as its lawyer. When disease wiped out the bananas in the 1930s, Norman Manley negotiated an endowment from Sam Zemurray, the head of the United Fruit Company in 1937. This became known as Jamaica Welfare (now Social Development Commission).

Out of Jamaica Welfare came several farmers' co-operatives. Many of these linked closely with the Jamaica Agricultural Society, which was itself responsible for forming many co-operative entities in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1941, the Young Men's Sodality of the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Cathedral established the first credit union.

In the early days of the credit unions, members had to be trained for six months before they could get a loan. They were trained in co-operative principles and what it meant to be in business collectively with the other members. They were taught about the importance of conscience in paying back loans so that others could get their loans. And they were taught about understanding peace and unity as being part of one family.

Both the agricultural co-operatives started by Jamaica Welfare (now SDC) and the credit union co-operatives were started out of necessity. In the same way that parents of children are getting together to confront the demon of violence towards children, and thereby actually learning to co-operate with each other, Jamaicans should get together to form co-operatives as we hear of hardships to come.

Whether we like it or not, we should solicit the help of the Rastafarians who live in communes such as many Rastafarians in Bull Bay.

While we may not agree with their doctrine, one thing that many of them have done is to master community living in a way that many of us have not. In this regard, the Rastafarians would be very good teachers by example.

In my piece entitled Jawbone and Print in the October 23 edition of the Jamaica Observer, I wrote of my plan to form a co-operative that would be an employment agency. The co-operative would seek to buy shares into businesses and therefore control the jobs. I also mentioned that the aim of the co-operative would be to buy shares into a hotel because of the wide range of jobs that hotels offer. I further wrote that funding would be sought from the various credit unions in Jamaica which the members of this proposed co-operative would be urged to join.

I also wrote that until someone could come up with a better name, "Jawbone and Print" would be the name of the association that seeks to be a co-operative. Jawbone and print is actually an acronym for Jamaica's Active Workers Bring Out National Equality and Produce Responsible Industrial Novelties Today. My efforts at involving the Co-operative Movement in the hotel industry have literally been done by "Jawbone" in my radio commentaries and by "print" in my columns in this newspaper.

My plan is to launch the association on Easter Monday 2009, but with what is happening, it might be sooner than that although not before 2009, which in any event is "around the corner". At the same time, necessity has always been the mother of invention. The truth is that nothing happens until the people are aroused and they will not be aroused unless there is a crisis. And since we are approaching a crisis, it will more than likely happen with or without me.

ekrubm765@yahoo.com

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