Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union and Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union of Mutual Aid co-hosted the Forum to Commemorate the Enactment of the Worker Co-operatives Act organized by the Workers Collective Network Japan (WNJ).
 

A worker co-operative is “an organization in which the basic principles are that the members invest in the co-operative, that the co-operative’s business is conducted by reflecting their respective opinions, and that the members themselves are engaged in the business.” (Article 1 of the Worker Co-operatives Act).

The draft of the Worker Co-operatives Act was submitted to the Diet as a legislator-initiated bill after carefully holding a large number of hearings and discussions with the organizations concerned, WNJ and the Japan Workers’ Co-operative Union (JWCU), and was unanimously approved and passed by the Diet in December 2020. The law will take effect on October 1, 2022.

It is now 40 years since the first worker collective was established by Seikatsu Club Co-op Kanagawa in 1982. The national organization WNJ was formed in 1995, and this Forum to Commemorate the Enactment of the Worker Co-operatives Act was held to mark the 25th anniversary of the launch of the movement for the enactment of a law appropriate for worker collectives.
 

Participation in the Forum, which was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was from many online venues and individuals (353 accesses).

At the beginning of the forum, guests of honor Keigo Masuya (Member of the House of Representatives for the Komei Party and Co-Chairman of the Diet Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Labor), Shigeyuki Goto (Member of the House of Representatives for the Liberal Democratic Party and Chief Secretary of the Diet Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Labor), Ryuji Satomi (Member of the House of Councilors for the Komei Party and Secretary General of the Diet Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Labor), Masako Okawara (Member of the House of Representatives for the Constitutional Democratic Party and Diet Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Labor), Nobuhiro Furumura (President of the Japan Workers’ Co-operative Union (JWCU)), who were instrumental in the enactment of the bill, greeted the participants, expressing strong encouragement for the worker collectives movement.

In the keynote proposal, Eri Fujii, Representative of WNJ, said, “The question now is how to pass on to the next generation, preserve, and expand the value of worker collectives, which is necessary for creating better and more sustainable communities. In order to make full use of the newly established Worker Co-operatives Act in Japan, we would like to strengthen the functions of the WNJ as a national center for disseminating the worker collective movement throughout the country so that we can go forward with an outlook for creating further mechanisms for worker collectives.”
 

In her keynote speech, entitled Possibilities and Expectations for the Development of the Worker Collectives Movement, Yuriko Ito (Chairperson of Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union, Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union of Mutual Aid) raised the issue of the future society by saying, “In considering the post-COVID society, it is time to envision the ‘building of a new’ society rather than a ‘return to the past.’ Let's take the opportunity of the Worker Co-operatives Act to aim for the creation of a model for a social solidarity economy through businesses (job creation) that connect together diverse local resources.” 
 

In the latter half of the forum program, “Reports from Worker Collectives,” four speakers: Junko Ochiai (Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Workers’ Collective Carry), Junko Hashimoto (Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Workers’ Collective Nanohana), Noriko Nakajima (Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Welfare Workers’ Collective Hope), and Yuko Shiroe (Representative of Coffee Roasting Workers’ Collective Coffee Craft Center Mamefuku) gave introductions to their respective businesses and reported on the prospects and challenges for the implementation of the Worker Co-operatives Act.

This forum was a place to confirm the expectations for and future issues regarding the Worker Co-operatives Act, and to declare a new start for the worker collectives movement in the hope that the enforcement of the Worker Co-operatives Act will become a catalyst for diverse people to participate in the movement.

Published on October 4, 2021