How we are working

Para todos todo, nada para nosotros*

Café Libertad Kollektiv - a cooperative collective enterprise

Due to legal requirements, cooperatives are more complex than other legal structures. However, they offer the benefit of socialisation and self-management beyond private ownership. In other words: Café Libertad Kollektiv isn't 'owned' by anyone, including the cooperative's shareholders or team members. The revenue isn't privatised or distributed as profit. We support the autonomy of Zapatista and indigenous communities and promote the idea of solidary trade and self-organised work.

An annual assembly of all cooperative members is legally required to present financial statements and to elect and formally approve the coop's institutions. This assembly is the coop's highest decision-making body and takes place according to cooperative law.

Our team structure

Our work is organised non-hierarchically; we make decisions by consensus at biweekly team meetings, which are unpaid. Additionally, we hold daily half-hour work meetings if required, which are paid. Once or twice a year, we discuss general questions at all-day meetings. Regular counselling is organised to prevent potential conflicts at an early stage, which have caused quarrels and even the collective's separation in the past.

Transparency by general communication of operative procedures and figures

Theoretically, all team members are supposed to work in every sector in order to prevent hierarchy at work. In practice, this can't be applied in every situation. Some colleagues can't work in the packaging sector due to physical limitations; other fields require special knowledge, such as foreign languages, accounting, or technical skills.

Generally, we strive to achieve maximum transparency and communicate procedures clearly, e.g., through in-house training in different work sectors. We regularly present the financial status quo and operating figuresat team meetings. In our view, this is crucial to preventing hierarchies based on specialised financial knowledge and to enabling all team members to participate in planning and control. At the same time, our focus is not exclusively on economic considerations, but we also strive to discuss and question decisions from a political perspective.

Contradictions and realities: With questions, we are moving forward!

The project Café Libertad Kollektiv has its origins in the anarcho-syndicalist union movement. The original ideas include supporting resistant cooperatives and social movements, as well as creating jobs with working conditions we are fighting for politically and socially to prevent self-exploitation and precarisation. Reality check constantly generates new problems that we question critically.

The packaging sector of Café Libertad Kollektiv, in particular, is characterised by physically demanding labour. Sick days must be compensated, and additional orders must be processed. In the long term, working in this sector several days per week has proven infeasible, because health problems tend to increase with work intensity. Therefore, work in the packaging sector is limited to 2 days per week. As work has increased, the use of temporary staff has also increased in recent years.

Standard wage and equal conditions

Temporary personnel in collective enterprises may sound unusual, but it's a reality in most collectives for managing the workload. We don't want to gloss over this fact, but to discuss it openly and consciously. Different personal situations have to be considered, and it should be possible to plan for the future in non-conventional ways. Students tend to have different concerns, priorities, and living conditions than freelancers or artists seeking auxiliary income, or people interested in a full-time job.

Temps are employed on a permanent basis and subject to full social insurance. They are entitled to equal wages, holidays and educational leave. We strive to ensure regular working days for temporary staff according to their wishes, needs, and living situations to prevent precarisation or covert outsourcing of collective work into deregulated employment relationships.

Right now, we are developing models of self-management and participation for employees outside full collective membership, e.g. general assemblies of all colleagues.

Currently, Café Libertad Kollektiv has 19 employees; 14 are members of the collective. Working hours vary from 6 hours (regular hours per day) to 30 hours per week (full-time). Whenever possible, working hours are based on the employees' needs and wishes.

Temporary staff are employed 1-2 days per week. Members of the collective are expected to work 3-5 days per week to facilitate deeper understanding and active participation in everyday operational developments.
 

*For everyone, everything. For ourselves, nothing.

From a mural illustrating the concept of Zapatista communities' management structures. Drawn on the following quote of Subcomandante Marcos: "Para todos todo. Para nosotros el dolor y la angustia, para nosotros la alegre rebeldía, para nosotros el futuro negado, para nosotros la dignidad insurrecta. Para nosotros nada."