Tag Archives: labor

Park Slope Food Coop: Will Work for Food

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Photo: Michael Nagle/NYT

“The co-op is worse than socialism. Because at least in a socialist country, if you know the right people, you can get out of it.”

“For a long time, the co-op member who lived furthest away was from—can anyone guess?—Ithaca, NY. Once a month, he would drive all the way to Park Slope, do his work shift, and then load up his car with groceries. There’s a food co-op in Ithaca too, but apparently it was still worth it to come all the way here.”

“It’s something between an earthy-crunchy health food haven and a Soviet-style re-education camp.”

Love it or hate it, the Park Slope Food Coop is undeniably the nation’s most notorious cooperative grocery store, a bastion of democratic ideals in one of New York’s most elite neighborhoods. As the name suggests, a cooperative is a group of people who work together in a jointly owned business. Most food co-ops in the U.S. have several tiers of members, where some members contribute labor to the co-op and pay less, while other members only shop and pay a bit more. The Park Slope Food Coop does not trifle with such distinctions—to shop at the co-op, every adult member of your household must work a 2 ¾ hour shift every four weeks. No exceptions. This is one of the strictest labor requirements in the country for a food co-op.

Which is to say, if you want to become a member, you will have to work very, very hard. No, I don’t mean the work requirement. I am referring to the sign-up process. To join the co-op, you must first register for an orientation session. Registration slots are available online, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, between 3 and 4 pm. For my first few attempts, every time I remembered to check online, all the slots had already been taken. Finally, I set myself a Google Calendar reminder, sat on the orientation page and hit refresh until I landed a slot.
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The Italian Work Ethic

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Me: “I’m sure Italians are very hardworking people!”

Italian: “Don’t be silly, all the hardworking Italians are already in the U.S.”

After I announced my move to Italy and the initial excitement had subsided, the jokes started rolling in about the work ethic of Italians and southern Europeans in general. I reassured myself that I’d be living in northern, rather than southern Italy, and surely it would be nice to take a break from the frenetic pace of American work habits? I mean, who needs to run errands between the hours of 12:30 and 3:30 pm anyway? (Most Italian businesses are closed closed in the afternoons, on Sundays, and often on Saturdays and Mondays as well.)

Anyway, I try to keep an open mind and not simply exaggerate stereotypes, but had to lol (with chagrin) at the NYT’s latest article on Italian work culture, “Fiat Pushes Work Ethic at Italian Plant.” Read it and weep:

Even some workers here in Pomigliano, Fiat’s lowest-producing plant, complain of ingrained bad habits, citing peers who call in sick to earn money while working another job or skip work with a fake doctor’s note — especially when the local soccer team is playing.

Now, fresh from rescuing Chrysler in the United States, Sergio Marchionne of Fiat is pushing these workers to be more devoted to their jobs, mirroring a larger effort by the government to improve Italy’s competitiveness and reduce its debt through austerity measures.

But shifting a culture toward work and closing the divide with Italy’s northern neighbors won’t be easy. Embedded for generations here — and on other parts of Europe’s often-sweltering southern rim — is a lifestyle that values flexibility for workers.

To some, Fiat is drawing the curtain on a humane working life.

“He wants to impose American-style standards,” Nello Niglio, a factory worker, said of Mr. Marchionne’s requirements to work longer hours and cut back on absences. “But too much work is going to kill our workers.”

Oh No, American-style standards! Pomigliano is near Naples, in the southern half of Italy, where poverty levels, unemployment and mafia strength are much higher than northern Italy. When I jokingly asked (northern) Italians why they don’t simply secede and leave their poorer southern cousins behind, they replied seriously that the separatist party Lega Nord was effectively trying to do just that.

And in case you think Fiat is trying to make too many changes at once, they do acknowledge the importance of Italy’s national past-time:

Just last month, Fiat erected large television screens inside the factory when Italy played in the World Cup to encourage employees to come to work, said Mr. Nacco, the longtime worker there. Still, some people did not show up. “And Fiat was paying us to watch the game,” he said.

The productivity of GM workers is starting to look pretty good right about now.

WWOOF Italy: Will Work For Food

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Barbialla Nuova farm

Have you ever been curious about what it’d be like to live on a farm? Want to travel to new places? Learn about healthy, sustainable agriculture? Interested in communing with nature and taking a break from the hectic pace of urban life? Does the idea of manual labor in exchange for food and shelter sound appealing? Then you might want to check out the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF).

I first discovered WWOOF a few years ago when a friend was exploring it, and at the time, I brushed it off as the most SWPL thing I’d ever seen. (Hypothetical parental reaction, “Uh, you’re doing what? How many of your ancestors have worked in the fields so you don’t have to?”) I am still well-aware that the phenomenon of well-educated people going back to the farm is quite hipster, but I’ve come to think that this is exactly what we need. There are so many problems with our food system that begin at the farm level; shouldn’t we be encouraging bright graduates to become environmental stewards at the ground level?

Starting next week, we have about six weeks of summer break. I am traveling for some of this but can’t afford to travel for all of it, so I revisited the WWOOF site and decided to register. WWOOF registration for a year costs about 30 euros, and gets you health insurance coverage and access to the official WWOOF farm list for your country of registration, along with access to the WWOOF Independents list. I signed up for WWOOF Italia to minimize travel costs, and also because I hope to improve my Italian by immersing myself with an Italian family.
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