**3.2 Expanding the role of cooperatives and unions in community development**

There are two ways in which the cooperative organizational form holds promise for dealing with the local-level community challenges in the twenty first century. First, cooperatives have been able, over time, to adjust the services they provide to deal with a changing set of issues that local communities face. This is especially true with respect to their expanded influence in supporting infrastructure development in low population density rural communities. Today, for example, Electric Cooperatives are playing a major role in efforts to expand broadband service into rural areas [39, 40]. The U. S. Department of Agriculture's Community Development Programs, through the Cooperative Extension Service, offers assistance to local communities for a variety of services [41], including those to assist in mental health [42]. The Dairy Farmers of America Cooperative recently announced the introduction of a new service to provide 24/7 access to mental health services to their members [43].

Second, since cooperatives are, by definition, self-governed by their members, they play a critical role in promoting the values and skills that build civil society. This, in turn, provides an anti-dote to the feelings of powerlessness that plague disconnected individuals in a mass society, thereby reducing the appeal of populist authoritarian demagogues. This function, which Tocqueville [23] saw in American small town voluntary associations in the 1830s was recognized in *the post-genocide Rwandan government's decision to make cooperative development a central part of its economic development programs* [44].

Expansion of cooperatives, with the support of enabling legislation from state and national governments, can provide substantial support to many struggling communities. One of the most important developments in this respect has been the work

of USDA Extension in supporting increased linkages between rural food producers and communities through the Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) program. This is especially helpful to small-scale fruit, vegetable, and meat producers, both in building sustainable collective linkages among themselves, markets, and consumers, as well as dealing with legislatures when decisions are made about licensing and other matters that affect their businesses [45, 46].

The cooperative organizational model also can be applied in ways that will expand the effectiveness of "upstream" interventions to promote health and mental health care in struggling communities, especially those with increasing rates of suicide, addiction, and preventable deaths from lack of early intervention. Researchers have found, for example, that important contributors to increasing health costs in rural communities is the lack of coordination between entities that deal with housing, access to healthy food and identification of vulnerable persons with symptoms indicating early stages of health or mental health problems. The increased interest in engaging local communities, especially in preventive public health programs has resulted in an upsurge of research on how best to understand local social networks and culture to implement programs that not only improve community health but also reduce costs to taxpayers [47–49].

Another collective organizational model that can be adapted to contribute to community sustainability in the twenty first century is the union. The conceptualization of the union during the post-World War II industrial boom years in the United States is articulated by John Kenneth Galbraith's [50], *American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power,* which was originally published in 1953 during the height of the post-World War II economic boom. His view was that the growth in size of mass production industries was matched by the growth in size of industrial unions, which, in turn, would bring overall benefits to workers, management and the public at large. This paradigm, however, has been seriously weakened by the increased mobility of capital and the internationalization of supply chains from the 1970s onward, and especially since the 1970s, by the increase in the application of robotics in industrial production [51]. This is reflected in the movement of significant portions of production overseas and the subsequent decline of union membership.

An alternative is to look at the German industrial organizational model in which unions and management play quite different roles than in the American case. In Germany union representatives sit on company boards and actively participate in day-to-day company policymaking. The impact of the 2007–2008 recession on workers in Germany versus the United States illustrates the practical outcome of the different organizational arrangements. When the recession hit mass production industries, like automobiles, in the United States, orders for new cars decreased and workers were laid off according to seniority. Alternatively, in Germany the boards, comprised of management and labor representatives, developed plans in which all workers would take a small cut in numbers of hours worked, with the government subsidizing the lost wages. This also reduced overall costs for unemployment benefits. The German industrial model, with the greater role for unions in day-to-day decision-making, is much more resilient than the American model in anticipating and adapting to external exigencies [52, 53]. It is important to emphasize that, as in the case of criminal justice reform, it is the *convergence of interests,* and the awareness of how working together can achieve their respective goals that provides an important incentive for both parties to support participation in the organization.
