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Membership Policy Changes and Rationale

This article is an outline of the changes the Ad Hoc Member Labour Committee has made to the membership policy, along with a discussion of why these decisions were made. While this piece cannot hope to do justice to the deliberations and struggles we have had in arriving at these changes, we nevertheless hope to lay out the basic issues.

Making changes to Karma's member labour system and other member-related policies is meant to motivate members to take on and maintain working-member status, to make the member labour system more accountable, and to create more equity between working and non-working members. The changes are to be understood as an interrelated whole. Following are the individual changes along with our rationale and any important implementation notes.

A. Annual Clearing of Work Hour Deficit

If a member ends a fiscal year with a work hour deficit, he or she will be required to work or pay off that deficit during the subsequent fiscal year.

Rationale

Currently, many of our working members fall behind in their monthly work commitment. The reasons are varied, and range from not enough resources focused on helping members work or pay off these hours to the lack of any policy that makes it necessary to even do so. Some members accumulate a significant number of owed hours that are not resolved before the member leaves the co-op (when the owed hours are deducted from the member's initial $70 loan). This policy change will enable the co-op to actively reduce this liability while the individual is still a member. Clearing the amount on an annual basis would even (in some cases) net more hours or revenue for Karma.

More important, this change is part of an attempt to change "work culture" at Karma. We want to cultivate a new norm, where people take their monthly shift as seriously as they would any other work in their life: signing up for regular shifts, cancelling early and responsibly if need be, and proactively signing up for another shift to replace one that is missed - as opposed to carrying a "work debt."

This change also intervenes in the all-too-common process of people joining as working members, falling behind in work obligations, and then switching to non-working status. In this transition, owed hours are rarely worked off. Indeed, the majority of hours owed at Karma belong to non-working members who were formerly working members and who still carry a four- to eight-hour work deficit. This policy change asks all members to start thinking about their work commitment to the co-op as an annual total number of hours, or the cash equivalent of these hours

Rules

These rules have been interpreted by some as being "punitive," and the committee has struggled with this characterization. It is certainly a change from our previous way of working, in which people could carry owed hours until they left the co-op. But the problem that Karma currently struggles with is not that we have a lack of working members to do the work that is needed at the co-op - indeed, we have a surplus of available hours on paper. The problem is getting our working members to sign up and show up for 12 work shifts every year. We hope this change strikes a balance between allowing flexibility and fostering responsibility in terms of work commitments

B. Forgiving But Not Forgetting Owed Hours

Hours that members owe the co-op for missed work from before June 1, 2004, will be forgiven for the purposes of the new "annual clearing of work hour deficit" policy (see Section A). However, these hours will be recorded separately, and reconciled against the member loan in the event that a member leaves the co-op.

The committee could not come up with a system to retroactively resolve these owed hours that seemed either workable or fair. The precise dates and circumstances surrounding many of these hours is now gone from our records. Many members do not even recall that they are behind in their hours, especially those who started as working members but switched to non-working status because they fell behind in their work commitments (a very common trend). The idea of a Karma owed-hours collection "goon squad" - while funny at the end of a three-hour meeting - seemed unco-operative to say the least.

Thus, our decision is to forgive but not forget these hours. Every member will start June 1 with zero owed hours in our new system (people with a surplus of hours will, of course, keep this surplus). This is intended to create the sense of a "clean slate" and a new start for all our members. The hours that people owed under the old system are not gone, though. The committee felt that this would be unfair to members who have worked reliably and consistently at the co-op over the years.

Instead, these hours will be recorded separately on the back of people's membership cards, set apart from any hours owed under the new system. They will stay there until a member leaves the co-op, at which point the owed hours - in addition to any hours owed under the new system - will be deducted from the loan that is returned to people when they leave the co-op. Deducting the value of owed hours from the member loan has been the standard practice at Karma, and is nothing new.

Of course, members are encouraged to resolve owed hours. You can do it before the end of May, or at any time after. These are hours that are owed to our co-op, and it would certainly be nice to have them taken care of.

C. Granting two-hour Credit to New Members

All new members of the co-op will receive a two-hour member labour credit regardless of whether they join as a working or non-working member.

Rationale

A two-hour member labour credit provides working members - or non-working members who may decide to change their membership status - the opportunity to research member labour opportunities at the co-op and take on their member labour responsibility. This is intended to reduce the frequent practice of working members falling behind in member labour in the first month of membership. Members who join as non-working members will also be credited with two hours of member labour to be used in the event that they decide to switch to working-member status.

Signing up for member labour shifts is currently a do-it-yourself process. Following orientation, working members - who comprise 90 per cent of new signups - are left to fend for themselves, with only the contact info of work-team coordinators. The two-hour credit is a recognition of this, and will act as a complement to new orientation scripts and improved access to and understanding of the member labour system.

D. Reduction in Temporary Surcharge Threshold

The threshold for when a member begins to pay the non-working member surcharge will be reduced to four hours from six hours.

Rationale:

This will make it easier for a member who has fallen behind in their member labour to work or pay off their owed hours. It will also encourage members to work more regularly so that they do not reach the surcharge level. Karma may also generate more revenue from those members who are expected to work but do not.

This change will ensure that members are contacted sooner about owed hours, which will help them address their work debt and facilitate their transition to consistently active working members.

Process

The temporary surcharge slip will be added to a one-person membership card when four or more hours are owed, and to a two-person membership card when eight or more hours are owed. Member cards will now be reconciled on a monthly basis - not every two months, as is the current practice - to minimize the amount of hours a member can owe

E. Modifying the Current Credit System for Karma Board and Committee Work

All board and committee members will be credited with four hours of member labour per month of service.

Rationale

Currently, committee members in one-person households receive two hours of member labour credit while on a committee and an additional one and a half hours of member labour credit per month of service on a committee after they leave the committee or board. Committee members in two-person households receive four hours of member labour credit while on the committee and an additional one and a half hours of member labour credit per month of service on a committee after they leave the committee or board.

The new automatic credit of four hours per month is intended to reflect the minimal and predictable labour requirements and expectations for committee work (for instance, a two-hour meeting per month plus two hours of work outside of the meeting). All committee members, whether they are part of a one- or two-person household, will be treated equally and will receive credit for their service when they perform the service. This change will clearly present the minimum member labour expectations for a committee and enable the board to better evaluate the work of a committee and its individual members. Please note that specific committees and members of committees may have fewer or more hours credited to them if the committee and board deems this more appropriate for the work that is done.

Note to current Karma committee members: hours worked under the old credit system will be reconciled and credited to you at the end of May 2004

F. Implementation of $9 Work Shift Cash Equivalent

The work shift cash equivalent will be increased to $9 per hour of member labour from $7.50 per hour of member labour. In the past, the $7.50 value was assigned to a member labour hour by the co-op mostly for purposes of deducting this value off a member loan when a member left the co-op and owed the co-op outstanding work hours. Members could also pay off owed work hours using this amount, although this practice was rare for a number of reasons. Both of these uses for the work shift cash equivalent will continue.

Rationale

This makes it easier to pay off owed hours. Payment will now be made at the cash, and not at the office, which will encourage members to reconcile their owed hours in a timely fashion in either work or cash equivalent. The value will also be used as the basis of a new payment option for non-working members (see below). The increased work shift cash equivalent will also better reflect the value of member labour to the co-op when compared to replacing it with paid staff labour, and will also provide an equitable basis for comparison between working and non-working member contributions.

G. Increase in Non-Working Surcharge and Implementation of Flat Fee Option

The current surcharge will be raised to 10 per cent from 8 per cent, and a monthly flat fee option will be implemented. Non-working members will have two options: they can pay a surcharge of 10 per cent on their purchases or they can opt to pay a flat fee at the beginning of the month.

With the flat fee option, a one-person household will pay an $18 flat fee at the beginning of each month, based on the two-hour-per-month work shift cash equivalent. Two-person households will pay $36. Both will then be permitted to shop at the working-member rate for the remainder of that month. When the cashier receives payment, they will put a stamp on the member's card indicating that they can shop at the working-member rate for that month.

Rationale (Surcharge)

The surcharge applied to non-working members should be based on the principle of equity of contribution between working and non-working members of the co-op. We believe that raising the surcharge to 10 per cent from 8 per cent represents a more equitable surcharge rate for non-working members. Given the cost of an average monthly shop for non-working members (using 2002 figures), this change leads to an increase of $1.72 a month.

The methodology for determining an equitable surcharge was based on the following question: How much value would Karma realize, and therefore be able to save on staff wages, if the non-working membership made the same two-hour-per-month contribution that working members make? This question yields a range of possible equitable surcharges, and the final decision of 10 per cent is the outcome of much consultation.

We recognize that the decision to raise the surcharge, and by how much, is perhaps the single most controversial policy change. We hope that all Karma members can move forward together on this decision.

Rationale (Flat Fee)

The contributions of working members and non-working members will now be valued equally. Non-working members will be able to choose the option that economically benefits them the most, depending on the amount of money they spend at the co-op each month. For example, with the new surcharge, a non-working one-person household that spends $180 per month at Karma would pay $18 per month in surcharges. If that member knows he or she will spend more than $180 a month at Karma, it would be to their financial benefit to pay the monthly flat fee of $18.

The flat fee option emphasizes an equivalency between working and non-working contributions. One challenge with the surcharge is that it is hard to find equivalency between it and the fixed number of hours that a working member contributes - one fluctuates with the amount of money spent at the co-op, the other does not. We hope that the flat fee option highlights the principle of parity. It may even encourage some of our non-working members to shop more at Karma. Currently, non-working members shop, on average, less than working members.

Conclusion

Questions, or confused about how this affects you? Members can contact Sara Pulins, the member labour coordinator, via phone at 416-534-1240, e-mail at mlc@karmacoop.org, or in person at the store.

We encourage anyone with questions about these policy changes to contact Brendan Heath, chairperson of the Member Labour Committee, via labourcommittee@karmacoop.org. Written messages may also be left in the Karma Board box for Lachlan Story (the board liaison to the Member Labour Committee).

The Ad Hoc Member Labour Committee