The possibility of cooperatives: a vital contributor in creating meaningful work for people with disabilities

Abstract

This article examines the rich lived experience of members of a 20-year-old workers’ cooperative in Brisbane, Australia – primarily made up of members who have intellectual disabilities – and reveals the need for significant social support to ensure people can access meaningful work. Drawing on the findings of our case-study research conducted with the Nundah Community Enterprise Cooperative, we argue that cooperatives can be a vital contributor in creating meaningful work for people with disabilities. Importantly, our case study strengthens the case that meaningful employment can be created and supported by such a holistic cooperative model, which also includes a role for meso-level community organisations. Overall, the case study is really the story of what cooperative solidarity and mutuality can achieve as one way of overcoming the social distress or social injury of not having meaningful work.

Keywords:

• Disability
• meaningful work
• cooperatives
• meso-level community organisation

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Morrie O’Connor, Richard Warner and the members of the NCEC for their support and engagement with this study, and to thank the 2016 UQ Bachelor of Social Science Capstone students for their interest and active involvement in this project: Stevie Ackerman, Eliza Bennett, Sophie Collins, Jayde Gudmundsson and Isabelle Oude-Egberink.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For the purposes of this journal we have adopted the UK definition and use the language of learning disabilities to refer to intellectual disabilities. In Australia, a distinction is made between intellectual disabilities (which includes cognitive impairments) and learning disabilities (also called Specific Learning Disabilities, which refers to neurologically based processing difficulties resulting in challenges in reading, spelling, writing and mathematicss – for example, dyslexia). See https://dsf.net.au/what-are-learning-disabilities/