The Origins and Early Years of the Barossa Community Store, 1944-65

The Barossa Community Store in Nuriootpa is Australia’s largest and most successful surviving Rochdale co-operative store. It is located in the Barossa Valley, the centre of one of Australia’s major wine growing regions. This paper explores the origins of the store against the background of the German heritage of the Valley and the community movement that developed in the town and attracted both national and international interest. The early years of the store, which arose from the result of the mutualisation of a successful non-co-operative retailer, saw tensions between leaders of the co-operative and the broader community over whether surpluses should be retained by the co-operative or ploughed back into the community. The co-operative saw need to raise capital to grow by seeking additional sources of capital beyond members’ shares. Management also had to face the challenge of changing retail practices, which gradually saw the shift to self-service and the opening of its first supermarket under the Co-operative brand in December 1965.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Competition in Retailing: Lessons from the History of Rochdale Consumer Co-operatives in Australia

Rochdale consumer co-operatives have played an integral role in the lives of many people in particular localities in Australia. The Rochdale movement developed in waves in the period prior to the end of World War II, but went into decline over the following decades. While the movement has collapsed in Australia, a number of Rochdale consumer co-operatives continue to thrive in rural areas of Australia, largely by drawing upon a reciprocal relationship with the local community. A further reason for the survival of these rural co-ops is that they have linked up with franchising. This arrangement – community co-operative ownership and franchising – provides another alternative in the quest to increase competition and reduce market concentration in retailing in Australia.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Competition in Retailing: Lessons from the History of Rochdale Consumer Co-operatives in Australia

Rochdale consumer co-operatives have played an integral role in the lives of many people in particular localities in Australia. The Rochdale movement developed in waves in the period prior to the end of World War II, but went into decline over the following decades. While the movement has collapsed in Australia, a number of Rochdale consumer co-operatives continue to thrive in rural areas of Australia, largely by drawing upon a reciprocal relationship with the local community. A further reason for the survival of these rural co-ops is that they have linked up with franchising. This arrangement – community co-operative ownership and franchising – provides another alternative in the quest to increase competition and reduce market concentration in retailing in Australia.The symposium is organised on behalf of AAHANZBS by the Business and Labour History Group, The University of Sydney, with the financial support of the University’s Faculty of Economics and Business

Visualising organisations over time and space: The Visual Atlas of Australian Co-operatives

There has been an upsurge of interest in co-operatives as an alternative business model since the Global Financial Crisis and the UN’s declaration of 2012 as the International Year of Co-operatives. While this upsurge of interest is welcome, there has been a long history of co-operatives in Australia since at least 1833. Unfortunately, the rich history of Australian co-operatives is poorly documented and overlooked in the major accounts of Australian history. The Visual Atlas of Australian Co-operatives History Project aims to explain the fluctuations in co-operatives over time and regional clusters through combining the skills of historians and business information researchers. The data is drawn from a wide range of sources including published histories, the Trove newspaper database, government sources and co-operative records. The Visual Atlas is based on Tableau software which allows researchers to chart the development of Australian co-operatives over time and space. This chapter besides outlining the theoretical explanations of co-operative development and the VAACHP, also highlights a preliminary result in terms of the upsurge of co-operatives in Western Australia following the First World War

Worker Voice

This book informs debates about worker participation in the workplace or worker voice by analysing comparative historical data relating to these ideas during the inter-war period in Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. The issue is topical because of the contemporary shift to a workplace focus in many countries without a corresponding development of infrastructure at the workplace level, and because of the growing ‘representation gap’ as union membership declines. Some commentators have called for the introduction of works councils to address these issues. Other scholars have gone back and examined the experiences with the non-union Employee Representation Plans (ERPs) in Canada and the US. This book will test these claims through examining and comparing the historical record of previous efforts of five countries during a rich period of experimentation between the Wars