AskProfWolff: PG&E Bankruptcy and Worker Co-ops

A patron asks: "Customer-owned vs. worker-owned co-op: with PG&E in bankruptcy, talk has turned to converting the utility into a customer-owned co-op, along the lines of a credit union. This begs the question, which organizations are best suited for customer ownership and which are best suited for worker ownership?"

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[pmacintyre]

Where I live in the province of Saskatchewan we have a government-owned utility called the Saskatchewan power Corporation that supplies electrical power to the entire province. Our electrical rate for Residential: $0.1565 per kWh.

[kevinbartlett]

I just wanna say the microwave noises in the background make this relatable.

[NathansHVAC]

Make sure the new public utility workers get big pay raises too.

[skynet]

In California, the municipal utilities like ladwp and smud had less issues than pge and sce. Privatization means less workers, less pay... That's how investors get profits. Ladwp makes money for the city, reducing taxes.

[billytheweasel]

Just texted someone in CA and asked about any effeort to make PG&E a public utility. Seattle City light is, for example.
Consumers have a say.

[trenabristol]

I am a PG&E customer who has been affected by the power shut offs. I tried to register on their website for updates. The power bill is in our landlords name. Because of that neither I nor my five roommates were able to register for this critical information. This exemplifies the organizational stupidity dominating the company. Having widespread availability of critical information would have been obvious to a worker-consumer coop because they are collectively living the situation. PG&Es problems were foreseen long ago. Revenues are regulated by the California public utilities commission. This means there is limited cash flow to address long term issues such infrastructure improvements. Because PG&E is a private company, getting infrastructure loans would have been very expensive. The state should have issued its own bonds for long term financing of improvements so desperately needed. If PG&E remains a private company this situation will continue. It is now politically unpopular to support his private company. PG&E will the bankruptcy to shed debts. Those with lawsuits will end up with cents on the dollar for their settlement. However we have yet to see any sort of five year plan made available to the public which shows what the company plans to do. I believe a consumer-worker owned company would be much more transparent

[mechafighter]

Was that a hotpocket being microwaved in the background?

[Diamat]

Two questions for Professor Richard Wolff
Dear Professor Wolff
First of all, I would like to warmly greet you, and the entire Democracy at Work team, for your work in promoting Marxism. I’d especially like to single out David Harvey about his lectures on Marx Capital.
My name is Michał Nowicki, although on the Internet I am known rather as Camarade Michael and I am the author of the Rebirth of Communism YT channel. I've been watching films with your participation for about a year now, and we've even translated some of the films to Polish. I also quite often refer to your lectures in my videos. Thanks to mine and my comrades’ publicity, you have slowly become a person well-known in Poland both among people with leftist views and among anti-communists.
Just like you, I am a Marxist, although we share different views as to Marx's famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. We Polish communists describe ourselves as continuators of the Bolshevik tradition and our model is rather Lenin and the October Revolution than Roosevelt and New Deal.
Our social status in the capitalist system is also different. I am a worker and have to admit that a scientific career for Marxists is simply impossible in an anti-communist country such as Poland.
I have two questions for you about my country - Poland.
The first question concerns Polish capitalism. Recently we celebrated in Poland the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining independence. We divide this 100-year period into 50 years of capitalism (1918-1939) (1989-2019) and 45 years of socialism, plus of course World War II.
Why is Polish capitalism so backward/retarded? We can observe the same atrocities/defects both before the war and after 1989. Mass unemployment, starving children, problems with access to housing and much more. With all my criticism towards capitalism, I must admit that it was in some ways an innovative system in the US or Western Europe. For example, in the welfare state era an average American worker could afford a decent life.
In capitalist Poland, a worker’s life is always miserable. In capitalist Poland there is no innovation, no ideas we’d call here literally a ‘Polish technical thought’. In capitalist Poland, Polish car factories were even being massively closed. Both before the war and after 1989, Polish capitalism is completely dependent on Western countries and our role is reduced to the one of assembly workers.
In short, the capitalist system is a curse for Poles, and I am all the more surprised by the fact that many Poles love this system so much. Me and my comrades, we believe that in the capitalist system Poland will always be a third category country, there will always be misery in us and I am not even able to understand how this system can be supported in Poland.
The second question will be much shorter. Why did many Westerners, including American Marxists, support counter-revolutionary forces in Poland, led by Lech Walesa, whose goal was to restore capitalism?
Thank you in advance for your answer, which we will definitely translate to Polish. I hope that one day you will visit our country, where we will organize a debate with some Polish equivalent of the anti-communist freak like Jordan Peterson.
Communist Greetings
Michał Nowicki

[mypal]

good. Every city should have its own power operation independent from these daffy brained monopolies who are too big to function.

[GarrettFruge]

This a little off-topic, but I would like Prof. Wolff to address the effects of competition on wages in worker cooperatives in a hypothetical rise in coop organization competing against capitalist firms.

For example, what if multi-billion dollar businesses like Walmart or Amazon started paying workers exponentially higher wages as a means of thwarting an interest in socialistic firms with more horizontal payment structures given the fact that the coops appear on the scene with fewer assets? How exactly could worker coops compete in the face of promises of significantly higher pay from companies who are more than capable of affording it, even at the cost of taking a bit of a hit in their bottom line?

I think the real-world effects of competition on wages in worker coops is an issue that's not being taken seriously by socialists who advocate competition against capitalist firms as a means of overturning capitalism. Perhaps I'm wrong, but nevertheless I firmly believe we need a serious conversation about this, rather than relying on theory alone.

[normalizedaudio]

I wonder how a Co-op would have dealt with ENRON.

[nthperson]

California lawmakers and regulators might consider requiring that electric utility lines be put underground wherever fire is a constant risk. The risk of damage from earthquakes would seem to be about the same. The cost differential of installation might be high but would the maintenance costs be much lower over time.

[DemocratizeTheMedia]

Am I wrong or does this seem like a reinterpretation of Mass Line?

[johnkesich]

Would enacting a Hippocratic oath - first priority, do no harm - for corporations address the problem of privatized profits with socialized costs, harms and risks? Didn't US corporations have to periodically satisfy a state entity that their existence was in the public interest, once upon a time?

[clarestucki]

What CA needs is definitely a worker/user co-op public utility. All residents of CA should be required to provide enough of their savings (capital) to build new distribution facilities for gas and electricity that would provide free utilities to all the Californians who cannot afford it. I hope they have that much savings, cause it's gonna cost a bundle.

[marcionphilologos]

OHOHOH, THIS FANTASY OF COOPERATIVE AND DEMOCRATIC UNITY IS GETTING ABSURD. YOU CAN BETTER LET RUN A COMPUTER THE PLACE THAN STUPID HUMANS.

[Atlassian.]

Sure, go ahead and sue them out of existence for fires that their necessary equipment may or may not have caused. Sue all of the power companies out of existence, see how that works out. PG&E might be gone, but the fires aren't going away. Now you have one less company to facilitate competition in that industry. You don't think a state-run supplier would cause fires with their equipment in that tinder box of an environment? You'll rage, but you know I'm right.