I just extended the deadline until 12th as I don't think I set it to a week sorry!

Should the manifesto at https://www.coops.tech/manifesto, or at least the opening statement, not be included in the constitution?

@graham2 I believe the plan is to keep the Manifesto (an outwards facing mission statement) and also create a Constitution (an internal facing 'bill of rights' for members). I think the plan was that the Constitution would replace the About page potentially.

We (GFR) also worked on this at WH and chatted to quite a few people about it. I think we've all done a good job of capturing the implicit ways the CoTech works and making them explicit - even if that has highlighted some obvious things we'd like to change.

I know this stuff can be a bit dry but I think it's important that everyone has a quick read to make sure it all makes sense.

I agree with @chriscroome - I'm pretty sure we've refused membership to non-UK co-ops before so I think this implicit "rule" should be captured. We can think about changing it when we have a simple system in place to do so.

I think it has been very clear that we have only been allowing UK based co-ops to join and if we are to ratify the existing custom and practice in the form of a document then I think that this aspect of our organisation should be included (irrespective of whether we agree with limiting CoTech to UK based co-ops).

References I have found from a quick search to CoTech being UK based:

Organisations that have not been allowed to join so far include:
* Protozoa - based in New Zealand (an Enspiral venture) - we'll notify them if we go international

https://www.loomio.org/d/gI1Ts8i5/membership-admission-decisions

And:

1) (Create) a UK-based coalition of tech-focused co-operatives that pool their resources to achieve their shared aims – making the world better and fairer with technology

https://www.loomio.org/d/93Kolm4U/co-op-sprint-retreat

And:

Allow DTC innovation co-op to join CoTech

The co-op is legally based in France, but he is based in London and one of the other members is soon to be based in Canada… Are we basing 'UK co-ops' as registered address, or the workers? He has offered to set up a UK address if we ask him to, but this seems long winded and not bureaucratic.

Chris Lowis: I think DTC have strong enough ties to the UK to be allowed to join

Chris Croome: We don't have a legal structure or (as far as I'm aware) a formal agreement that we are only open to UK based legal entities / co-operatives (though perhaps we should?)

https://www.loomio.org/p/9zZAoSBi/allow-dtc-innovation-co-op-to-join-cotech

There is more on the contact list archives and I'm sure I had a conversation about with with @alexwa in Slack, examples from the list:

• https://www.fountstudio.com/ — pointed at the North America based network as they are not UK based by me.
• http://agaric.coop/ — gently turned away by @finnlewis as "Agaric is a distributed co-operative, but mainly based in US / Nicaragua"

Are more examples need to justify including UK based in the document?

Why UK-only? That's not in the draft and I can't see any good reason to be national except language and currency issues. However agree that although imperfect the draft is where we've got to

Sorry if you thought I was defending the existing UK-only custom and practice — that wasn't my intention, I don't think that the UK is a political entity that we should feel a need to defend or support — I was just suggesting that since we have only been allowing UK based co-ops to join that the attempt to document our existing custom and practice should reflect this fact.

@sionwhellens @peteburden There has been a high-expectation of accessibility for CoTech - e.g. where events are located, subsidies for attending, etc.

These challenges would be much greater if this was a Europe or worldwide organisation. I suggest we wait until all the co-ops can afford to get to the Midlands before we start organising events across Europe and arranging for multilingual facilitators.

The About Us page currently states that CoTech "aims to create a better technology sector in the UK"

Would obviously be good to collaborate with people outside the UK (and EU) though.

I agree with Chris "I don't think that the UK is a political entity that we should feel a need to defend or support"
Without slowing anything down I think we need to revisit allowing worldwide OR UK based co-ops to join. I note that the discussions CHris referred were ambiguous in the subtle difference between:

" UK-based coalition of tech-focused co-operatives..." and

"coalition of UK-based tech-focussed cooperatives..."

I think I'd prefer the 1st one, allowing non-UK members

The reference to the New Zealand co-op being refused membership - seems a shame - it was the only one in a list of 4 refused on that basis, the rest weren't co-ops (Harry "Outlandish" Robbins · 4 months ago - https://www.loomio.org/d/gI1Ts8i5/membership-admission-decisions said "Protozoa - based in New Zealand (an Enspiral venture) - we'll notify them if we go international" )
I suppose I'm advocating for "going international" AS a UK-based network.

Clearly Webarchitects needs to have an internal discussion about this — I don't believe that @jonathan31 has understood the point I was trying to make…

This thread was opened with this text:

What is this thread?

This thread's purpose is to agree that the constitution outlined below is an accurate representation of the current situation.

What is this thread not?

This thread is not the thread to try and devise a perfect and all-encompassing constitution. That can and will be done gradually over the course of CoTech's life. Once we have agreed the starting constitution then we can start amending it as we see fit.

So:

If you have any critical concerns that the constitution below a.) is materially inaccurate or b.) absolutely requires something which is missing, please let us know.

So this isn't the place to have a debate about whether CoTech should or shouldn't be restricted to UK co-ops — it is a place to agree what the existing situation is.

I'm afraid we didn't have a discussion at the Webarchitects Committee Meeting about this before I used the Webarchitects vote (perhaps there wasn't time) and in hindsight I think I'd argue that we should have blocked this, rather than abstaining, for the simple reason that the text from Wortley Hall is "materially inaccurate" and it is the case that it "absolutely requires something which is missing" — the fact that in practice we have been and are a UK based network of Tech Co-ops, not an International network.

The point of the exercise was to agree what we currently have in place in order to provide a baseline from where we can start to move on, but as this thread shows we might have failed to achieve this since the vote was on a document that doesn't mention if we are or are not a UK based network.

@sionwhellens - I feel like the three examples I gave in the proposal show that there has been an implicit "uk based" rule applied already. I'm not saying I agree with it - just that it should be written down.

With the way things currently work, a disagreement means this won't pass and we'll have to have another go-around to ratify this constitution.

Hi Chris, have changed my vote to abstain so as not to effectively block! I think what has happened in practice re non-UK enquiries has been based on assumptions rather than anything that's ever been agreed. It may well be that we decide to say something more explicit, such as confirming that English is the working language of the network; or that other membership requirements (e.g. physical attendance at an annual retreat in the UK) put distant coops off wanting to join, but as you say, this is about confirming what we think is currently in place constitutionally.

@sionwhellens I think you are mistaken when you say "I think what has happened in practice re non-UK enquiries has been based on assumptions rather than anything that's ever been agreed.", in addition to the list of examples I posted two months ago I'd like to point out the discussion I had with @alexwa and others in #general on Slack on Tue Apr 04 2017:

--- Day changed Tue Apr 04 2017
09:38 < chrisc> email on contact list asking to join from http://www.protozoa.nz/ which is great, but i'm a little confused that their web site doesn't mention that they are a coop?
09:50 < sdgluck> They're in new Zealand. I guess we would have to decide if cotech is national or international. I sort of understood it was the former.
09:53 < chrisc> yeah we should have that discussion
09:53 < chrisc> it's been needed for a while and this makes it's concrete
09:53 < chrisc> *it
10:21 < amil> yeah I think we should decide too, as Abi found these people online a while back and they are definitely in our remit but are based in the states: https://www.fullsteamlabs.com/
10:29 < chrisc> you know about the US tech-coop email list and associated website?
10:30 < chrisc> https://www.techworker.coop/about
10:31 < amil> oh yeah! I think i remember you mentioned it a while back now but it does ring a bell
10:33  * chrisc if they have north america covered perhaps we should just cover the islands off the north west coast of the european mainland, dunno, this issues get compliacted fast due to Ireland, Scotland etc...
10:34 < alex> I mean I thought the obvious implicit default was "national"
10:34 < chrisc> which nation though?
10:34 < chrisc> but yeah
10:34 < chrisc> i agree
10:35 < alex> The United Kingdom
10:35 < chrisc> some people have political problems with the United Kingdom, especially in Scotland and Ireland...
10:37 < alex> We can't anticipate all future constitutional arrangements Chris! It'll do for a basic rule of thumb.
10:38 < chrisc> tell that to Irish and Scottish nationalists :-p
14:54 < chrisc> perhaps we limit the co-ops to uk ones but allow supporters and supporting co-ops from anywhere? dunno, I guess we need a discussion thread on this, so I'll see if I can get Discourse setup in the next few days
14:57 < alex> Much as I am an internationalist I just think this muddies the water quite a bit, people are fine to cheer us on and know about CoTech but to have any more formal arrangements seems odd
15:24 < chrislowis> I'd agree with that too - we already have a tendency to defer decisions until we meet face to face, and that would become almost impossible with a global membership.
15:24 < chrislowis> But I'd be delighted to have Discourse open to anyone who is interested or feels like they can contribute.
16:22  * chrisc perhaps we should formulate it as "co-ops incorporated under English or Scottish law" or smt, dunno, have had this discussion a few times before in other groups...  

Thanks @sionwhellens that's great - I'd 100% support us having a proposal following this ratification to add some clarity around this (and other) issues! It's really confusing at the moment for sure :)

Thanks for making the proposal @harryrobbins

I'm not sure I'm clear on what the difference is between points 2 ("Must be primarily owned by its workers") and 3 ("Must be controlled by its workers"). Could you clarify?

I think one of your reasons for disagreeing with the decision to allow Digital Life Collective (that I also agree with but struggle to find the words) to join is that they don't employ anyone. Could we make that more explicit? Perhaps in the definition of "worker".

I think your point 5 requires some thought - it's quite open to interpretation as written and I'm not sure that helps (although I agree with the sentiment).

I also wonder about creating a new membership type "associate" or something that would allow us to publically recognise that we support and co-operate with collectives like DLC without, perhaps, requiring the same commitment from them or giving them the same voting rights?

Ownership and control are two different things. Both should be included explicitly.

Rather than "must be controlled by its workers" I would suggest "must be democratically controlled by its workers".

Rather than "Must sell tech/digital service" I would suggest "must provide tech/digital products/services.

And I guess what's missing there (it might already be somewhere else) there needs to be something along the lines of "must support the vision/mission/purpose/manifesto/raison d'être* of CoTech" (*delete as appropriate).

Good points @chrislowis and @graham2 - I've updated the text in the proposal to make clear it's a straw man and is being refined in the discussion.

@graham2 I don't think I agree with your second point (Must sell -> Must change) - to me this is about co-ops where the economic activity is about workers telling tech services. A co-op with no tech workers could provide a tech service, and that doesn't feel in keeping with CoTech

@chrislowis agree several of the points are too ambiguous - could you suggest clarified versions?

My use of the word 'provide' rather than 'sell' is an attempt to be a little broader in language. You could have a tech worker co-op that contracts out it's sales work, so it wouldn't technicvally sell stuff itself, but it would still provide it. Anyway, the important change is the use of 'products/services' instread of 'service'.

I wonder if it might be easier to collaborate on the text for this somewhere else and then put something that we agree on out as a proposal?

Looking good but I would suggest we don’t need to ennumerate the varieties of coop it must be, since majority/primary ownership and control by workers is there. Also, a secondary coop (coop of coops) should not be controlled by its workers, but by nominees of its corporate members? Definition of workers to me should be those whose labour creates most of the value in the coop’s products and services, i.e. a political rather than a legalistic definition. This is quite important because for instance Coops UK still assumes that a consortium is not a worker coop unless the members specially identify as such and ask to be in the worker coop category of members (giving them the right e.g. to elect people to the Worker Coop Council). European (CECOP) definition of a worker coop is even more narrow, they don’t yet recognise anything except employee membership for worker coops, although they realise they need to work fast on new typologies of e.g. freelancer coops, people working for platforms like Uber. This isn’t mere pedantry, because it follows the lines of the EU laws and national frameworks which they try to influence.

Following the decision to not allow the Digital Life Collective into membership, we need to make it explicit that worker ownership and control menas ownership and control by paid workers. Volunteer workers don't count.