Limitations of Business Unionism and Co-Op Conservatism: A Case Study of Denver’s Taxi Driver Union-Cooperatives

This chapter examines the labor-empowerment potential of emerging taxi driver cooperative-union partnerships. Cooperative-union partnerships can adopt differing stances toward the virtue of waging broad-based, class-conscious conflict against economic elites to win economic change, as opposed to the virtue of small-scale and practical steps to improve the immediate conditions of individual “job-conscious” workers. This case study utilizes a “class consciousness” versus “job consciousness” framework to examine a recent immigrant taxi driver union-cooperative partnership. Case study of taxi driver organizing in Denver (CO), utilizing narrative inquiry, and survey and interviews with 69 drivers. The US tradition of accommodational job consciousness continues to influence union and cooperative leaders. Among Denver’s taxi cooperatives, an emphasis on accommodational job consciousness, bereft of class perspectives, has undermined a narrative promoting worker solidarity or encouraging workers to engage in social justice campaigns for immigrant workers. The consequence has been to weaken the transformational potential of taxi driver activism. Findings based on a single case study need to be confirmed through additional research. Cooperative-union partnerships that adopt a class-conscious political approach, including leadership development opportunities, a “labor empowerment curriculum, and partnerships with broader social movements, are a promising alternative to narrowly tailored “job conscious” organizing strategies. Immigrants are increasingly forming worker cooperatives, and the recent Denver taxi driver union-cooperative is one of the largest taxi cooperatives in the country. Current research on the labor empowerment consequences of these emerging immigrant cooperatives is sparse.