Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Paying members of group for work

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

At Sharingwood we have a childcare cooperative system which works well 
for us.  Everyone gets $100 in "play money" to start. Childcare goes at 
a standard rate per hour.  When you start running out of money its time 
to do childcare, when you start accumulating too much money its time to 
go out and leave the kids.

This system has a couple of advantages which can be generalized: 1. It 
makes acounting easy.  2. It lets you know your status of contributing 
within the system, if you are low in  "money"  you need to contribute 
to the system, If you are ahead in money you are in good standing.  We 
have talked about expanding this system into other labors but the vast 
majority want our community labors to be done as free and voluntary 
contributions to the community, not as cooerced, forced labor 
requirements. We made an agreement within our membership that as long 
as all the  "important" stuff got done we would keep our labor system 
voluntary.  After two years, its still working.
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From:  <netmail!BARANSKI [at] VEAMF1.NL.NUWC.NAVY.MIL>
To: Rob Sandelin
Subject: RE: Paying members of group for work
Date: Tuesday, February 15, 1994 9:17AM

  Our group is in the process of revisiting the issue of whether and/or when we
  can pay members of the group to do work for the group.  I'd appreciate ideas,
  feedback, experiences, from all of you out there.

One solution is to let everything be market driven.  By this, I mean, have an
internal economy, paying people 'credits' for tasks.

1:  List all the tasks that need to be accomplished

2:  Allow people to bid on the tasks in credits
    (how many credits they will recieve for doing a particular task)
    Lowest bid takes responsibility for the task.
    If a task is not accomplished satisfactarily then no credit is given.

3:  Total up the expected credits paid out, and
    divide them fairly amoung the community;
    Each member is expected to 'pay' their share of credits into the community
    bank to pay individuals for specific tasks.

4:  Allow members to buy credits from each other in real dollars to get the
    credits to fullfill their obligations.  There is no fixed credit <-> dollar
    exchange rate.

5:  Allow members to bid for a task, and then pay an outside person in real
    dollars to actually do the task.  This way if someone wants to do the task
    internally, great, otherwise, someone will have to take on the
    responsibility of hiring, and making sure the outside person does the job
    correctly.  In effect, sub-contracting the task out.  For their time and
    money the responsible member recieves the amount of credits they bid for
    the task.


Comments?