Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: work-or-pay system - legalities? general advice?

[David L. Mandel (dlmandel]

I fully identify with the frustration at the phenomenon of grossly unequal 
participation in the necessary work of the community. But the problem with "pay 
or play" is that it can reinforce the inequality. Say I'm very busy with what I 
consider the very important responsibilities of my work, family, other 
activities, whatever. But I'm lucky enough to have a well-paying job and rather 
low expenses, so I can easily choose to pay more and work less in the 
community. You, on the other hand, do vital work that doesn't pay much and are 
struggling to put two kids through college. You don't have that choice, so you 
get stuck with some of my share of the community work too. How fair is that? 
How likely to foster good community feelings?
David Mandel

--- On Fri, 4/15/11, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com> wrote:

From: Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com>
Subject: Re: [C-L]_ work-or-pay system - legalities? general advice?
To: "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Date: Friday, April 15, 2011, 7:45 AM


I removed the sender's name because it isn't relevant. Many people have posted 
the same thoughts often. I'm not questioning this person so much as the logic 
behind this reasoning.

> Some people may have family or job challenges that make it difficult for them 
> to do community chores for a while, or they may have or may develop health 
> problems or disabilities of various sorts which may make it difficult for 
> them to do chores, but may be living on fixed incomes. For those people such 
> a system could be a significant burden or embarrassment.

Note that the operative word here is actually not the list of descriptors but 
"may" which appears 5 times, as if no system of paying for work not done could 
take all these conditions into account. Why is it always assumed that there are 
no jobs for people on fixed incomes or with disabilities or families?

What about our day jobs? Do our bosses have all these mays? The same needs 
exist in our communities. If one person is working, someone else is doing their 
work. Or everyone is doing without.

>  I think there needs to be other more neighborly and humane  ways to deal with
> getting community chores done than privileging those with the most energy, 
> time or money or the least family or job problems or the least disabilities.

And a pay or play system can't be neighborly or humane? How neighborly or 
humane is it for some to work very hard and others to do nothing?

> This makes it less a question of blaming or shaming anyone and more a 
> question of figuring out
> how best to get things accomplished.

And why is a play or pay system even associated with blaming or shaming? What 
leap got us there?

If you don't go to work, you just don't get paid. I like the system Sharingwood 
has — everyone pays for the CH cleaning and then those who do the work are 
reimbursed.

The rush to accuse those who want a fair system of being inhuman and accusatory 
baffles me. I thought when I moved into cohousing that it was about creating 
better ways of living in community than the one we lived in before.

At Takoma Village, we are on about our 6th iteration of the counseling strategy 
— each new set of people thinks that all we have to do is be sympathetic and 
match people to work — find their perfect jobs. Help them negotiate. "They just 
don't know how to figure out what needs to be done." The current group contains 
some very competent people and they are doing a good job of conceptualizing, 
but they haven't gotten to the talk to people stage yet. We'll see what happens 
then.

In the meantime, I've taken the position of doing what I want done and what I 
can do well, usually better than anyone else. I hope others will do the same. 
We all have skills and abilities to share. 

Our disabled are among our more active residents. Fixed income has no 
relationship to community work ability or time available. People with health 
problems find many things to do except when the illness is acute — and we have 
serious chronic illnesses in our community. A person with 4th stage breast 
cancer still did her chores and served on the board when she was up and walking 
around, even when participating in clinical trials. Job challenges are common 
to everyone at one time or another — the most baffling excuse, however, is I 
can't do anything because I don't have a job.

I think people with new babies do take advantage by taking a year or two off. 
What I do when someone asks me to care for their infant is housework. It is 
easy to do a task that can be interrupted and during which you can talk to the 
baby. Babies love it when people fold laundry — all that stuff flying around. 
It's like kites. They love being in the CH where so many people walk by and 
talk to them.

When people come home, they want to relax and veg out. Everyone does. Perhaps 
the issue is not how we spread the work, but how do we spread the relaxation. 
Put a committee in charge of that.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org




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