Hi, at Suma we have a member council. This is a group of members, elected by and from our members, that has a remit of scrutinising our Board, but also wider ensuring members wishes are represented, have a voice, and improving engagement. We’ve been running it for about 4/5 years now, and it has added lots to Suma in what it does, and helped us set up a Board more formally than it was, as it took some of that member workload of what we used to call our management committee.
We are now at a point where we’re struggling a bit with it, and feel we need to change its purpose or remit, or at least it needs reinforcing. It’d be interesting to know if people are aware of other organisations using member councils, or wider worker/employee councils. Perhaps we could set up a wider call to discuss best practice, how they work.
They are effectively quite like what union coops would say the role of the union is in a union coop, whilst we do have and recognise our union, we do feel that a body that represent all members fits better for us, but if there are groups who’ve formalised that union position in their worker coop then be interested to see how that works as well.
If you do know of any please post here, I’m happy to look up links and get in touch with people, or if interested in a discussion let me know.