ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a conventional business and a worker co-operative in the organic food industry. Employees at the conventional whole food organization, HealthBite, often described their pay checks as motivation for their jobs. A few were motivated by attraction to the organics movement and took their jobs to pursue this ideological commitment. HealthBite workers mentioned toleration strategies more frequently than members of Organix Co-op. Members of Organix Co-op frequently preferred formal grievance resolution to informal measures. Members of Organix worker co-operative were more likely to mention informal dispute resolution among their strategies than their counterparts at HealthBite. Interestingly, in organic food industry, Organix members were more likely than HealthBite workers to say they would quit their jobs to resolve a workplace problem. The employees at HealthBite relied nearly exclusively on informal routes to resolve problems, with no one mentioning the formal dispute mechanisms that were available at the company.
