Il Posto delle Fragole – Smultronstället - A never ending story

Persons with a history of mental illness and/or disability and/or drug addiction and/or other forms of social exclusion must be allowed to participate fully in the organization of the work and management of a cooperative In our method for the construction of a working group, disadvantages, disabilities, lack of experience and difficulties in general are gradually overcome by exploiting the cultures and extraordinary skills inherent in every human being.

Hotel Tritone can be considered the Le Mat’s Hotel school. The teachers are the workers.

The secret of the success of a hotel lies in effective application of the workers owned cooperative model, whose strength, indeed, stems from the full participation of all its members. Yet how can the full participation of all the worker members be obtained?

Here, then, are the five main rules which are always applied by the cooperative:
1) by limiting the size of our hotels we promote the active participation of everyone and support a broad entrepreneurial project but, on the other hand, they aren’t too small because they have to guarantee a well paid and continuously work in order to facilitate personal life projects of all the workers ;
2) work and training must go hand in hand, and both vocational and managerial training must be continuous and personalized;
3) quality must be a keyword: quality in terms of the product/service offered, and quality in the organization of the work done and its environment. To produce quality, people must experience it themselves and this quality must also be felt and materialized in the relationships between our enterprises;
4) the entrepreneurial culture must be encouraged as the prerequisite for the attainment of personal independence, and making the most of each person's efforts and initiatives, since it is indispensable for the establishment of a collective enterprise such as a workers owned cooperative, whose workers are also its members;
5) cultural transformation is required to ensure that the fight against discrimination and social exclusion is waged as a practical feature of a person's daily life.
All this is not at all easy although it is guarantees you to feel alive and to feel well – as the cooperative members say.

Il Posto delle Fragole is a small cooperative – 15 paid members managing 1 restaurant, a bar and Hotel Tritone – three small and autonomous staffs discussing, arguing and deciding.
One of the most important questions is the passing on of information about such matters as how the entire production process works, the budget objectives and the ways and means envisaged for their attainment, the results, where there is wastage and inefficiency, what the competition is doing and what can be done to improve performance. Inform and then involve. Involve those concerned in all decisions.

Much time should be devoted to team meetings directed to the reaching of clearly defined objectives. These meetings are to be held during working hours and once a week, at least at the start. They must be open to everyone. Once a month or every two months there should be a meeting at which everyone must be present so that they can be told about all that is going on and express their opinions and suggestions.

At the start of the path (of entrepreneurial training and collective management) many persons will not know what to say, some will think they are wasting their time and there will be only one-way communication (from those who know to all the others).
If, however, the purposes of the meetings are clear to everyone and above all concrete, participation is assured.

Here are three examples of what could be discussed at a meeting:

- the arrival of a group requiring a special form of invoicing (overnight stays with a voucher from a travel agency, extras for some guests to be charged to a company);
- planning of the summer holidays;
- the application of a new law.

Some more complicated issues may also be included:

- what can we do to increase the turnover?
- how can we improve the cleaning of the bedrooms?

It is advisable to leave a diary open with all the subjects to be dealt with at the next meeting so that people have time to prepare for it, including those who do not usually express an opinion. Nobody likes having to give an answer concerning subjects that come as a surprise.
People will gradually start to speak and put forward proposals. They will volunteer for tasks or be made responsible for a project, etc.

In order to learn more a bout all this you can contact:
Renate Goergen renate@lemat.coop
Or directly Hotel Tritone – Teresa Bandelli
htritone@libero.it