Association of Swiss Consumers' Associations

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Association of Swiss Consumers' Associations VSK
logo
founding 1890, dissolved in 1970

place Suburb 1890: Basel , Switzerland
Members Maximum stock: 572 cooperatives with 3320 points of sale

The Association of Swiss Consumers (VSK; French Union suisse des coopérative de consommation (USC) ; Italian Unione Svizzera delle Cooperative di Consumo (USC) ) was the cooperative umbrella organization of the Swiss consumer associations .

It was founded in 1890, transformed into an umbrella organization in 1893 and an umbrella cooperative in 1941. The VSK represented 572 consumer associations (1950) with 3320 sales outlets (1960). With the first round of merger, the VSK was merged into the Coop (Switzerland) in 1970 .

prehistory

The high food prices in the 1840s led to the formation of fruit clubs whose main task was to procure cheap bread, which was sold to members in exchange for tokens and cards. They bypassed the middleman to gain a benefit for consumers. They were stock corporations like the later consumer associations, but were only formed temporarily during times of need (grain inflation, famine). Following the example of the Schwanden share bakery from 1839, self-help organizations for the provision of bread spread in the cantons of Glarus, St. Gallen, Schwyz, Bern, Vaud and Geneva.

As the successor to the Basler Fruchtverein founded in 1846 , which was dissolved again in 1847, the General Workers' Society in Basel established a consumer association in 1847 , which existed until 1859. In 1851 there were consumer associations in the larger cities and in the canton of Zurich: the Utzenstorf-Bätterkinden non-profit association had 100 members. The first factory consumer association was established in the Rieter factory in Niedertöss . The Société de consommation Fontainemelon , founded as a boulangerie par actions , belonged to the VSK until it was taken over by Coop Neuchâtel in 1976 .

The Konsumverein Zürich was the first association to be called “Konsumverein” in 1851, making it the oldest successful consumer society in Switzerland and on the European continent. The great successes of the Zurich Consumers' Association did not remain without influence on the environment. From October 1852 consumer associations were formed in Rüschlikon , Affoltern am Albis , Altstetten , Brüttisellen , Rorbas , Schwamendingen and Wollishofen , and shortly afterwards in Horgen and Thalwil . In the course of 1853, over 30 consumer associations were formed in the canton of Zurich. A first conference of 34 consumer associations in Zurich to found a loose association was unsuccessful.

The factory workers association Schwanden designed in 1864 its statutes in accordance with the principles of the 1844 founded company of the pioneers of Rochdale , inter alia, the goods purity (genuine goods), Cash, distribution of surpluses due to past purchases (refunds), limited return on capital, creation of reserves from the Surplus (savings cooperative), promotion of further training and democratic administration (one man, one vote) included. The president of the Schwanden factory workers' association, the textile manufacturer Jean Jenny-Riffel, had found out about the consumer associations while on business in England. The English-language expressions have been incorporated into the Schwanden statutes.

At the conference of the consumer associations of Zurich, Basel, Bern, Grenchen, Biel and Olten in 1869, they could not agree to found an association of Swiss consumer associations.

With the first Swiss Code of Obligations of 1881, the legal form of the cooperative was introduced, which was specially tailored to the basic concerns of consumers and producers in the nutrition sector. As a result, around 80 percent of the almost 300 consumer associations had been converted into cooperatives by the turn of the century.

Association and cooperative history

Logo VSK 1904

After the failed merger attempts in 1853 and 1869, the Association of Swiss Consumers (VSK) was founded at the conference in Olten in January 1890 . The suggestion for the conference came from the Société coopérative suisse de consommation in Geneva and the invitation came from the Allgemeine Consumvereins (ACV) Basel. The latter was designated as a suburb. Of the 27 represented consumer associations, five declare their immediate membership. By the end of the year the association had 43 members, including the Zurich Food Association, founded in 1878 .

The VSK was an economic policy association of local and regional consumer associations and consumer cooperatives. The activities of brokering goods and trading on their own account led to the conversion of VSK into an umbrella cooperative just three years later, which became a cooperative association in 1941 and Coop (Switzerland) in 1970. In the following years, more and more consumer associations joined the VSK. In 1936 505 of the 661 consumer associations in Switzerland were already members of the VSK, 50 were with other associations and 106 remained independent for the time being, such as the Zurich KVZ consumer association, which was a closed stock corporation from 1878. The KVZ was taken over by Coop Switzerland in 1995.

In 1892 the VSK created a central office for the brokerage of goods and hired a part-time administrator. The association was converted into a cooperative in 1893. The VSK took part in the Swiss national exhibition in Geneva in 1896 and in the same year elected Hans Müller as the association's first secretary.

From 1897 the «Correspondence sheet of the Association of Swiss Consumers» appeared regularly as a bulletin for the cooperatives. It was replaced in 1901 by the “Swiss Consumer Association” and appeared until 1967. In 1897, the VSK joined the international association of cooperatives .

Private trade felt threatened by the strong growth of the cooperative consumer associations, which not only bypassed the intermediate trade but also set up their own production facilities. He responded with boycotts and advocacy for higher taxation of the cooperatives in order to curb the growth of consumer and agricultural cooperatives.

In March 1898, at the invitation of the VSK and the VOLG, around 400 delegates from business cooperatives gathered in Zurich and decided to establish a Swiss cooperative federation as a defense measure , which was supposed to deepen the economic exchange between the consumer and agricultural cooperatives in Switzerland. So far, the VSK has concentrated on the sale of colonial goods and not on the brokerage of food produced in Switzerland.

Logo VSK 1908

From 1902 the “Genossenschaftliche Volksblatt” (today's “Coopzeitung”) was published, followed in 1904 by the French edition of “Coopération” and in 1906 by the Italian “Cooperazione”. Purchase of the property at Thiersteinerallee 14.

In 1902 the VSK headquarters in Basel was bought and a number of production and ancillary operations were opened by 1912: 1905 chemical laboratory for analyzing food, 1907 warehouse in Pratteln with coffee roasting, corn and spice mill. Founding of the Swiss Consumption Administrators Association, 1909 Swiss Consumers Insurance Company VASK (today Coop Personalversicherung CPV), 1910 own print shop, 1912 construction of a shoe factory and formation of a VSK bank department. Acquisition of the Stadtmühle Zürich , the largest mill in Switzerland, by the newly founded mill cooperative Swiss consumer associations MSK.

In 1914, the year of the war, the first collective labor agreement was signed between the VSK and the Association of Trade and Transport Workers . Numerous mergers took place from 1915 to 1921.

In 1916 the milk buying cooperative Swiss consumer associations MESK was founded and eight farms were bought by 1918 so that they could produce their own food. The VSK was thus involved in the nutrition sector across all four stages of the value chain: production, processing, trading and sales to consumers. The Schweizerische Volksfürsorge, a mutual insurance company with trade union representatives, was founded in 1917 (1942: Coop life insurance cooperative).

In 1918, the year of the national strike, in which protests were made against the war-related food shortage due to the low level of self-sufficiency , the VSK took the initiative in 1918 to found the Swiss Vegetable Growing Cooperative SGG in Basel in order to grow vegetables on previously fallow land. It played a central role in establishing food security during and after the First World War in Switzerland.

From 1919 to 1921 the VSK had the Freidorf settlement cooperative built in Muttenz , which it donated as a model project to a full cooperative. In 1922 the consumer cooperative women's association was brought into being (since 1969 the Coop women's association).

Today's Coop Education Center has its roots in the Cooperative Seminar Foundation of 1923. The Bank for Cooperatives and Trade Unions was founded in 1927 together with the Swiss Confederation of Trade Unions , and in 1928 it was renamed the Cooperative Central Bank. The branch ban of 1933 slowed the expansion of the consumer cooperatives.

In 1937 the theses of cooperative goods brokerage, written by Bernhard Jaeggi, were drawn up:

  • 1. Delivery to small and medium-sized clubs by neighboring large clubs based on delivery agreements to save unnecessary warehouses and transport costs.
  • 2. Merger of associations, provided that the prerequisites for this are in place.
  • 3. Restriction of the range with preference for the CO-OP brand.
  • 4. As possible standardization of the range, the prices and the reimbursement rates of the clubs that are active in an economically or geographically unified area.
  • 5. Active pricing policy, even if a reduction in reimbursements should be necessary for its implementation.

Due to the revised Swiss cooperative law of 1937, the VSK changed from a cooperative to a cooperative association.

The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 brought the war economy and numerous activities of the VSK within the scope of the elections plan, such as the VSK touring exhibition «Grow more or starve» in 1942/43. In 1942, the VSK founded the Coop sponsorship to support the mountain population. The VSK's first self-service shop was opened in 1948 at Stauffacherstrasse 20 by the Zurich Food Association (LVZ). The Coop logo was introduced in 1960.

From 1965 a fundamental structural change took place. The association members received a joint chart of accounts, budgeting and a first nationwide sales plan were introduced, and television advertising began. The fall of second-hand price maintenance in 1967 encouraged this development. The VSK drew up a first merger plan in 1969 with the aim of merging the 400 cooperatives to 30-40 by 1975.

The 7-point program "The Coop Group plans and implements" comprised:

  • 1. Mergers
  • 2. A rational network of sales outlets
  • 3. Central processing of the assortments
  • 4. Concentration of warehouses
  • 5. Investment and financial planning
  • 6. Personnel and training policy
  • 7. Reorganization of the headquarters and redesign of the organizational structure.

In 1970 the VSK became Coop Switzerland.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Müller: The Swiss consumer cooperatives, their development and their results.
  2. ↑ Peter Moser: A service provider as a producer: the Association of Swiss Consumers and the Swiss Cooperative for Vegetable Growing as part of the nutrition project in the 20th century
  3. ↑ The history of the Coop Group - a company on the move, Coop March 2016