Cooperatives

When Workers Become Owners: Taking Co-Op Movement To Next Level

December 23, 2015 Brian Van Slyke, www.truth-out.org Create! Cooperatives, Workers Rights and Jobs

By Brian Van Slyke for Truthout - There's a revolution taking place in the US workforce - but you may not have heard about it. Around the country, workers are starting businesses that they democratically control and that financially benefit them. These businesses, called worker cooperatives, are owned and governed by the employees. Every worker is a member of the co-op, which gives them one share and one vote in the company's operations. Worker cooperatives come in all shapes and sizes. Equal Exchange, a distributor of fair trade chocolate and coffee, has over 100 worker-owners, with a board of directors and co-executive directors, all ultimately accountable to the employees.

Co-Ops Build Stronger Communities, New Economy

December 7, 2015 TESA Collective, www.toolboxfored.org Create! Cooperatives, Economics

By TESA Collective for TESA - Cooperatives are businesses and organizations democratically owned and managed by the people they serve. They come in many shapes and sizes: from a handful of people to thousands upon thousands of members. Some are owned and run by workers, others are owned and governed by consumers, still others are for producers (like farmers and artists). But no matter what, cooperatives always have the same foundation: one member, one share, one vote. Recently, we at The Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA) (a worker co-op) launched a new poster series to highlight and celebrate the power of the cooperative movement.

Solidarity Economy – From Quebec To Chicago To Mexico

November 14, 2015 Derek Royden, www.occupy.com Create! Cooperatives, Finance and the Economy

By Derek Royden for Occupy - Defining the term “solidarity economy” can be difficult: it has become a kind of catch-all to describe everything from worker-owned cooperatives to open source software to complementary currencies. Surprisingly, the ideas promoted in the solidarity economy aren't very well known in the English-speaking world, though they’ve been gaining a foothold in academia and civil society groups since the turn of the century. Quebec, Canada’s French language-majority province, is where the concept began to get traction in the late 1980s, mostly influenced by European experience (the word "solidarity" is, after all, French).

The Legacy And Current Growth Of Black Cooperatives

November 9, 2015 Beverly Bell and Natalie Miller, www.otherworldsarepossible.org Educate! Black Power, Cooperatives

By Beverly Bell and Natalie Miller for Other Worlds - For National Co-op Month, we present a three-part series from an interview with Jessica Gordon Nembhard. Read the first piece, Black Cooperative Economics During Enslavement, here and the second piece, on how the cooperatives were critical partners to struggles throughout African-American history, here. When I first became interested in cooperative economics, everybody, Black and white, told me that Black people just don’t engage in cooperative economics. But that didn’t seem right to me. So I started studying it, talking to people about it, and participating in the US co-op movement.

Newsletter: Economy Of The Future-Economic Democracy

September 5, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter Commmons, Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, Labor Day, Land trusts, New Economy, Participatory budgeting, Public Banking, Worker Cooperative

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance - This Labor Day weekend rather than looking at the history and current struggles of workers, we look to the future and imagine what will work be like in 2025 or 2050. What will the overall economy look like? What is our vision for an economy that works for the people? There are some major trends that indicate we are in the midst of a radical transformation of what work means and how people will have income. There will never be enough jobs in the future so we need a new way to ensure people have money on which to live and to keep the economy going. It is time to figure out how to provide people with a basic income where everyone receives a single basic income to provide for a comfortable living whether they work or not. To create wealth among workers, worker ownership through worker cooperatives or worker self-directed enterprises need to be encouraged. It takes roots to weather a storm, and the storm is here.

Cincinnati’s Experiment With An Economy That Works For Everyone

August 8, 2015 Geoff Gilbert, www.wagingnonviolence.org Create! Cincinnati, Cooperatives, Labor Unions, New Economy

By Geoff Gilbert for Waging Nonviolence - With the 2016 presidential campaigns underway, economic populism has taken center stage. Bernie Sanders, calling for a $1 trillion investment in a sustainable infrastructure jobs program along with publically funded health care and college education, has forced Hillary Clinton to offer vague support for similar measures, while even some Republican candidates, like Marco Rubio, have asserted the need to stop the “fall of the [American] worker.” Not content to wait for national politicians to follow through on non-binding proposals, 1worker1vote — a joint venture launched in 2009 by the United Steelworkers, or USW, and Mondragon USA — has been pursing a grassroots agenda to move populist discontent beyond protest and toward the building of new institutions.

Energy, Democracy, Community

August 5, 2015 John Duda, www.medium.com Create! Baltimore, Cooperatives, Environment, Sharing Economy, Worker Rights and Jobs

By John Duda in Medium - But there’s another lesson to be learned from Curtis Bay: organized communities can successfully demand something other than business as usual. It started with just a few high school students, who started talking about building neighborhood resistance to the incinerator. With the help of local economic human rights organization called the United Workers, that small initial group snowballed into a massive campaign, bringing students and neighbors together with supportive activists and artists from across the city, all showing up at meetings of the institutions who had signed up to purchase power from the planned incinerator, and demanding they do otherwise. Against all expectations, as of August 2015, it looks like they are winning. The consortium of school boards, local governments, and nonprofits has canceled their contracts with Energy Answers, and the incinerator is far from even beginning construction. Meanwhile, Curtis Bay residents have become leading voices working to create an alternative development plan.

Farmer Cooperatives, Not Monsanto, Supply El Salvador With Seeds

March 13, 2015 Nathan Weller, www.truth-out.org.com Create! Cooperatives, El Salvador, Food and Agriculture, GMOs, Monsanto

In the face of overwhelming competition skewed by the rules of free trade, farmers in El Salvador have managed to beat the agricultural giants like Monsanto and Dupont to supply local corn seed to thousands of family farmers. Local seed has consistently outperformed the transnational product, and farmers helped develop El Salvador’s own domestic seed supply–all while outsmarting the heavy hand of free trade. This week, the Ministry of Agriculture released a new round of contracts to provide seed to subsistence farmers nationwide through its Family Agriculture Program. Last year, over 560,000 family farmers across El Salvador planted corn and bean seed as part of the government’s efforts to revitalize small scale agriculture, and ensure food security in the rural marketplace.

Deer Isle’s Model Worker Cooperative

September 6, 2014 Violeta Duncan, www.community-wealth.org Create! Cooperatives, Finance and the Economy, Labor

Beloved for its charming landscapes and fresh lobster, the rural community of Deer Isle, Maine is now gaining attention in the cooperative world. When Verne and Sandra Seile, proprietors of Burnt Cove Market, V&S Variety and Pharmacy, and The Galley, decided to retire last year, they sold their businesses to their employees. With 62 new worker-owners, Island Employee Cooperative, Inc. is now the twelfth largest worker cooperative in the nation. In a small community of just more than 2,500, with a workforce of 1,300, the loss of 62 jobs would have been felt intimately. Where family-owned businesses are significant, communities face additional challenges. Only 30 percent of family-owned businesses, like the Seile’s, survive to the next generation. When these businesses are closed or sold to outside investors, communities lose wealth. For example, an Institute for Local Self Reliance study analyzing the local multiplier effect in Maine, found that for every $100 spent at a big box retailer, $14 in local spending is generated compared to $45 when the money is spent at a locally-owned business. Additionally, communities sacrifice social benefits fostered by ownership of local business, such as good health and a politically engaged community. Hoping to keep wealth rooted in their home of over 40 years, the Seiles began working with the Maine- based Cooperative Development Institute and the Independent Retailers Shared Services Cooperative to convert their businesses to a worker-owned cooperative.

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