Worker Cooperatives

Building A Cooperative Economy In Cincinnati

May 29, 2025 John Duda, Inequality.org. Create! Cincinnati, Local Economy, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights

Zeke Coleman’s story says a lot about his worker cooperative, Our Harvest — part of Co-op Cincy’s growing network of worker and community owned businesses. But it also says a lot about America: Before [here] I worked at a chicken processing plant. I got a raise one or two times, at fifty cents, and that was it. I didn’t receive another raise for the next four years. [It’s] different here, because I feel like I’m treated like a person, and it’s not a big corporation where the CEO is making millions and millions and millions while the workers are getting peanuts. Coleman is a worker-owner and the food hub manager at Our Harvest, a worker co-op founded by Co-op Cincy in 2012. Growing healthy food across two urban farms, and sourcing more from community food system projects, Our Harvest connects local growers and producers to customers, creating good jobs along the way.

Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing The Media Industry

April 1, 2025 Damon Orion, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, COVID-19, Employee Ownership, Journalism, Media, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

The arrival of COVID-19 in the United States kicked off an ongoing period of job insecurity within the media industry. In April 2020, the New York Times reported that about 37,000 news company employees had been laid off, furloughed, or had their salaries reduced since March of that year. This instability was still evident in 2024, with media outlets like the Los Angeles Times, the Messenger, and HuffPost undergoing major layoffs and closures. An October 2024 report from the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc. found that 13,279 media jobs had been cut that year. This included 3,520 cuts in the broadcast, digital, and print news industry—the most since 2020. Job insecurity has helped spur the rise of worker-owned journalism cooperatives like Flaming Hydra, Aftermath, Racket, and RANGE. According to the Poynter Institute, “[a]t least six worker-centered [news] outlets launched in 2024 alone.”

Varieties Of Worker Cooperatives In Tech

February 11, 2025 Stefan Ivanovski, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, Platform Coops, Technology, Worker Cooperatives

Working conditions in the tech sector are deteriorating. Leading tech firms like Google, once considered top employers, have laid off thousands of workers despite reporting profits. Traditional tech firms struggle to reconcile the paradox of high job quality and profitability. Can worker cooperatives offer an alternative for tech workers? Known for prioritizing equity and social well-being, can they succeed where traditional firms fail? I believe worker cooperatives are a viable solution for tech workers. I want to share a framework that explains the different varieties of tech worker cooperatives.

Inflation Poses Unique Challenges For Worker Co-Ops

February 5, 2025 Kenzie Love, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Strategize! Finance and the Economy, Inflation, Wages, Worker Cooperatives

Inflation is top of mind for many Canadian small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) these days. A recent survey of Canadian SMEs found 90 percent of them had been impacted by inflation, and another survey of 500 Canadian accountants revealed inflation as the most significant financial threat to Canadian SMEs. With the vast majority of Canadian worker co-ops being SMEs, it’s reasonable to assume that they’re also feeling these pressures. But delving deeper into the issue suggests that while worker co-ops face some of the same challenges as conventional businesses regarding inflation, how they respond is likely to be different.

Celebrating 20 Years Of The Worker Cooperative Movement

June 25, 2024 Margaret M. Bau, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, History, USDA, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

When Congress enacted the Cooperative Marketing Act of 1926, it directed the USDA to create a range of federal services in support of producer-owned cooperatives. For nearly 100 years, USDA has gathered statistics, conducted research, provided education, and offered cooperative development to America’s agricultural cooperatives. Occasionally, USDA conducted cooperative development among producer co-ops of artisans or created educational materials on housing, shared services, or worker co-ops. Though the name of the agency changed at times, most of USDA’s efforts remained firmly focused on farmer-owned cooperatives.

Technology Cooperatives In The Movement: Where Are We Now?

June 18, 2024 Micky Metts, Keegan Rankin and Benjamin Melancon, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Cooperatives, Technology, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

Cooperatives have many benefits to their members and communities. The transformation of the economy to one that works for all, likely requires a much greater role for cooperatives—worker owned cooperatives perhaps most of all. Marxist economist Richard Wolff has gone so far as to posit that the critical failing of past socialist revolutions has been not democratizing the workplace. Certainly, catalyzing a solidarity economy network will require as much of the economy and public infrastructure as possible to be under people's direct control. Tech worker cooperatives have the potential to provide particularly crucial infrastructure for the communication and coordination necessary for a liberatory movement and a robust and just economy.

Dorchester Food Co-Op Is Here To Shake Up Boston’s Food Ecosystem

September 4, 2023 Punnya Kalapurakkel, Next City. Create! Boston, Cooperative, Food and Agriculture, food justice, Worker Cooperatives

Stroll down the intersection of Bowdown and Topliff Streets in Boston and you’ll see the shiny automated doors of the brand new Dorchester Food Co-op, where a few friendly faces are adding some finishing touches to the space before it opens to the public in the coming weeks. The worker- and community-owned grocery store, which aims to increase access to nutritious and culturally relevant food, is a project over a decade in the making. As Next City reported during last year’s groundbreaking ceremony, the co-op is the result of more than 10 years of organizing around investors and gathering the funds to make a dream come true.

Driver-Owned Ride-Hailing App Is Putting Its Foot On The Accelerator

June 13, 2023 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Create! Cooperatives, Gig Economy, Lyft, New York City (NYC), taxis, Uber, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

Sometimes the money’s good, sometimes not so good. Either way, Shaun Beckles loves the human aspect of working as a for-hire vehicle driver — getting to know fares even just a little in passing, gaining a glimpse into so many different lives over the course of a single shift. “I’ve always liked driving for the mere fact that you get to meet some interesting people who can connect with your passion, you’d be surprised,” says Beckles, now operations manager at The Drivers Cooperative. The driver-owned ride-hailing platform, which launched in 2021, is hitting some major milestones this year: It has a new app, it’s the official transportation partner for Juneteenth NY, and

NYC’s Christmas Tree Cooperative

December 24, 2022 Democracy At Work, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! New York (NY), New York City (NYC), Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

New York City, New York - In this holiday-themed episode of All Things Co-op, Kevin speaks with Ellis Roberts of New York State of Pine, a worker cooperative selling Christmas trees in New York City. They discuss the exploitation of workers and huge markups for consumers from traditional Christmas tree companies, New York State of Pine’s democratic centralist model for decision-making, the question of scale, and the importance of working with and getting to know working-class people as communists and socialists. If you live in NYC and haven’t gotten your Christmas tree yet, visit NY State of Pine at 323 St. Johns Pl in Prospect Heights, 75 7th Ave in Park Slope, or Metropolitan Ave and Bedford Ave in Williamsburg! About our guest: Ellis Roberts came to New York from Pennsylvania to join the Occupy Wall Street encampment and never left.

Social Impact Worker Cooperatives Gain Adherents In Madison

June 7, 2022 Emilie Heidemann, Madison.com. Create! Wisconsin, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

A business model that allows workers to have a stake in how their employer pays and supports them while also tackling social justice issues is expanding in Madison and statewide. The worker cooperative model, which already has a history in Wisconsin and the city spanning decades, is one in which the business is equally owned and governed by its employees — they each get a say in their pay, benefits and how to divvy up company profits. In Madison, an accelerator for worker cooperatives that want to make that social impact was recently put together by Downtown startup promoter gener8tor and the Nehemiah Center for Leadership and Development. Also, a local worker cooperative called Roots4Change, which partners with health organizations to support Hispanic mothers through their pregnancies, is expanding.

How A Cincinnati Preschool Became Worker-Owned

March 22, 2022 Cinnamon Janzer, Next City. Create! Education, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Ownership, Worker Rights and Jobs

Mt. Airy, Ohio - Katie McGoron founded Shine Nurture Center — a childcare and preschool in Mt. Airy, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati — in 2015. She envisioned a small, closely knit childcare center where kids would play outside and eat healthy food. That’s exactly what she built over the last seven years. But when she decided to go back to school and start a new phase of her life, she did something unexpected. Rather than sell her business to the highest bidder, she sold it to five of her workers, turning it into a worker cooperative. The transition process concluded last month when ownership was officially transferred from McGoron to Shine workers, thanks in large part to the help of Co-op Cincy.

Richard Wolff: US Capitalism Has Peaked And Is On The Way Down’

December 27, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Capitalism, Economic crisis, Pandemic, Worker Cooperatives

For the end of the year, Clearing the FOG speaks with economist Richard Wolff about the current state of United States capitalism. Wolff explains that the United States is experiencing the greatest crisis in its history - a severe economic crisis at the same time as a pandemic, as well as the climate crisis. This is unprecedented. Unlike the great depression in the last century, when the wealth divide shrank, inequality is worsening. On top of that, US empire is in decline. Wolff discusses the current state of inflation and supply chain disruption and the forces behind them. Instead of facing up to these realities and learning from the experiences of other countries, such as China, and even our own past, the ruling class is in denial and continues on the same path that created the current situation. Wolff talks about what we need to focus on going forward.

Take This Job And Love It

October 21, 2021 Jaisal Noor, The Progressive Magazine. Create! Transportation, Uber, Worker Cooperatives, Worker Rights and Jobs

In the six years that Michael Ugwu has worked as an Uber driver in New York City, he’s seen a growing share of his earnings diverted into venture capitalists’ pockets. Uber and Lyft require workers to assume a myriad of expenses that can quickly trap drivers like Ugwu into debt and poverty. “Currently, they’re taking out between 35 to 40 percent, when you add up all the deductions,” Ugwu says. “You end up not having enough to pay rent, maintain the car, pay the car loan, and buy gas. They’re continuously ripping us off.” By 2017, rideshare drivers were earning less than half what they made just four years earlier, a study found. Meanwhile, executives at Lyft and Uber have raked in tens of millions of dollars in compensation.