Worker Coops – U.S. Solidarity Economy Network

08OctOctober 8, 2018

Argentine co-op movement develops free app for solidarity economy

Under the motto 'connecting solidarity', it allows people to search for co-op providers of goods and services By Anca Voinea via The News.coop Co-ops in Argentina can now connect with customers and other social and solidarity economy businesses through a free app. ESSApp, developed by open software co-operative GCOOP, maps co-operatives across the country. Under the motto “connecting solidarity”, it enables people to search for co-op providers of goods and services. The project was supported by the Institute Mobilising Co-operative Funding (IMFC) and the University...

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06AugAugust 6, 2018

Cooperativa Tierra y Libertad

via Food Chain Workers Alliance “To tell the truth, we are forming this cooperative so that one day we can get ahead. Hopefully this goes well. For now, in the context we are fighting -- si se puede! -- we have each other as partners willing to work together as much as possible, so that we all move forward. In this cooperative, there are no bosses nor supervisors. We arrive at the hour that we’re able to, and we apply ourselves...

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24MayMay 24, 2018

More Businesses Are Becoming Coops: Here’s Why

With new tools and political policies now in place to support them, there could be a boom in employee-owned business ahead as baby boomers retire and sell their companies to their workers. By Eillie Anzilotti via Fast Company In 1982, Linda and Gregory Coles were struggling to find a sitter for their 18-month-old daughter. After a year of searching, they just decided to open their own daycare, and founded A Child’s Place in Queens, New York, in 1983. Thirty-four years later, they were...

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10MayMay 10, 2018

Cooperatives, Community Development and Social Justice

An Interview with Jessica Gordon-Nembhard and Ed Whitfield via GEO Richard Rice interviews Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, PhD and Ed Whitfield on Cooperatives, Community Development and Social Justice. Jessica is the author of "Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice" [and a member of the GEO collective]. Ed is a social critic, writer and co-Managing Director of the Fund for Democratic Communities.

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11AprApril 11, 2018

Worker Cooperatives Are More Productive

When maximizing profits isn't the only goal, companies actually work better. By Michelle Chen via The Nation Imagine an economy without bosses. It’s not a utopian vision but a growing daily reality for many enterprises. A close analysis of the performance of worker-owned cooperative firms—companies in which workers share in management and ownership—shows that, compared to standard top-down firms, co-ops can be a viable, even superior way of doing business. The term “co-op” evokes images of collective farming or crunchy craft breweries. But...

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28MarMarch 28, 2018

Considerations of Workplace Democracy

via Georgetown Public Policy Review Coauthored by Rebekah Ackerman and Charlie Whittington No subject suffers continuous and unproductive beatings as often as the subject of economic inequality. The conventional analysis of economic inequality considers measurements of income and wealth to identify trends in inequality. We abandon this method and propose an economic theory in terms of production. Through worker inclusion in the right to control and return, we theorize that firms are more productive and experience more growth. We suppose that inequality is...

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19MarMarch 19, 2018

Buy Out Your Boss

Two Glasgow businessmen knew that selling up for big money would also mean huge job cuts, so they handed over power to their staff instead. The latest article in our new economics series explores this forgotten solution. by Aditya Chakrabortty via The Guardian It had all been going so well. In this smoothest of seductions, John Clark and Alistair Miller hadn’t had to do a thing. There they were, itching to sell their business and get on with retirement. Then one day in the middle...

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12MarMarch 12, 2018

#PoderColectivo

Connecting and Organizing Collectives of Color in Los Angeles via Color Coded by Aldo Puicon For communities of color, being dependent on the current economic system is dangerous and hazardous to our health and to our lives. Through decades of neoliberal policy making, capitalism has prioritized the individual over the collective and corporations over communities?—?oftentimes negatively impacting communities of color. This brings us to our current living conditions: a volatile job market, low-paying wages, shortages of affordable housing, and an expensive healthcare system… to name...

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26FebFebruary 26, 2018

Worker cooperatives offer real alternatives to Trump

via Waging Nonviolence Announcing his presidency in 2016, Donald Trump promised the nation that he’d become “the greatest job president God ever created.” His plan to accomplish this rested on a retrograde economic vision that would “make America great again,” by restoring waning coal and manufacturing jobs, as well as putting an end to the alleged assault on American work by foreign immigrants and global competition. A year later, his attempts to realize this vision have largely consisted of backwards motion. In...

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07FebFebruary 7, 2018

Cincinnati experiments with co-op/union hybrid

A city hit by high unemployment is looking to examples abroad and from US history to create new ways of working via Co-op News In Cincinnati, Ohio, a city with high levels of unemployment, new models of co-operation are being developed, based on examples in US history as well as current projects overseas. The Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative (CUCI) is a no-profit union co-op incubator founded in 2009. It develops union co-ops – a hybrid business combining elements of the democratic worker ownership of...

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