Home Work (cleaning, personal care, etc.)
More Low-Wage Workers Become Their Own Bosses
Are worker co-ops making a difference? an interview
From grocery stores and bakeries to bike shops and day care centers, worker-owned cooperatives are gaining popularity across the country. How are they faring in the recession? What solutions do co-ops offer for today’s recession/depression? If they gain even more popularity, could they transform the economy and the way we think it should work?
Guests include Dan Thomases, a founding member of Box Dog Bikes co-op, John Kusakabe of the Arizmendi Bakery co-op, and Hilary Abell of Women's Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES).
Sidebar: Worker Ownership, Coming of Age and Out of the Shallows
(Editor's Note: Steven Dawson was president and founding director of the Industrial Cooperative Association (now the ICA Group) from 1978 through 1988. He is currently president of the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute (PHI), the nonprofit affiliate of the 1600-employee Cooperative Home Care Associates - the largest worker cooperative in the U.S.
Cooperative Home Care Associates: Participation with 1600 Employees
Permanent link to this article: http://geo.coop/node/443
Cooperative Replication at WAGES
By Joel Schoening
From Rangi-Changi to Wabi Sabi: Supporting the Development of a Worker Cooperative in an Urban Immigrant Community
By the Center for Family Life
The Challenge
Co-ops Unite to Support Worker-Ownership in Home Care
Past issues of GEO have reported on the emergence of a particular type of worker cooperative, the home care cooperative. In the 1980s, the federal government followed the lead of state governments like Wisconsin and acknowledged that elderly and disabled people who need help in day-to-day living are best served by in-home assistance. Medicare and Medicaid funding that would have otherwise been used only for nursing homes would now be applicable to home care services. With "the gray tsunami" of aging baby boomers looming, demand is only going to increase for the next few decades.
Koreikyo: A Japanese Home Care Co-op Run For and By Seniors
As the baby boom ages into the elder explosion in the world's industrial nations, more and more innovative solutions will appear in the effort to provide seniors with the many sorts of care they deserve and to which they are entitled.
Cooperative Care: A Cooperative Model for Homecare
The keynote speaker at the Second U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperative Conference was Rick Surpin. In 1985 Rick founded Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), the first worker-owned home care cooperative in the United States. CHCA now employs over 1,000 home care workers in quality jobs. Virtually all of the worker-owners of CHCA are African American and Latina women. CHCA aims to change the home health care industry by modeling their philosophy of "quality care through quality jobs." To that end, CHCA has spun off a number of partnership organizations.
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