Worker Cooperatives
Businesses that are owned and democratically controlled by their workers/employees (called "worker-owners").
South End Press: Independent & Collectively-Run
A radical cooperative press in Boston, since 1977.
Arts & Cultural Creation | Collectives | cooperative economy | News & Media | Publishing & Printing | Worker Cooperatives | United States | Gleanings
The Seed
A solidarity trade organizing effort in Greece
Collectives | Cross-Sector Alliances | Ethical Purchasing | Linking Opposition & Alternatives | Networking & Collaboration | solidarity economy | Solidarity Economy Organizing | Trade & Exchange | Worker Cooperatives | Eastern Europe | Gleanings
Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives (W. Mass and Southern VT)
Networking & Collaboration | Worker CooperativesCo-op Biodiesel In Global Context
A Biodiesel Worker Cooperative describes the world of globalized biofuels.
Utilities (Electric, Water, Phone, Internet) | Worker Cooperatives | United States | Gleanings
The People's Grocery: Developing a Worker-Owned Community Grocery Store
People's Grocery is making speedy progress from a mobile organic food service cooperative towards developing a worker-owned cooperative grocery store in West Oakland in which local food and sustainable agriculture will be prioritized in a community health model centered on nutrition education for low-income residents of the community. At the same time, the cooperative is taking their business development goal beyond the single cooperative grocery store to a broader community development initiative focused on establishing a commercial and health service complex.
Community Development | Economic Justice | Food | Healthcare | Retail Trade | Worker Cooperatives | United States | Articles
Searching For the Next Cooperative Principle
By Len Krimerman
Consumer Cooperatives | cooperative commonwealth | cooperative economy | Cross-Sector Alliances | Economic Justice | Networking & Collaboration | Peace Building | Producer Cooperatives | Worker Cooperatives | Workplace Democracy | Articles
In 1995, the International Cooperative Alliance adopted seven cooperative principles to define and guide cooperatives throughout the world. Briefly stated, the "traditional seven" include: voluntary and open membership; democratic member control; member economic participation; autonomy and independence; education, training and information; cooperation among cooperatives; and concern for community.
A Strategy for Unions and Coops: Toward Building A Labor-Ownership Economy
By Lisa Stolarski
Cross-Sector Alliances | Networking & Collaboration | Organized Labor | Unions & Worker Organizations | Worker Cooperatives | Workplace Democracy | United States | Articles
Both Hands in the Soil
There is an ethical imperative to shift the balance of economic power away from corporate Capitalism and toward economies that benefit us all. Beginning with this assumption, I will explain how it is possible for unions and worker cooperatives to collaborate strategically to take market share away from absentee-owned and wage labor capitalist enterprises and place control of resources and production in the hands of communities of working people.
Unions & Cooperatives: Allies in the Struggle to Build Democratic Workplaces
As labor organizers, we struggle in the field every day to improve the lives of workers; we are in search of tools and alternatives for working people that will meet the needs of today's casualized and insecure workforce, with shrinking or negligible benefits. It is in the spirit of innovative leadership that we propose that the labor movement use worker cooperatives, an alternative organizing strategy added to more traditional labor organizing methods, as a means of returning control of their lives to the American working people.
Cross-Sector Alliances | Networking & Collaboration | Organized Labor | Unions & Worker Organizations | Worker Cooperatives | Workplace Democracy | United States | Articles
Our Eyes On the Prize: From a "Worker Co-op Movement" to a Transformative Social Movement
While empathizing with those who feel a sense of "inevitability" in the face of today's powerful capitalist economy (and disagreeing with those who see it as generally acceptable), I hold firmly to the perspective that a more just and democratic economy is both necessary and possible. And I believe that the greatest chance of increasing and assuring viability for the workplace democracy movement may rest in our ability to keep our "eyes on the prize"; that is, on the long term replacement of capitalism―an economy which socializes costs and privatizes benefits―with an economy of democratic cooperation―in which costs and benefits are democratically and equitably shared throughout society.
beyond capitalism | cooperative economy | Cross-Sector Alliances | Economic Justice | Linking Opposition & Alternatives | Networking & Collaboration | Organized Labor | solidarity economy | Solidarity Economy Organizing | Strategies for Change | Unions & Worker Organizations | Worker Cooperatives | Workplace Democracy | United States | Articles
Vermont: The State of Co-ops
The cooperative business model is very popular in Vermont. Why is that? By Stephen Morris.
Consumer Cooperatives | Housing Cooperatives | Producer Cooperatives | Worker Cooperatives | United States | Gleanings
