Organized Labor

A Strategy for Unions and Coops: Toward Building A Labor-Ownership Economy

Ethan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:15:54 -0500

By Lisa Stolarski

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

Ethan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:13:16 -0500

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.

Our Eyes On the Prize: From a "Worker Co-op Movement" to a Transformative Social Movement

Ethan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:56:02 -0500

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.

Boston Workers Alliance Temp Agency Project

admin — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:54:31 -0400

by Chris Heneghan

Just over a year after the Boston Workers Alliance (BWA) was founded at a convergence of "jobless workers" from Boston's Dorchester, and Roxbury neighborhoods, members of their job creation committee were in New York City at the second national conference of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives discussing plans to establish a temp agency cooperative in the Greater Boston area.