Workplace Democracy

Cooperative development is the most important social change work that a person can do.

This article explores how union negotiations in worker-owned co-ops compare to more traditional labor negotiations. The theoretical analysis addresses possible synergies between practices traditionally considered as alternative, employee ownership and collective bargaining, and the development of collective bargaining in new business models.

When child care is hard to find and harder to afford, some communities aren't waiting for a fix. Kristin Forde Hurckes of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension Center for Cooperative explains how cooperative models are helping - and where they hit their limits.

ASETT has three main objectives. One is to build for the future, which involves engaging in scenario planning. The second is to pilot and scale cooperative and social economy practices. And the third is to focus on knowledge generation and transfer to create a narrative that breaks down Mondragón’s isolation and builds support for a social and solidarity economy. 

Ramsey Nassar, Gwen Pasquarello, and Andy Wallace at EMMA Technology Cooperative have spent five years as a worker-owned co-op building software and hardware for video games, theater, public installation, and media arts. And theme parks. And custom programming languages. And a nonprofit arcade collective. They're thriving.

This week, workers and community supporters launched the Pittsburgh Progress, “a cooperative news organization, owned and democratically run by its workers and members… dedicated to looking out for, and telling the stories of, the working-class people who form the heart and soul of our diverse communities.”

In this episode of How (Not) To Do Business, Chris King sits down with Cherry Haynes and Siôn Whellens of Calverts, the East London design and print co-operative.

GEO is returning to print after nearly two decades. Here's why we're doing it.

Ever dreamed about starting your own business with like-minded creators? A worker cooperative is a business that is owned and controlled by its workers. It is an underused model in the cultural industry that channels the creative power and freedom of the workers to build a world grounded in solidarity. Join us in this discussion on how Creative Workers Cooperatives function and how you can make one too! 

In this chapter, Luis Razeto identifies the key to the democratic transformation of the market – “the formation of a new social block, a subject of transformational action, the bearer of a new structure of social action” – and analyzes the various theoretical and practical obstacles that must be overcome in order for it to occur.