Summary
As a growing number of employers hire contractors and staffing agencies to build and run their business, some worker rights advocates view staffing cooperatives as a strategy to advance job quality, firm performance, and social outcomes. However, with only a few staffing co-ops and limited past research, a successful strategy requires close study of cooperative labor contracting. What kinds of staffing co-op models can create quality jobs, provide quality services, and scale?
This working paper was produced for the POWER Act Research Analysis and Final Report found here: https://haas.berkeley.edu/hrwo/report/.
The paper presents original research on goals, models, and growth among staffing co-ops and “umbrella groups,” a variety of nonprofits, secondary co-ops, and other organizations that provide multiple co-ops with shared services and pooled resources. The analysis focused on 1) business scalability, 2) financial sustainability, and 3) worker participation in governance. We found that staffing co-ops develop a competitive advantage that enables them to create or sustain quality jobs with higher wages, but struggle to secure clients and to scale. By contrast, we found that all umbrella groups create and sustain quality jobs among the co-ops they support, and demonstrate an ability to scale their business. All staffing co-ops describe strategies to grow that involve a larger strategic partner, like an umbrella group. Building worker-to-worker cohesion remains a challenge for staffing co-ops to include workers in day-to-day and long-term decisions, due in part to shorter contracts and dispersed worksites. However, umbrella groups facilitate worker participation in governance and also provide training that boosts worker skills for ownership as well as job duties, such as cleaning or care work.