Democratic member control is cooperatives’ superpower and Achilles heel. Research shows that strong governance is essential for cooperatives to thrive, yet cooperatives have lacked the data that is needed to benchmark their governance practices. UWCC launched the Cooperative Governance Research Initiative (CGRI) in response to this unmet need. Its purpose is to generate robust, longitudinal … Read More
Worker cooperative practitioners and developers often claim that democratic worker ownership advances egalitarianism within and beyond the workplace, but most of the empirical evidence in the U.S. is based on ethnographic case studies or small-scale surveys. We leverage the first national survey about individuals’ experiences in these unique firms to ask if claims that co-ops … Read More
This paper presents findings from a national survey of 1,147 workers in worker cooperatives and follow up interviews with 15 participants conducted in 2017.
In 2009, United Steelworkers (USW) and Mondragon signed an agreement to promote union co-ops: firms that combine democratic worker ownership and union membership. Eleven U.S. initiatives now seek to implement the USW-Mondragon union co-op model, prompting a debate about whether unions and worker cooperatives are stronger together. This article draws on a case study of … Read More