This short video from the Union Co-ops Council of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives asks: Can you imagine a workplace where power is 100% in the hands of the workers? A workplace without bosses, where managers are elected by the workers and accountable to the workers, and where the excess profit is distributed as the … Read More
Union‐cooperative collaborations, which first emerged in the 18th century, have witnessed a resurgence in recent years. Across the world, they have created new jobs, safeguarded worker‐owners facing exploitation, and reinvigorated community and labor movements. By combining cooperatives’ democratizing ideals of self‐reliance and social security with union ideals of empowerment and mass organization, union‐cooperative collaborations hold … Read More
Unions have a complicated history with employee ownership. Prior to the institutionalization of collective bargaining, several nascent U.S. union movements in the late 19th century put worker ownership at the center of their thinking and practice. Since formalized collective bargaining, unions have often resisted participating in employee ownership plans due to concerns about worker financial … Read More
A collective labor of vision and determination by 38 contributors in six countries, three continents, this volume shows how solidarity, innovation, and conviction forge sustaining local and global social economy practices on behalf of the greater common good; recipient of Honorable Mention from 2024 Joyce Rothschild Book Prize.
What if taxi drivers in New York City or rickshaw operators in Bangalore could start a worker-owned and-operated alternative to Uber with stable hourly wages? Platform cooperatives reimagine a world where domestic workers can double their income by establishing their own platform—an internet where platforms such as Twitch, Twitter, and Roblox were owned by their … Read More
How we structure ownership and work in healthcare matters. As a society, we underpay and under-support—under-care-for—the very workers we rely on to provide health and care services to others. The COVID-19 pandemic briefly spotlighted this fact as health workers braved risks to care for the vulnerable. The worst of that crisis has passed—but the extractive … Read More
Contingent workers make up a large part of today’s healthcare workforce, and the healthcare industry is America’s most contingent worker-dependent industry. While contingent healthcare workers overall earn low pay with few benefits, contingent work burdens fall most heavily on women of color, due to deep race and gender-based inequalities that have long plagued the healthcare … Read More
Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) holds a significant place within the U.S. worker cooperative and long-term care landscape. For decades, it has been the largest worker cooperative in the country by some distance. CHCA workers are also members of the largest union in the country, 1199Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers East (1199SEIU). Through its … Read More
Currently, there is renewed interest in organizations providing greater economic benefits to its members given the widening divide among social classes. A major source of alternatives to capitalist organizations in the U.S. was the co-operative movement sponsored by the Knights of Labor during 1870–1889. This study examines cases of the Knights’ producer cooperatives to understand … Read More
The global Covid pandemic and the Third Reconstruction and renewed labor activism within the U.S. challenge us to find more humane, sustainable, and egalitarian ways of living and working. Those in the labor movement and the cooperative movement, who have been working to build union cooperatives, offer a vision for one type of more humane, … Read More
An urgent and deeply resonant case for the power of workplace democracy to restore balance between economy and society. What happens to a society—and a planet—when capitalism outgrows democracy? The tensions between democracy and capitalism are longstanding, and they have been laid bare by the social effects of COVID-19. The narrative of “essential workers” has … Read More
The Worker-Owner Workbook can help teams develop cooperative businesses and worker-ownership culture. The book teaches the nuts and bolts of running a co-op business, from business financials to conflict management to team building. It also contains essential information about the co-op movement, labor movement, and the Mondragon cooperative network of Spain. The Worker-Owner Workbook is … Read More
This primer focuses on one set of tools the labor movement can utilize to build power, expand wealth, and deepen member engagement in the years ahead: worker ownership. It explores: How Unions and Worker Ownership Work Together How Worker Ownership Can Build Power for Workers The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Overcoming Challenges Looking … Read More
In Co-operative Struggles, Denise Kasparian expands the theoretical horizons regarding labour unrest by proposing new categories to make visible and conceptualize conflicts in the new worker co-operativism of the 21st century. After the depletion of neoliberal reforms at the dawn of the 21st century in Argentina, co-operativism gained momentum, mainly due to the recuperation of … Read More
Labor unions and worker-owned businesses share the objectives of generating better jobs and giving workers control over their workplaces. The scaling of worker ownership paired with unionization offers pathways to expanded worker power and wealth-building for working people. The purpose of this paper is to show strategies used by labor unions to support the creation … Read More
With a growing prominence of sophisticated econometric research in a much-expanded field of New Economics of Participation (NEP), it is of particular value to learn about real-world examples of participatory and labor-managed firms in the advanced market economies through extensive case studies. In this volume of Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labor-Managed Firms, … Read More
Immigrants are increasingly forming worker cooperatives, and the recent Denver taxi driver union-cooperative is one of the largest taxi cooperatives in the country. Current research on the labor empowerment consequences of these emerging immigrant cooperatives is sparse.
This chapter maps existing patterns of broad-based worker ownership and control in contemporary advanced capitalism and considers future possibilities for expanding democracy within firms. Section one discusses worker ownership and control arrangements in relation to different theories of the firm and shows how these arrangements map onto different national systems. Section two compares Germany, which … Read More
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
Union–management relations in the U.S. are best described as adversarial. However, under certain circumstances, they can become cooperative. One example of the latter was the role of trade unions in the conversion of firms to employee ownership. Firm ownership (entrepreneurship, capitalism) by employees has increased in recent years. Specifically, we focus on the use of … Read More
This article evaluates worker-owned and unionized worker-owned cooperatives as alternatives to the conventional corporate structures for businesses in the United States. With their focus on democratic governance and shared ownership, worker-owned cooperatives offer an antidote to the extreme inequality of income and deterioration of working conditions that workers are experiencing. These are inequities for which … Read More
MONDRAGON, the largest cooperative in the world, and the inspiration for several U.S. cooperatives, faces a challenge in 2013 after one of its largest cooperatives votes to leave the group and another goes bankrupt.
In an unusual partnership, the United Steelworkers of America union helped the firm’s new owner-managers convert to an ESOP as part of a reorganization. This effort saved jobs and the company. Since that time, the firm’s employees have proven to be its most valuable asset and a key source of its competitive advantage…
The United Steelworkers, Mondragon, and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center Announce a New Union Cooperative Model to Reinsert Worker Equity Back into the U.S. Economy. View the published model within CLEO.
The United Steelworkers, Mondragon International USA, and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center created this detailed model for developing sustainable jobs through a combination of worker ownership and unionization. This model, or template, for unionized cooperatives seeks to implement principles and values of the Mondragon model in combination with collective bargaining. The model is intended to … Read More