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SPECIAL: The deal between Mondragon and the United Steelworkers

Oct. 27, 2009: The United Steelworkers (USW) and MONDRAGON Internacional, S.A. today announced a framework agreement for collaboration in establishing MONDRAGON cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada.

Go to GEO's meta-page on this historic agreement

Unions & Worker Organizations

Organizations of and for workers, dedicated to building worker power.

Honest Hope

...we are coming to our national worker co-op conference sounding the theme that worker co-ops are the solution. My worry, however, is...
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The John Logue ACE Award; other ACE Awards

The Association of Cooperative Educators established the John Logue ACE award at its 58th annual conference in Cleveland July27-30, 2010. Ohio Employee Ownership Center staff members, Bill McIntyre and Logue's wife, Olga Klepikova, talk about Logue's work, vision, "moxie" and his impact on Ohio and the U.S. Other ACE awardees for 2010 are also mentioned.
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF COOPERATIVES IN THE PITTSBURGH AREA

A BRIEF HISTORY OF COOPERATIVES IN THE PITTSBURGH AREA By John Curl At the time of its incorporation in 1817, Pittsburgh was already a manufacturing center, with a population of around 6,000, supplying the western region with artisanal products almost entirely made by home industry. It had become a manufacturing center during the war of 1812, when the supply of British-made goods have been cut off in the region. In 1817 most manufacturing was still done by independent self-employed artisans using hand tools. But their livelihood was already threatened by the growth of a new system that was making their economy obsolete: factories and wage labor.
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An Outline History of Cooperatives in the Bay Area and California

John Curl's history of the Bay Area Cooperative movement is eye-opening. It leaves you amazed that this country is so rich in cooperativism yet we only learn of it through John's heroic efforts. It brings to mind the saying: You need to know where you've been to know where you're going. My hope is that this history further opens up and extends our vision and our work.
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John Curl's Outline History of Cooperatives in the San Francisco Bay Area and California

John Curl's history of the Bay Area Cooperative movement is eye-opening.  It leaves you amazed that this country is so rich in cooperativism yet we only learn of it through John's heroic efforts.  It brings to mind the saying: You need to know where you've been to know where you're going.  My hope is that this history further opens up and extends our vision and our work.  Many thanks to John Curl for his work.   

Download Curl's History of the Bay Area Cooperative Movement here

GEO will also post his fabulous history of the Pittsburgh area and the Pennsylvania history written for the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy in a booklet in 2009.

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

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.

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Unions & Cooperatives: Allies in the Struggle to Build Democratic Workplaces

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

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.
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Worker Conference Goes to the South, Resolves to Collaborate with Unions

By Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo

Credit: http://www.usworker.coopThe Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy (ECWD) took concrete steps toward coalition building with other workers and unions, inter-cooperation with other cooperatives, and forging alliances with political groups at its 4th biennial conference this summer. It was the first ECWD held in the South. Attended by 146 people from 26 states and 75 organizations, the conference took place at the University of North Carolina in Asheville from July 20-22, 2007. It was one of the largest, most enthusiastic, inclusive, and successful conferences since the first ECWD meeting in 2002.

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Boston Workers Alliance Temp Agency Project

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.

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