Repost

Attorney Neil Helfman discusses his chapter in the Sustainable Economies Law Center's 2021 Legal Guide to Worker Cooperatives, as well as his thoughts on worker cooperatives in construction and climate-wise, green building, and the need for professionals to step up in the coop movement.

The paper includes seven case studies of interaction and collaboration between labor unions and worker-owned entities, in which unions get out their tools to apply their power and capacity toward worker ownership for expanding avenues for worker power.

The emergence in practice of worker cooperative ecosystems, which draws on the entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) concept, has been largely ignored in academic research. Contrasting worker cooperative development efforts in Toronto with Montréal, we affirm there are multiple and multiscalar EEs in each region, including both a dominant capitalist and a worker cooperative EE. Productive enterprises like worker cooperatives, operating with a different logic than investor-owned firms, not only construct their own EE, but the relational connectedness of the worker cooperative EE to other EEs also plays a role in outcomes. Worker cooperatives have been less successful in navigating these dynamics in Toronto than in Montréal.

Michael Lebowitz shares his perspective on the social economic models in Venezuela and Yugoslavia. Lebowitz highlights the importance of self-actualization through protagonism and how the most successful of these models focused on solidarity over self-interest.

An interview with a worker-owner at the Vio.Me worker-occupied factory in Greece.

The 2021 USFWC Worker Co-op Awards presentation.

Ebony Gustave interviews Florencio Esquivel of Understory restaurant

An interview with Gene Homicki, co-founder and CEO of myTurn, an online platform for managing libraries of things.

What if rather than selling out, successful businesses became community assets that put ownership and governance in the hands of workers and even consumers? Could a startup become a means of building community wealth, economic justice, and accountability over our technology?

Two worker-owners from White Electric Coffee in Providence, RI describe how they converted their workplace to a worker cooperative.