Worker cooperatives can function as both an enterprise and a social organization. They serve as a platform to share resources, reduce costs and offer a more comprehensive array and quality of products and services; but cooperatives also allow for the management of individual and collective needs, to guarantee a place for the social and political involvement of people.
Popular economy cooperatives arise when their members, rejected by the formal labour market for various reasons, must create their own work to survive. That is why their main goal is revenue generation, to guarantee a livelihood and a decent lifestyle for their members. But the struggle for a decent lifestyle cannot only be reached by addressing economic needs, it needs to go beyond that.
Discrimination on the basis of class, sexual orientation or gender identity, ethnicity or migration status, among others, is an obstacle for many people trying to access the formal labour market. This is also the case of feminized identities that, being in charge of household care tasks, must give up hours of paid work. Cooperative action guarantees, in these cases, inclusion in the labour market and advocacy for the development of policies that integrate those outside of the system into the economy, taking equity and social justice into consideration.
Read the rest at WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing)
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