REI Workers Look to Shake up Co-op’s Board Amid Push for a First Contract

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Since March 2022, over 600 workers have voted to unionize at 11 REI stores. The campaign is growing, with workers in Greensboro, NC, voting to become the eleventh union store just last week. Workers at these stores are affiliated with either the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) or the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).
To date, management recalcitrance has stymied workers’ efforts to win a first contract, so the REI Union is trying a new tactic: Running candidates for the board of the 24-million-member outdoor equipment retailer, the nation’s largest cooperative.
REI has nine elected board members, who serve staggered three-year terms. This year, the REI Union is backing the campaigns of two nonprofit leaders as candidates—Shemona Moreno, executive director of 350 Seattle, and Tefere Gebre, chief program officer at Greenpeace USA—in hopes of installing pro-worker voices at the highest levels of the company.

Read the rest at Nonprofit Quarterly

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GEO #5

Native ‘hempsters’ follow global cooperative example

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A global enterprise based in Spain may seem an unlikely role model for a fledging American Indian initiative. But inspired by its success, Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm in Anishinaabeg territory is sowing the start of an intertribal cooperative consortium.

The new endeavor, called the Indigenous Hemp and Cannabis Farmers Cooperative, is laying the groundwork for the envisioned network. Farm owner Winona LaDuke and fellow founders intend to support the development of seeds, Indigenous standards, cultivation, value-added processing, appropriate technologies, and fair-trade markets.

LaDuke spoke to other Native hemp growers during a recent informational meeting at Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center, located not far from Oglala Lakota tribal offices. Alerting listeners to an Aug. 17-18 fundraiser for the cooperative cause, she said, “I hope that some seeds are in the ground, and we will pray for gentle rains.” She announced the initiative at the fundraiser, a concert featuring folk singer-songwriter David Huckfelt at Madeline Island in Lake Superior.

Read the rest at Buffalo's Fire

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Publication date

September 20, 2023, 12:00 pm

Nicaragua: Making Cooperatives Central to Democratization

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A phenomenon deserving more attention by those interested in the debates on Socialism in the 21st Century is the development of the cooperative and associative sector in Nicaragua. Over 50 percent of the Central American country's gross domestic product is produced either by small family-owned associative enterprises with less than 10 workers or by more advanced cooperatives some of which have several thousand members. This non-capitalist sector of the economy currently employs about 70 percent of the workforce in a country where neoliberal policies have deliberately attacked secure formal employment, as they have done around the world. The lives of about 2 million people, one in three Nicaraguans, are directly influenced by cooperatives, either because they themselves or else one of their close relatives, belong to a co-op.