With the support of the cleaning company’s founders, employees in January officially transitioned the company into the Happy Earth Cleaning Co-op — a cooperative owned and run by workers.
Employees at worker cooperatives get a say in how their business is run and a cut of the profits. As wealth disparities continue to increase in the country, some are hoping co-ops can make the economy more equitable and democratic.
Nominations are now being accepted for the Shared Capital Cooperative Board of Directors. The election will be from March 30 to April 12 and this year four seats are open; three seats representing cooperative members and one seat representing individual members.
This month, our group of Italy fans is exploring the wine cooperatives of Italy. Virtually every course, text, or article on cooperatives stresses how they produce just average wines. The growers are paid by the ton for their grapes, so there is no incentive to grow for quality. This is true in many grape growing regions of the world. Italy seems to be the exception with multiple examples of high quality wine cooperatives. Our group set out to find out why.
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One trait that makes a co-op a co-op is that every member gets one vote on important issues. In co-op circles this is known simply as “one member, one vote”.
For the first time in my life, I shared a house with friends who happened to share my own social and environmental concerns. It felt more possible (if not, more hopeful) to live sustainably, in the face of overwhelming scientific and economic realities.
This handbook investigates ‘member-owned’ organizations, whether consumer co-operatives, agricultural and producer co-operatives, worker co-operatives, mutual building societies, friendly societies, credit unions, solidarity organizations, mutual insurance companies, or employee-owned companies. Such organizations can be owned by the consumers, producers, or employees—whether through single-stakeholder or multi-stakeholder ownership.
Less well known is a third strand in the consensus braid: the practice of the Inuit, an indigenous people of the Arctic (they live in the north slope of Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, and Denmark). While these peace-loving people have never been large in number (their population is about 150,000 today) they have endured for millennia in a harsh natural environment that few covet—which has undoubtedly contributed to their survival.
Joselyn Mendoza and Lesly Herrera met as LGBTQ+ activists in upstate New York. As trans women and undocumented workers, they bonded over shared experiences—specifically, the difficulty of finding a dignified means of providing for themselves. So, to reclaim their economic futures, they founded the Mirror Beauty Cooperative in New York City.
The Freedom Quilting Bee was established in 1967 in Alabama. It is a handicraft cooperative founded by Black women in sharecropping families who needed to supplement their meager incomes, creating and selling exquisite quilts. In 1968, the cooperative bought 23 acres of land on which to build their sewing factory. They provided day care and after-school services for members’ children. The cooperative ownership of land provided members with independence and improved their well-being.
[Editor's note: while the Oak Street Cooperative's membership is limited to Vermont residents, the basic model is one that cooperators in other states may want to emulate.]
We’re aiming to raise that equity by selling member shares in the co-op to Vermont residents! The minimum investment is $1,000, and folks are encouraged to invest more (up to a maximum of $25,000), with the caveat that no member may own more than 10% of the total shares. A few key things to understand about co-op membership include:
[Editor's note: GEO featured an article on the Maryland Brush Co. in 2011. You can read it here.]
“The closing is not a unique story. The 29 previous years is the unique story,” says Deborah Groban Olson, a Michigan attorney and former chair of the National Center for Employee Ownership, who advised the company and has been instrumental in helping establish other worker-owned enterprises and cooperatives.
The Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC) is a global hub for research, community building, and advocacy of digital co-operative enterprises. The PCC supports the growth and conversion of hundreds of platform co-op businesses with tens of thousands of worker-owners around the world.
The Sustainable Economies Law Center is excited to add a new member to our team! We are looking for a new full-time co-worker (which we define as 30 hours per week) to help us refine and deepen our communications and narrative strategy for progressive change.
