TROY — Cafe Euphoria, the Capital Region's first eatery founded by a collective of members of the transgender community and dedicated to providing a space for the LGBTQIA population with a largely vegetarian/vegan menu, has been in soft-opening mode for the past month and will host grand-opening event from 6:30 to 11 p.m. Friday...
Agriculture, and specifically the agrifood cooperative sector, has always integrated the principles of the circular economy, bioeconomy and sustainability into its activity.
Despite the recent shift to a worker-owned cooperative, Quesnelle says things haven’t changed much at D3. Rather, the transition has been more of a legal formality than an entirely new way of operating.
“[D3 has] always been very focused on collaboration and cooperative decision-making, so the switch to this employee-owner model is really just making that all legal,” Quesnelle says.
Worker-owned cooperatives are pretty rare. In California, there are only around 100 cooperatives doing business today. Cal Solar is the ONLY worker-owned solar cooperative in the state!
“Why is it that in conversations about ‘sustainability’ we talk about vegetables but not about people?” Ben Miller of South Philly Barbacoa and Masa Cooperativa asked me.
The number of worker cooperatives in the United States grew more than 30 percent since 2019, an astonishing figure when you consider the obstacles to new businesses during the pandemic. Through its bi-annual economic census completed in 2021, the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) verified 612 worker cooperatives employing 5,966 workers.
On July 2, cooperatives all around the world will celebrate the 100th International Day of Cooperatives (#CoopsDay). A decade on from the UN International Year of Cooperatives, which showcased the unique contribution of cooperatives to making the world a better place, this year’s #CoopsDay slogan --“Cooperatives Build a Better World”-- echoes the theme of the International Year.
This ILO Spotlight brief is jointly developed by the Social Protection Department and the Cooperatives Unit in the Enterprises Department. It focuses on mobilizing social and solidarity economy units towards universal social protection. The brief builds on the related section of the Office Report on “Decent work and the social and solidarity economy” prepared for general discussion at the International Labour Conference 110th Session, 2022 (paras 73 et seq.).
As workers speak up to advocate for their needs, companies accuse employees of being lazy while continuing to profit off their employees’ hard work. “The word “laziness” seems to be a buzzword vis-a-vis the phenomenon of people leaving bad work situations in search of better ones,” Akanjo writes about corporations’ attempts to deflect attention away from bad working conditions.
- Over a million people in France regularly invest in solidarity economy mutual funds, up from 50,000 only a decade ago. These funds invest 5-10% in solidarity economic enterprises, with cooperatives explicitly included as one of the main types of enterprises eligible for investment. The other types also resemble cooperatives in some key ways such as having similar distribution of surplus.
- The funds have grown eight fold in the last 10 years.
In its report, 2021 Food Co-op Impact Report, NCG references its vision for a food system which prioritises people’s wellbeing, across nine key areas: co-operatives, inclusive economies, racial equity, food justice, local food, organic certification, climate, environment and community.
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Even if promoting Black capitalism could close the racial wealth gap, is our vision of a just society in the US simply one where the top one percent is roughly 13 percent Black, 18 percent Latinx, six percent Asian, and 1.5 percent Native American—ie, one where the elite looks more like the mass of workers it exploits? Is massive wealth inequality justified so long as it is not racialized?
A nonprofit organization paid the landlord $2.6 million for the property in February 2022, and plans to eventually hand it over to the tenants, who will be able to buy their apartments for $2,500 each.
