Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy
Aide, a dog handler and shift leader, remembered this period as being really scary. “My first thought when I heard they were gonna close the daycare was, Oh my God, I need to find another job. I’m a college student, so I need a way to pay for my school and my bills,” she said. “I needed a backup right away.”
As COVID-19 has brought newsrooms worldwide to their knees, one French Canadian outlet is flourishing — less than a year after going bankrupt.
Quebec City’s Le Soleil doubled its number of readers this spring as the pandemic swept the globe. The French-language daily newspaper converted this into 3,500 new subscribers by the end of April, including 1,000 over a single 10-day period, according to Simon Audet, Le Soleil’s head of digital development.
Here I interview Tim Jenkin, Matthew Slater and Dil Green (and Keith the cat, briefly, until he got bored – see video) about the money system, the problems it causes and what could replace it. Fascinating insights from three people who have spent an enormous amount of time thinking about the money system.
When we participate in a democratic workplace or collective, we take on the incredible responsibility of shaping an institution—and we therefore have incredible power to resist the harmful cultures, practices, and policies that reinforce anti-Black racism in mainstream institutions. But the persistent messages that we receive that reinforce anti-Blackness can just as easily infiltrate our workplaces if we’re not dedicated to building a shared vision for collective liberation that centers Black liberation and self-determination.
Abstract
The paper aims to situate the debate on media workers co-ops. Thus, the article: a) discusses flexibilization and individualization of labor in the world of work of media workers; b) discusses the actuality of co-ops, between possibilities of real utopias and radical projects and contradictions involving the capitalist mode of production; c) describes some media workers co-ops, with emphasis on the Argentinean scenario, where the communication area was the one that grew the most in cooperative economy in the last two years.
WIR cooperative is one of the most mind-blowing cooperatives I’ve ever come across. It is a “mutual credit” cooperative in Switzerland that enables members to trade with each other in its own currency, “WIR”, which is valued the same as Swiss Francs, but can’t be exchanged to other currencies. It was founded during the great depression of the 1930s by a group of small business owners who were inspired by the theories of socialist Silvio Geselli.
Founded in 1986 by three food co-op employees in New England, each committed to sharing power rather than amassing it—among employees, farmers and consumers—Equal Exchange is now one of the largest worker-owned cooperatives in the U.S.
Headquartered in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, Equal Exchange distributes coffee, tea, bananas, chocolate and other organic, fair trade products sourced from more than 40 farmer co-ops in 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
A draft Worker Cooperatives Act submitted to Japan’s House of Representatives on 12 June would offer a specific legal form for worker co-operatives in the country. Existing legislation provides no legal entity for worker co-operatives. This means businesses cannot register as worker co-operatives, even when they operate in accordance with co-operative values and principles.
No two community bike workshops are the same. They’ve been set up by different people, for different reasons. Bristol Bike Project grew out of a smaller scheme, set up to recycle second-hand bikes and provide them free of charge to refugees.
The USFWC and DAWI is hosting a one-hour session featuring Wegner CPAs and help to answer questions you may have about the SBA's PPP Loan Forgiveness Application.
