Worker Cooperatives

A survey for cooperators, reflecting on the worker cooperative movement on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the founding of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives.

Cooperative development is the most important social change work that a person can do.

The music industry doesn’t have to be exploitative. What if artists owned the platforms we depend on? What if musicians shared resources, power, and profits—together?

In his From Capital to Commons, Hannes Gerhardt introduces us to an exploration of a world beyond capitalism.

 The ‘empresas recuperadas' or worker-recovered enterprise movement in Argentina emerged as a response to the country's sovereign debt crisis of 2001, with workers fighting for their right to run abandoned factories. Central to the movement is an ethos of solidarity, with worker-owned enterprises based on horizontal authority, collective decision-making and shared returns from the business.

They ride like the pro cyclists you see on TV, logging long hard miles, day in and out, but you won’t see them at the Tour De France. Instead, they tow 8-foot trailers stacked with over 300 pounds of trash through the streets, 365 days a year. 

In this episode, Squinky and Jess from Soft Chaos dive into the world of worker co-ops and how collective ownership fuels their bold, genre-defying work. Get a behind-the-scenes look at how they create deeply personal, experimental games and interactive art that push the boundaries of play.

Catalyst Cooperative is an all-remote, 8-person, tech worker cooperative based in North America. The coop was founded in 2017 with the mission to make US energy system data more accessible. Catalyst's main objectives are to curate the free, open-source Public Utilities Data Liberation project (PUDL) and help clients navigate a myriad of energy or environmental data needs.

B Lab’s research suggests that certification has at least struck a chord with consumers. While worker co-ops seem to perpetually struggle with a lack of “awareness” around the model, one in three consumers in Canada and the US reportedly understand the B Corp label.

In this video farm tour, we visit Ferme Coopérative Tourne-Sol, a thriving co-op farm just outside Montreal, Quebec. Farmers Dan Brisebois and Emily Board walk us through their seed-growing operation, discuss how their worker co-op farm was founded, and share how it functions today.