Workplace Democracy

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

Ever dreamed about starting your own business with like-minded creators? A worker cooperative is a business that is owned and controlled by its workers. It is an underused model in the cultural industry that channels the creative power and freedom of the workers to build a world grounded in solidarity. Join us in this discussion on how Creative Workers Cooperatives function and how you can make one too! 

In this chapter, Luis Razeto identifies the key to the democratic transformation of the market – “the formation of a new social block, a subject of transformational action, the bearer of a new structure of social action” – and analyzes the various theoretical and practical obstacles that must be overcome in order for it to occur.

The GEO is back in print after 19 years! 

Unfortunately not everybody's experience of cooperatives is positive. For Elle, their time in co-operatives was both transformative, but also painful, marred by classism that often goes unnamed.

The new approach that Razeto proposes here is made up not through federation of cooperative businesses but association of individuals in small groups or base communities. This is his movement-building perspective: cooperative organizing from the grassroots, with a clear distinction drawn between representational and operational functions.

This article explores worker cooperatives’ possibilities and challenges of knowledge-making through constructive resistance within the capitalist market economy, based on qualitative material from five Swedish worker co-ops.

Chuck Bell interviews Delia Marx of Westchester Cooperative Network about the organization's work to promote the development of worker-owned cooperatives in Westchester, County, NY

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.