"With the recent political events here in Madison, there has been a surge of interest in the cooperative model. Some of us here at Community Pharmacy have found ourselves explaining what a worker cooperative is to many folks at rallies and other events. Simply put, a worker cooperative is a business that is owned and controlled by its workers."

Are you a New York State worker, entrepreneur, or business owner who is interested in funded technical assistance for starting or transitioning to a worker cooperative?  If so please voice your support by Tuesday, 9/27 for a pilot worker cooperative incubator and technical assistance center in the Southern Tier.  Joe Marraffino (Democracy at Work Network) and Gay Nicholson (Sustainable Tompkins) will carry your expression of demand to the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council seeking funding to launch this new center. 

It is the legislative policy of New York State to promote the creation of worker cooperatives - businesses owned and democratically controlled by their workers. The legislature recognizes that "cooperative ownership will result in increased job satisfaction and increased productivity and will enable workers to receive the fullest economic benefits from their endeavors," will "result in the creation of new jobs in all economic sectors, will offer greater economic stability," and "will discourage the movement of capital and jobs out of this state." Worker cooperatives are also an important tool for creating a green and just economy via community wealth building as "entities in which ownership is broadly shared, locally rooted, and directed toward the common good."

The regional Councils have until November 14th to submit their proposals for economic development in a competition for several $40 million dollar grants.  We'd like to see some of those funds invested in social and economic justice.  New York State residents, please click here to express your support!

"I've been working with many different volunteer collectives over the years; various Community Bike Shops, Wayward Council (a Record Store & Venue), All Ages Venues, Books for Prisoners, Food Not Bombs, a Cafe Collective, Community Info Shops, and more. All the while learning skills and trades and perfecting hobbies and crafts, and working 'real' jobs with bosses and managers and the like to make ends meet in the 'real world.'

Worker Owned businesses are functional examples of the goals many of us share; working together towards equality and freedom in the workplace and our communities that is unprecedented by any other model.  Why the Twin Cities? Minnesota has a particularly vibrant history of co-ops and collectives, inlucding land and food co-ops facilitated by northern euorpean settlers in the 1800's.

I went into the Seward Community Cafe and Hard Times Cafe in Minneapolis several years ago and asked if they could produce any publicized material on how they conducted business as a collective, with the intentions of finding working models to structure future collective projects. Neither spot could provide me with the information, most of the it are in folders and stacks of old documents in the basement, and both expressed that it would be a good idea to have it available in a way that was more understandable by other like minded folks that were interested in the Collective Process and possibly starting up a collective business or few in their own communities.  So I decided to be the one to do just that."

"In New York City many are imagining--and creating--another way to do business. They are economic innovators combining new and old practices to align their businesses and organizations with strong values of justice, sustainability, democracy, and cooperation. Together, they make up something called the solidarity economy..."

"We're bringing the stories of these economic innovators to life through 7 short films, 1 stop-motion animation, and an informational website. Each film portrait examines the values and practices of a given business or organization through the story of an individual leader. We've included a reiki practitioner at a worker co-operative in Brooklyn; two co-founders of Brooklyn food co-operatives, including the most successful food co-op in America; a co-founder of a barter network for artists; a member of a 32-year-old successful intentional community on Staten Island; a community resident advocating for participatory budgeting in East Harlem; a board member at a Lower East Side community development credit union; and a veteran community gardens advocate in the Bronx...  Here's a sample from our food co-op film to give you an idea."

Gordon Edgar, cheesemonger/owner/author at Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, reflects upon the Western conference at Breitenbush.  Gordon was a keynote speaker at the conference this year.

"My favorite workshop was the one promoting peer technical advisors sponsored by the US Federation of Worker Co-ops. [See DAWN] One co-worker of mine is actually going through the one-year training program right now, but I’ve informally (for Rainbow) been doing technical assistance for 15 years or so. The meat of the workshop involved small groups using the USFWC guidelines to decide how to proceed on requests for assistance sent to the Federation. These were real requests and – as they often come to me – were confused, hopeful, exciting, depressing, revealing, and baffling all at once. One envisions it being clear cut, “Hi, I represent 10 people trying to start a wood-working collective”, but oh, in real life it so isn’t.

I realized that my years of frustration with this was coming out during the workshop. I knew I needed to tone it down when I tried to get to the bottom of the role play by saying to our (role-playing too well a particularly confused) requestor, “What do you want from us?” The kinda-new-to-co-ops person next to me looked at me in horror and said the much nicer, “We really appreciate your enthusiasm but maybe you could narrow down your focus.” That really probably would be a better approach."

Gordon blogs on cheese, co-ops, and the world at gordonzola.net.

The Sweetwork Project is organizing a worker-owned organic grocery store in West Harlem. "The store will hire young people who have recently aged out of New York City youth services." The project website offers their starting Mission and Ownership Statement and their Business Plan.

Doing Democracy, 10 Practical Arts is a 50 page handbook offered as a companion to Frances Moore Lappé's 2006 book Democracy’s Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life. "It is designed for educators, group leaders, and any citizen who wants to become more powerful. We humans may be born innately social creatures; but to be effective in creating societies we want, it helps to approach democracy-making as a learned art. As with any art – from ballet to basketball – breaking the process down into its core elements can facilitate learning."

"We’ve chosen ten arts of democracy – a nice round number – not with any pretense of creating an exhaustive guide. Rather, these practices are a starting point. They contribute to enhanced decision-making, mutual regard, group learning and staying power. We’re convinced that the better we become in practicing such arts, the more satisfying our public lives become. Our improved public practice moreover, also enhances our private lives as well."

The ten arts of democracy explored in this handbook are 

1. Active Listening – encouraging the speaker and searching for meaning
2. Creative Conflict – confronting others in ways that produce growth
3. Mediation – facilitating interaction to help people in conflict hear each other
4. Negotiation – problem solving that meets some key interests of all involved
5. Political Imagination – reimaging our futures according to our values
6. Public Dialogue – public talk on matters that concern us all
7. Public Judgment – public decision making that allows citizens to make choices they are willing to help implement
8. Celebration and Appreciation – expressing joy and appreciation for what we learn as well as what we achieve
9. Evaluation and Reflection – assessing and incorporating the lessons we learn through action
10. Mentoring – supportively guiding others in learning these arts of public life

Nabolom is a worker-owned collective bakery and café, operating in Berkeley since 1976. We are currently looking for 2-3 new full-time and/or part-time workers. Ideally, each worker would eventually expand into all aspects of the bakery including full collective ownership.   This position requires scheduling flexibility and is not an after-school or seasonal job. The bakery is staffed 24 hours a day and can require unusual hours.

Requirements

• Minimum 1 year commitment (looking for long term members interested in ownership)
• Interest in participating fully in a worker-owned cooperative
• Ability to attend Collective Meetings on Monday afternoons
• Ability to lift 50 pounds and stand for 8+ hours
• Baking and/or food production experience
• Excellent communication skills
• Demonstrable initiative
• Delivery Driver candidates must be 21+ years old, have a valid CA state driver’s license, and a clean driving record (driving is not required for all candidates)

Preferred

• Baking and/or customer service experience
• Collective experience or familiarity with consensus process

Please state your preferred shifts in your cover letter. All workers train on the store shift and then learn new shifts. Priority is given to candidates able to work over-nights and weekends.

• store: 6:30 am-2 pm, 1 pm-8:30 pm
• prep: 9 am-5 pm, 2 pm-10pm
• bake: 7 pm-3 am, 3 am-11am
• office: 9-5ish twice a week
• delivery: midnight to 7 am

We are looking to hire someone who is responsible, self-motivated, good at communicating, and fun to work with. Compensation is based on a shift-pay system with hourly wages. No health benefits currently offered, but we are working on it!  If you are interested in joining the Nabolom community and feel you fit this description, please bring a resume and cover letter by the bakery as soon as possible.

The Friends of Old Puppy band plays at the Nabolom Bakery. 

Internal financing through retained patronage is an very useful innovation for the capitalization of small and medium-sized worker cooperatives.  Explaining how it works it to members can be easier with a handy flow chart.  Here are some examples, in which you can see the percentages retained or distributed vary according to the cooperative.  Click the images to enlarge them.  

From the CFNE and ICA presentation to VEOC. 

From Melissa Hoover's presentation to MadWORC.

From an Arizmendi Association presentation through CooperationWorks!

From the ICA Illustrated Guide to Internal Capital Accounts.

From Jessica Hiemenz' presentation on Equal Exchange, appended to her SNHU research:

My attempt at a streamlined general flow to emphasize the end goal of having operating capital.

Telling the stories behind co-operatives is the basis of the ICA’s public awareness campaign in 2012.  stories.coop is a global, digital campaign which aims to promote the understanding and an appreciation of the co-operative sector.  “Stories.coop will tell how many diverse and great co-operative experiences can be found around the world and how deep their impact is on the lives of millions of people, especially at this time, with the economic crisis beating so hard,” Gianluca Salvatori, ceo of Euricse, told the eDigest. 

The campaign – with its story telling core - is a partnership between the ICA and the Italian research institute Euricse – the European Research Institute on Cooperatives and Social Enterprise, based in Trento, Italy.  stories.coop will feed one story a day to the official 2012 website, www.2012.coop, where it will appear as the major feature on any given day of the International Year 2012. That daily showcase story will be chosen by an independent panel of experts drawn from the co-operative sector.

"Thanks to Women for Women, a women’s giving circle administered by the Community Foundation of WNC that provides grants to nonprofits addressing the needs of women and girls in Western North Carolina, CPC was awarded $20,000 to continue supporting job creation through worker owned businesses.

This project focuses on expanding the development of worker-owned, cooperative small businesses that will sustain 20 part-to-full time jobs and will create 8-10 new living-wage, dignified, part-to-full time jobs across Western NC for very low-income immigrant women.

This project provides intensive support to three worker-owned small businesses already created by Latinas in Burke, Buncombe, and Transylvania counties.  Additionally, there are two new cooperatives: one emerging cooperative in Henderson County (Green Muse Home Cleaning) which currently has 4 members and has been meeting regularly since September 2010, and one new initiative."

"The mission of the Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network is to promote the development of worker coops in the state of Oklahoma by creating a structure of support, involving education, business incubation, access to financing, and training, that empowers stakeholders to bring about economic opportunity, personal development, and revitalized local communities. The Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network  operates as a limited cooperative association.

We envision an interconnected system of worker owned cooperatives that fosters fairness and security for local economies, functions in harmony with local ecosystems, supports just, safe and democratic worker environments, and provides the basis for a joyful, prosperous community life for all Oklahomans."

What is a worker-owned cooperative? How can it benefit Oklahomans?  Nine free evening workshops in central Oklahoma are offered September 25 - October 25, 2011 in Oklahoma City (NW, SE, SW, and NE), Edmond, El Reno, Norman, and Shawnee.

Here are some readings to become familiar with the waves of cooperative organizing that have been a part of the United States' history.  Many cooperative guides will use the Rochdale Pioneers and Mondragon as historical touchstones, but there is quite a storied, innovative and contemporary history within the United States that is worth getting to know.

Overview

• American Producer Cooperatives and Employee-owned firms: A Historical Perspective by Derek Jones.  1984
• For All the People: Uncovering the Hidden History of Cooperation by John Curl.  2009

1800s worker cooperatives

• Cooperative Cooperages of Minneapolis 1874-1931 

• The Citizen Producer: the Rise and Fall of Working-Class cooperatives in the United States by Steve Leikin. 1999

• The Practical Utopians: American workers and the cooperative movement in the Gilded Age by Steve Leikin. 2005

• History of Coöperation in the United States (1888)
• 1866: The Cooperative Foundry in Troy, New York

Cooperatives of the 1930s

• Living in the U.X.A. by John Curl.  1983
• Co-operative League of U.S.A Publication Archive

The Plywood Cooperatives of the Pacific Northwest

Twenty four worker-owned plywood manufactories prospered in Washington and Oregon between the 1930s and 1970s.  

• Worker-owned Plywood Companies of the Pacific Northwest by Ben Craig and John Pencavel.  1993
• Plywood Co-operatives of the Pacific Northwest: Endangered Species by Christopher Gunn. 1993
• Spillovers From Cooperative and Democratic Workplaces: Have the Benefits Been Oversold? By Edward Greenberg.  2008
• Worker participation: lessons from the worker co-ops of the Pacific Northwest by John Pencavel. 2001

Sunset Scavenger

The independent garbage collectors of San Francisco organized into a worker cooperative in the 1920s that held the municipal monopoly to serve most neighborhoods in the city.  Their organization demutualized in the 1970s.   

• Collecting garbage: dirty work, clean jobs, proud people by Stewart E. Perry, Raymond Russell.  1998

The Federation for Economic Democracy

The Federation for Economic Democracy (or FEDO) was a network of local technical assistance organizations advocating worker cooperatives and self-management from 1975 to 1977 in the eastern United States.  Local nodes of the Federation became the Boston-area Industrial Cooperative Association and the Philadelphia-based PACE.   

• The Federation for Economic Democracy 
• Building Support Systems for Worker Cooperatives by George Benello. 1982
• ICA Model Bylaws for A Worker Cooperative.  1983
• A Targeted Approach to Worker Co-op Development: Lessons from Mondragon and Northern Italy, by Sherman Kreiner. 1989

Youngstown and the Campbell Iron Works

The shutdown of the Campbell Works in 1978 galvanized a lot of the cooperative organizing efforts of the Northeast.  Though the project did not succeed, both the Ohio Employee Ownership Center and eht University of Maryland's Democracy Collaborative were founded by people involved in the rescue attempt. 

• Steelyard Blues by Paula Cizmar. 1978
• Worker Ownership as a Means of Reducing Regional Unemployment and its Application to Steel Plant Shutdowns By Peter Berg. 1983

Rescuing Plant Shutdowns

• Employee Ownership Case Studies, by Deborah Olson

• When Workers Take Over the Plant, by Carey English

• Labor Research Review 1985 edition on "Workers as Owners"

• The South Bend Lathe Story: What Can We Learn from an ESOP "Failure?", by N. Kurland

• A Noble Experiment Goes Bankrupt, by T. Lueck

• Coops and ESOPs in America: Worker Ownership’s Uncertain Future: Lessons from Two Decades of Trials, by Len Krimerman

The O&O Supermarkets

The O&O Supermarkets were a series of worker cooperatives in the Philadelphia area in the 1980s.  The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1357, in partnership with Philadelphia Area Cooperative Enterprise (PACE), organized the first two stores in 1982 as part of a negotiation to keep the stores from being shut down by A&P.

• The O&O Supermarkets, an overview
• Worker Ownership as the Basis for an Integrated, Proactive Development Model by Sherman L. Kreiner. 1987

The Influence of Mondragon

The success of the Mondragon Cooperatives has been an inspiration for American Cooperative organizers ever since word arrived.   Previous to Mondragon the best large scale implementation of the cooperative idea available was the socialist self-management of Yugoslavia.   

• The Mondragon System of Worker Production Cooperatives, Ana Gutierrez Johnson and William Foote Whyte.  1977
• From Mondragón to Ohio: Building Employee Ownership by John Logue.  2001
• In Cleveland, Worker Co-Ops Look to a Spanish Model by Judith Schwartz. 2009

The counterculture

Many small worker cooperatives formed as part of the counterculture in urban areas in the 1970s.

• The Bay Area Directory of Collectives.  1980
• The Shape of the Small Worker Cooperative Movement, Robert Jackall and Joyce Crain.  1984
• Cooperatives in the late twentieth century: the democratic impulse and the challenge of oligarchy.  Joyce Rothschild. 1986

The Hoedads

The Hoedads were a network of worker cooperative tree planters that reforested the Pacific Northwest after logging.  At peak they had 13 crews and over 300 workers.

• Tree Planters: The mighty Hoedads, back for a 30-year reunion, recall their grand experiment by Lois Wadsworth
• Hoedads Celebrate Reforestation History By Roscoe Caron
• Birth of a cooperative: Hoedads, Inc., a worker owned forest labor co-op by Hal Hartzell

Histories of Contemporary Worker Cooperatives

Sometimes people remark that worker cooperatives were a phenomenon of the 1970s, but there are plenty of examples of startups, some of them quite innovative, during the 1980s and 1990s. 

• History of Union Cab Cooperative: The First Twenty Years (founded in 1977)
• The Workers' Owned Sewing Company (founded in 1979)
• Isthmus Engineering (founded in 1980)
• Alvarado Street Bakery (founded in 1981)
• A Brief History of Cooperative Home Care Associates (founded in 1985)

• Equal Exchange: a Vision of Fairness to Farmerse (founded in 1986)

• South Mountain Company (mutualized in 1987)

• WAGES and the Eco-Friendly Cleaning Co-op Network (founded in 1994)

• The Replication of Arizmendi Bakery (founded in 1994)

Demutualizations

Demutualization, or restructuring as non-democratic corporation usually to sell to an outside buyer, can be a problem if a cooperative is struggling OR if it is too successful.  Demutualizations of two of the larger West Coast worker cooperatives created stir a few years back.

• Good Vibrations Restructures as California Corporation.  2006

• The Rise and Fall of Burley Design Cooperative, by Joel Schoening

Conferences and Federations

During the late 1990s and 2000 a serious organizing effort was made toward creating federations of the somewhat isolated worker cooperatives in the country.  

• Network of Bay Area Worker Collectives (NoBAWC) History
• Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives (VAWC) to Publish a Movement Book by Michael Johnson.  2009
• Western Worker Cooperative Conference
• Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy
• Regional Histories  from the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives
• The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives Has Issued a Call for Membership
• The US Federation of Worker Cooperatives at Two

"The U.S. fiscal and economic challenges today stem from a basic problem: too many companies and assets are owned solely for profit. It boils down to what I will call an ownership crisis.  Because mortgages were owned by investors all over the world, when the U.S. housing market collapsed, the pain was global, as homeowners and financial institutions went into a downward economic spiral. Now, the debates surrounding the growing federal debt raise related concerns: Who owns America? Will foreign nations continue to buy Treasury securities and invest in U.S. businesses?

Expanding the “cooperative” economy could buffer the nation against future crises.  The past three years show us why it is time to consider a different approach to ownership: cooperatives. If more assets and businesses were owned and controlled by the people who use them, our economy could be more stable."

Economist Wilhelmina Leigh advocates for cooperatives in the New York Times.  Adam Trott, Rodney North, and Enrico Massetti are among the many who pitch in with comments.  You can too. 

"In nearby Richmond, a city of 120,000 residents with a 17 percent unemployment rate that is nearly twice the national average, city officials are trying different things.  The city has embarked on a program to help promote the growth of co-op businesses to create job opportunities and provide avenues to create stable incomes for unskilled and hard-core unemployed residents.  The program started last year after Green Mayor Gayle McLaughlin visited the Mondragon Corp., a federation of worker cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. She was part of a national delegation."

"There are many different kinds of co-ops, and we're focusing on worker co-ops where people own their own jobs and manage themselves," said Terry Baird, who was hired by Richmond as a consultant. Baird, a Richmond resident, is a co-founder of Arizmendi Cooperative Inc., and a co-op owner of the Arizmendi Bakery on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland.

And so far, Richmond is not lacking for ideas, Baird said.  Miguel Espino, who established the East Bay Agricultural Project, wants to establish aquaponics farms in Richmond that grow fish and vegetables.

Baird has consulted with a budding North Richmond health food co-op, an electric bicycle builder and a group that wants to sell hydroponically grown organic foods.  Most recently, Baird advised the Latina Center, a women's group of Central and South American immigrants who dream of one day running a bakery similar to Arizmendi.

Baird, a 30-year veteran in co-op enterprises, has advised the group to start small and think big. The costs of starting up most of these ventures are low. Instead of a bakery operation, Baird recommended creating a "pop-up" restaurant, in which an existing, often struggling, restaurant allows other chefs to use existing facilities to launch a new business.  The model has been used in San Francisco and Berkeley, a leader in the co-op businesses and home to some of the most well-established co-op-owned businesses in the nation."

Via the San Francisco Chronicle

Image from Richmond Confidential: "Mayor McLaughlin lead a discussion Tuesday night at the Richmond Public Library, fielding questions and listening to ideas. Terry Baird of the Arizmendi Bakery Cooperative (back right) explains why the company isn't currently interested in bringing a bakery to Richmond."

Related

• Mayor of Richmond, CA, Seeking Cooperative Developer
• Mayor Gayle McLaughlin on Cooperatives in Richmond
• Richmond, CA signs letter of intent to collaborate with Mondragon