Cooperatives

Directory of American worker cooperatives, democratic ESOPs, sustainable enterprises, support organizations and resources.

From the publisher: Socially responsible investments have grown exceptionally in the same year that "moral values" determined a presidential election. So why has business been so slow to catch on? In a new book, The Company We Keep, small business owner and entrepreneur John Abrams makes a case for a return to workplace values, and shows how we can ultimately profit by them.

The Company we Keep is more than the success story of a revolutionary company. It sets down a framework for a model of employee ownership and community involvement that has piqued the interest of entrepreneurs around the country. In the words of Abrams, "This is a book about a different way of doing business in today's world-a way based on workplace democracy, shared ownership, staying small, building community, commitment to a place, and long term thinking."

From the author:
* The top 5% of Americans own just under 70% of all financial wealth.
* The top 1% of Americans now claim more income per year than the bottom 100 million Americans taken together.
* The top 2/10th of 1% makes more on the sale of stocks and bonds in one year than everyone else combined.

The distribution of wealth ownership in America is truly feudal--and deeply corrosive of our democracy. Is the growing concentration of wealth inevitable, or are there innovative models and policies that begin to point the way toward more equitable ownership of wealth by individuals, workers, communities?

The coming November election could become a truly fundamental turning point for Democrats and progressives.

The main link refers to an article from the Eugene Weekly about the Hoedads. This cooperative is no longer operational, though it had a good run, solid enough for any independent business. I'm giving it a link because the story is close to my own heart, since I worked in an Americorps forestry organization for a little while.

The Hoedads were a worker coop devoted to reforestation, and combined participatory democracy with sound business management and a commitment to ecological principles. I'm including several links about them.

Video clips from a Hoedads reunion

"Mudshark for Hire"

From a review in Social Anarchism:
"When Workers Decide: Workplace Democracy Takes Root in North America, edited by Len Krimerman and Frank Lindenfeld.
308 pp. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992. $16.95 paper.
Corporate capitalism is interested in one thing and one thing alone: profits. The end result is high unemployment, frequent recessions, devastated land- scapes, environmental degradation, and abandoned communities. How can workers take back control of their workplaces and thereby take back control of their lives?

From the publisher: - How buying fair trade can help change the world --

"A lively, accessible and inspiring survey of how fair trade is bringing new hope to poor producers around the world." Paul Chandler, Chief Executive, Traidcraft

"A wonderfully inspiring and uplifting book."

Caroline Lucas, Green Party MEP for South East England

"The best and most comprehensive guide around to the principles and practice of fair trade." Joanna Blythman, food writer and campaigner

"This well researched, balanced and inspiring book is a great guide to how and why the empowered individual can make a difference. " Craig Sams, founder of Green & Black's

From the publisher: After six years of economic development work in Africa, Ernesto Sirolli witnessed how little most foreign aid programs were actually doing for the people they hoped to help-from creating a communal tomato field on the banks of the Zambezi river (only to be demolished by the river's hippos at harvest time) to donating snow-plows to African nations! However well intentioned, Sirolli points out, inappropriate development often creates more problems than it solves.

Thus was the genesis of this exciting and unique alternative to traditional economic development termed "Enterprise Facilitation"- where depressed communities can build hope and prosperity by first helping individuals to recognize their talents and business passion, and then providing the skills to transform their dreams into meaningful and rewarding work.

[This book is not specifically about cooperatives, but fits into our local economic development theme.]

This is a very inspirational book. It features dozens of case studies of different types of cooperatives in every area of business, from value-added farmers' coops to worker cooperative bakeries to housing coops. A great read if you're looking to understand the breadth of possibility in the cooperative movement.

Our copy, used, good condition, $5

From the publisher: Employee ownership can pay bottom-line benefits. Today, more than 25% of American workers own stock in their employers. You can shop at employee-owned supermarkets such as Publix, buy Gore-Tex fabric from employee-owned W.L. Gore & Associates, and sip coffee served by employee owners at Starbucks. Now Corey Rosen, John Case, and Martin Staubus present convincing evidence that employee ownership can be much more than just a good benefit program. Done right, it can be the foundation for a new--and more effective--model of management. Drawing on first-hand studies of dozens of companies from large corporations to local retailers, the authors show that the "equity model" enables firms to grow faster and more profitably than conventionally run competitors. Vivid examples of both winning and failed attempts at employee ownership reveal the key concepts that make the model successful and suggest how managers can adapt these strategies for use in their own companies.

From the publisher: Excerpt from the Preface

The Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain, at more than fifty years of age, remain the world's outstanding example of building a cooperative social system within the context of a now global market economy. This effort is foremost an adventure. It's an expression of individual and collective energies and dreams, as well as the requisite careful business practice of tens of thousands of cooperators engaged as social entrepreneurs.