Michelle Chen at The Nation writes—What if Workers Owned Their Workplaces? The cooperative movement is showing that worker-owned businesses can not only survive, but thrive:
Can good values be good business, too? For generations, the cooperative movement has been answering with a resounding “Yes!”
After a surge of entrepreneurial fervor following the 2007 economic collapse, cooperative ventures are even getting a nod from our divided government: In August, Congress passed the Main Street Employee Ownership Act. The measure aims to help launch the next crop of worker-ownership ventures by directing the Small Business Administration to take proactive steps to increase technical and financial assistance for budding worker-owned cooperatives. Although the law does not provide major new funding, advocates hope it broadens avenues for securing seed financing, and for conducting community-outreach programs through local SBA offices.
Although the law offers just a small boost to the sector, according to Melissa Hoover, executive director of the Democracy at Work Institute, “It’s a start. It’s the very first time that anyone ever said worker coops matter in federal legislation.”
Often the main barrier to launching a coop is simply lack of knowledge—worker cooperatives aren’t just a fluffy hippie social experiment, they’re viable businesses with a track record of promoting civic-minded sustainable enterprises. What worker-owned cooperatives offer is simply this: a stake for each worker in the future. Based on a structure centered on shared equity and worker autonomy, the business model, which hews to a principle of “one-member-one-vote” workplace governance, intrinsically guarantees that each worker profits in tandem with their labor. The key difference from the conventional corporate model is that workers share in the equity and direct how funds are reinvested, be it in pay raises and pensions, new hires, or investing in tech upgrades and staff training.
According to surveys of the roughly 300 to 400 cooperatives nationwide, more than a third were launched since 2000. [...]
Indivisible’s list of Resistance Events & Groups xPretty clear it’s now a mainstream GOP position that most US domestic policy between 1929 and 1981 was “socialist†🤔
— Sean Hecht (@seanhecht) March 11, 2019On this date at Daily Kos in 2011—Wisconsin legislator files complaint over Walker's stealthy union-busting vote:
Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, filed a complaint Thursday morning with the Dane County district attorney charging that the Joint Conference Committee that convened at 6 p.m. Wednesday and passed an amended version of Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill is in violation of the open meetings law.
Earlier, former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, who now represents AFSCME, said it was "clear...on it's face" that the conference committee meeting was violated Wisconsin's open meetings law which requires twenty-four hours public notice. The meeting last night was held after less than two hours of notice, far short of the statutory requirement. Even if courts conclude that the meeting was held in violation of the law, it isn't a guarantee that their action will be voided. But at the very least, it gives opponents of the legislation a cause of action to keep the the fight against the legislation alive even as recall efforts pick up steam.
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