Worker Cooperative Credit Union Proposal 

Participants will discuss the need and opportunities for a financial institution dedicated to worker cooperative financing and development. A credit union or cooperative bank can meet several key needs: providing financing for worker cooperatives; providing accessible financial services that specifically benefit worker cooperatives as a socially responsible investment option; and supporting and expanding entrepreneurial and development activities for worker cooperatives. An overview of the existing financial resources for worker cooperatives will be presented as well as current impediments to worker cooperative development. This will be followed by a discussion of the suitability of a credit union to meet these needs, given business lending restrictions, the common bond, and chartering requirements. A worker cooperative bank will be presented as a preferred but currently impractical alternative. Interested workshop participants may form a steering committee to move this discussion into its initial development phases. See http://workercoopfcu.org/ for more information.

Brent Emerson is a founding worker-owner at Electric Embers Cooperative and a worker cooperative activist. He served on NoBAWC’s first Board (2006) and is a member of the advisory board of the Worker Ownership Fund. Brent previously worked as a technology consultant to progressive nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area and was a founding member of the tech underground. He graduated from Brown University in 1998 with a B.A. in Philosophy (Logic & Philosophy of Science) and Mathematics. Brent currently resides in Portland, OR. Michael Leung is working on starting a worker cooperative credit union. He graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 2000 with a B.S. in Engineering Physics and completed his Ph.D. in Physics at Princeton University in 2006. Michael consults for the Princeton University Physics Department. His primary interests are human rights, power structures, poverty, and development. He currently lives in the Boston, MA area and will be moving to Berkeley, CA.