On the top floor of an old industrial building at 41 Jackson St., steps from a factory where garment workers a hundred years ago made women’s corsets, a printers’ cooperative […]
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Illinois Proposal Aims To Empower Worker Co-ops
Co-ops allow their employees to also be the owners. But state law doesn’t recognize them as a business entity, which makes it hard to get financial backing. State Rep. Carol […]
Read More >What if Workers Owned Their Workplaces?
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, […]
Read More >Changing its tune: Downtown Sounds to become worker-owned cooperative after retirement of founder Joe Blumenthal
“It’s really an institution in the community,” Blumenthal said this week. Blumenthal, 70, opened the store in 1976, with no musical background. Yet his father told him that if he […]
Read More >Berkeley Pledges Support and Funding for Worker Co-ops
Last week, the Cheeseboard’s longtime home committed to a new strategy for fighting economic inequality and building the local economy: city support for worker cooperatives. The Berkeley City Council voted […]
Read More >3 surprising facts that will change the way you think about worker cooperatives: Q&A with Virginie Pérotin
Is it really easier, as some have said, to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism? In the capitalist model, corporations are treated as […]
Read More >Fashion production co-op run by refugee, immigrant women to open in Chicago
“…Now, Mercy — who asked that we not use her last name — is one of three founding members of Blue Tin Production, a fashion production co-op run by immigrant […]
Read More >Support for Employee Ownership Climbs Nationally
Last year’s Main Street Employee Ownership Act, which authorized firms seeking to convert to employee ownership to access Small Business Administration partially-guaranteed loans of up to $5 million, was the first […]
Read More >New Program Helps Businesses, Non-Profits Create an Ownership Culture—Even If They’re Not Employee-Owned
The New Jersey/New York Center for Employee Ownership at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) and the Democracy at Work Institute today announced a new program to […]
Read More >A National Worker Co-op Financing Network Emerges
Connelly and others recognized that the community needed to take the lead in its own revival—or else risk having others develop the community, but in ways that promote gentrification and […]
Read More >The Co-op That’s Keeping Community Money Out of Big Banks
Connelly’s credit union is part of a strategy by a nonprofit consortium of investors, financial organizations, and community development groups known as the Financial Cooperative to set up locally controlled […]
Read More >Can Employee Ownership Preserve Durham’s Legacy of Black Businesses?
Pettigrew is one of three city employees serving as fellows in the Shared Equity in Economic Development (SEED) Fellowship, developed by the National League of Cities and the Democracy at Work Institute […]
Read More >Nonprofit helps employees take hold of reins as business owners retire
“I’ve been approaching retirement for a long time,” Adams said with a chuckle. “I couldn’t imagine being 80 and carrying on at the same level, but how else do you […]
Read More >Employee-Owned Businesses a Tool for Equitable Growth
ncome and wealth inequality, exploitative working conditions and displacement are critical issues faced by communities across the country. These challenges require strategies that create both stable employment and access to […]
Read More >This new fund will help retiring baby boomers turn their businesses into worker co-ops
In May, the Evergreen Cooperatives, a network of worker-owned businesses in Cleveland, took over operations of a laundry facility owned by the Cleveland Clinic. On the surface, it was a […]
Read More >New Cleveland Fund Will Acquire Businesses and Sell Them Back to Workers
Tameka Thomas had returned to society after a five-year prison sentence, and a month after her release, she landed a job with Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland with help from a re-entry transition […]
Read More >Worker Ownership Initiative Launched by Nonprofit Lender in Nation’s Capital
Last week, a nonprofit community development financial institution (CDFI), the Washington Area Community Investment Fund (WACIF), which has operated in the nation’s capital since 1987, launched its DC Employee Ownership Initiative to help existing worker-owned business […]
Read More >Coalition Launches Rural Employee Ownership Transition Initiative in Maine
Two months ago, NPQ profiled an initiative supported by US Department of Agriculture (USDA) grants to encourage retiring business owners to sell their businesses to their employees in Oregon, Washington. Now a […]
Read More >Worker Ownership Initiative Launched by Nonprofit Lender in Nation’s Capital
The initiative will also provide lending support not just to businesses that convert to employee ownership, but to businesses that launch as worker cooperatives. An example cited at the forum […]
Read More >Worker Cooperative Resolution Passes Unanimously in Cook County
The Cook County measure, in which the Cook County Board of Commissioners asserted its support for the development and growth of worker cooperatives, passed unanimously on October 17th. Getting legislation passed in […]
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