Worker Cooperatives

Transform Finance Executive Director Curt Lyon talks with Jim, Matt, and Josh about their work educating investors about ways to support businesses with a focus on worker empowerment.

Practical tools to build real diversity, inclusion, and racial justice, and need for a cultural shift- planned by CWCF's Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion ("JEDI") Committee as part of their action plan.

Industrias del Orinoco, C.A. (Indorca) is a factory without bosses in the industrial city of Puerto Ordaz in Bolívar state, the home of Venezuela’s basic industries. Indorca workers carried out a heroic three-year struggle to gain control of the factory after the former owner brought it to a halt. Since 2015, when Venezuela’s Ministry of Labor extended a mandate giving the workers control over Indorca, the enterprise has been democratically managed by the women and men who produce here day in and day out.

In Thailand, several traditional cooperatives are offering products and services through digital platforms. While these may be considered Platform Co-ops, their primary revenue does not stem from the platform but from conventional business operations. This differs from the focus of this blog article, which refers to businesses that operate online through websites or mobile apps and are characterized by democratic decision-making and platform ownership by workers and users.

In the heart of Victoria, British Columbia, a remarkable transformation story has been threaded by The Make House. What started as a 10-year-old sole proprietorship blossomed into a worker co-operative in December 2022.

Industrias del Orinoco, C.A. (Indorca) is a factory without bosses in the industrial city of Puerto Ordaz in Bolívar state, the home of Venezuela’s basic industries. Indorca’s workers carried out a heroic three-year struggle to gain control of the factory after the former owner brought it to a halt. Since 2015, when Venezuela’s Ministry of Labor extended a mandate giving the workers control over Indorca, the enterprise has been democratically managed by the women and men who produce here day in and day out.

Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard summarizes her work on solidarity economics and worker cooperatives.

As baby boomer business owners retire, their employees are taking ownership of their own futures.

A series of 6 videos from CWCF on how to develop a worker co-op.

Healthcare-based interventions addressing social needs such as food and housing generally fail to impact the upstream wealth and power inequities underlying those needs. However, a small number of US healthcare organizations have begun addressing these upstream inequities by partnering with community wealth building initiatives. These initiatives include community land trusts, resident-owned communities, and worker cooperatives, which provide local residents ownership and control over their housing and workplaces. While these partnerships represent a novel, upstream approach to the social determinants of health, no research has yet evaluated them.