Permanent link to this article: http://geo.coop/node/585

By Traci Kuratomi, current Fulbright Fellow in Argentina

In 2001, Argentina was devastated by an economic crisis that led to widespread deindustrialization and unemployment levels of 21 percent. As factories closed, thousands of people suddenly found themselves jobless and without the possibility of finding work. Worse, the factory owners who declared bankruptcy often owed their workers months of wages and failed to provide workers severance pay.

Permanent link to this article: http://geo.coop/node/440

By Aaron Dawson, Equal Exchange

In reflecting back to the 2009 Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, what impresses me the most is how much more action it has generated since the meeting! This is exciting to me as I have been to five worker co-op conferences and this is the first time that I feel so much movement is happening on so many levels.

Third Coast Workers Cooperative (TCWC) is an new cooperative development center in Austin that works with low-income communities to help them produce their own environmentally friendly, worker-owned businesses.

By Joe Marraffino, Arizmendi Development and Support Cooperative

Since the mid-1990s a group of worker cooperative organizers in the San Francisco Bay Area has been developing a new model for cooperative development.  Our organization, the Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives, is a network, incubator, and technical assistance provider that is owned, governed, and funded by the member workplaces it creates and serves.  Our primary activity is to replicate and offer continuing support to new retail bakeries based on a proven cooperative business model.   

Past issues of GEO have reported on the emergence of a particular type of worker cooperative, the home care cooperative. In the 1980s, the federal government followed the lead of state governments like Wisconsin and acknowledged that elderly and disabled people who need help in day-to-day living are best served by in-home assistance. Medicare and Medicaid funding that would have otherwise been used only for nursing homes would now be applicable to home care services. With "the gray tsunami" of aging baby boomers looming, demand is only going to increase for the next few decades.

By John Zippert, Federation of Souther Cooperatives

From August 16-18, 2007, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund will celebrate its fortieth (40th) anniversary and Annual Meeting. Growing from 22 cooperatives and credit unions organized by SNCC, CORE, SCLC and other civil rights organizations in the South in the 1960's, the Federation has worked with thousands of Black farmers and other low income rural folks over the past four decades.