Why Worker Owned?

A worker cooperative is an alternative for-profit structure designed to bring equity and democracy to the workplace. Worker cooperatives are values-driven businesses that put worker and community benefit at the core of their purpose. In contrast to traditional companies, worker members at worker cooperatives participate in the profits, oversight, and often management of the enterprise using democratic practices. The model has proven to be an effective tool for creating and maintaining sustainable, dignified jobs; generating wealth; improving the quality of life of workers; and promoting community and local economic development, particularly for people who lack access to business ownership or sustainable work options.

Benefits
Cooperatives are the only form of business centered around membership, and member and community benefit is at the core of the cooperative model. Worker cooperative businesses are owned and run by their members, the people who work in them, and they operate for the benefit of these members.

The member benefits are multiple. A cooperative can be a way for people to start and own a small business together when they may lack the means or expertise to do so alone. Worker cooperative members can build assets in their cooperative business by retaining surplus every year in individual capital accounts. In a worker cooperative, workers own their jobs, so they decide how they are treated and how they want to operate the business. Worker-owners also get a lot of practice making decisions, building their skills in a variety of areas, and participating democratically in a process to benefit the larger group. These are the skills and habits of engaged community members, and they don’t stop at the workplace: you will often find worker-owners involved in the community in other ways.

Community benefits are clear too. Successful worker cooperatives tend to create long-term stable jobs, enact sustainable business practices, and develop linkages among different parts of the social economy. Worker-owned businesses have not only a direct stake in the local environment but the power to decide to do business in a way that is sustainable for us all. The worker cooperative movement is increasingly recognized as part of the larger movement for sustainability and a new economy based on people’s needs.

Cooperatives have a long history as a way for working people to create good, dignified jobs that they control, particularly for people who lack access to business ownership or even stable work options.  Organizations undertaking economic development to build wealth in poor communities and communities of color have used worker cooperatives as a powerful vehicle for addressing economic inequality. Worker cooperatives have been shown to provide better working conditions and wages for typically low-wage work, and to increase household wealth for low-income workers. Worker cooperatives can also play an important role in building movements for economic justice and social change. As institutions where real democracy is practiced on a day to day basis, they are a model for the empowerment we will need to create the change we envision. As economic engines, they meet material needs, anchoring capital and jobs in communities.

Become Worker Owned

We are a project of Cooperation Humboldt and North Coast Small Business Development Center’s Worker Owned Humboldt Program. Learn more here.