Workers-owned Cooperative Businesses
Worker Cooperatives are businesses that are owned and controlled by their members, the people who work in them. The two main characteristics are: Workers invest in and own the business; and decision-making is democratic, generally adhering to the principle of one worker-one vote. According to the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives research conservatively estimates that there are over 300 democratic workplaces in the United States employing over 3,500 people and generating over $400 million in annual revenues. Worker-owned businesses can incorporate as cooperatives, C corporations or LLCs depending on the State laws that govern where the business is incorporating.
Worker-owned business and democratic workplaces exist across the US, with the greatest concentrations in the Northeast, the West Coast and the Upper Midwest. The vast majority of them are small businesses, with a few notable larger enterprises.
Worker cooperatives tend to create long-term stable jobs, sustainable businesses practices and linkages among different parts of the social economy. In addition to creating meaningful jobs and asset-building opportunities for workers of all income levels, worker cooperatives can play an important role in building movements for economic justice and social change and offer a model for the broad-based empowerment needed for effective structural change.
Read more on this topic from the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives website.
1. What is a Worker Cooperative? Click here ...
2. Que es TC? Spanish
SBA Recognizes Worker Cooperatives as Small Businesses.
Micha Josephy (2012). SBA Recognizes Worker Cooperatives as Small Businesses. Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) Newsletter, Volume 2, Issue 12. http://geo.coop/...
Cooperative Fund of New England Disburses First Ever SBA Funds to Worker Co-ops received through the Intermediary Lending Pilot
Authorized under the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, the new Intermediary Lending Pilot Program will provide direct loans up to $1 million in long-term, low-cost funds to 20 nonprofit Community Development Financial Institutions or intermediaries, in fiscal year 2011. The CDFIs in turn will use those funds to help finance small businesses, mostly in underserved markets. Awardees can use ILP funds to make loans of up to $200,000. Designed to expand access to capital for small businesses and drive economic growth and job creation, the program is scheduled to fund 20 additional community lenders in FY 2012.
CFNE received its $1 million award to finance startup and existing worker and producer-owned cooperatives across New England and eastern upstate New York.
There are at least three steps co-op supporters like Capital Sharing can take to help expand SBA resources available to co-ops: 1) Outreach to Other ILP lender, 2) Outreach to SBA’s Local Offices, and 3) Advocacy for Consumer Co-ops.
Capital Sharing is working to take advantage of the SBAs ILP in its current program which is hoped will help bolster the process of small business and job creation in many communities.
