Resilience: Worker Co-ops - The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry
Are you tired of local communities who prostrate themselves before corporations: giving them tax breaks, handshake deals on by-law enforcement, and preferential treatment by politicians (often for cash contributions), only to see the same corporations outsource jobs overseas, pollute the environment, and send profits far away? Well, there is an alternative, one that has been growing together in Cleveland, Ohio since 2009. More below.
Is it this?
Er no, the Browns were last a model of winning when Paul Brown himself was still there :=)
But on that note:
The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry
http://www.evgoh.com/ecl/
The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry is a nearly $6 million facility that opened in 2009.
Most of them live in the surrounding community, where the poverty rate exceeded 30 percent and "thousands of homes lay stripped and abandoned even before the current recession began"
(Yes magazine http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-new-economy/clevelands-worker-owne...).
The Co-op gets most of its business from Cleveland hospitals, who actively supported its creation.
The Evergreen Laundry employee-owners is a different kind of enterprise: it is a workers for-profit cooperative. The business is 100 percent owned by its 50 employees. Its employees earn a living wage and health benefits.
As members of the cooperative, they have greater job security than workers at more traditional businesses.
After eight years on the job, they will have built an ownership stake of as much as $65,000.
And very importantly, the cooperative keeps financial resources local and help the community create wealth.
Here's a 6:38 min clip from 2010.
The Evergreen Laundry is one of four start-ups created by Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland.
The others are:
Evergreen Energy Solutions http://www.evgoh.com/e2s/
Green City Growers Cooperative http://www.evgoh.com/gcg/
Also see good old wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Cooperatives
Here is an hour-long video about what has become The Cleveland Model.
It begins and ends with Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, not bad eh.
Link https://youtu.be/ZlO_2QhUQRI
Their model is that of Mondragon, a giant workers cooperative in Spain, which has 120 businesses and sales of $20B a year. http://www.mondragon-corporation.com/eng/
This is our problem at present.
On the one hand we have a social service network that works hard but somehow is never enough to move poor people into solvency and sustainability.
On the other hand, lies the investor model of capitalism, where workers are simply inputs to be used and discarded as needed.
And this situation, as we have now abundantly seen in the first world, is simply not sustainable.
It uses up people and natural resources, leaves behind pollution and despair, and sends the profits far away.
No community can flourish if all of its businesses send their profits far away.
Communities need businesses who form capital locally.
Local communities need businesses that increase local capital formation and create wealth locally.
Workers cooperatives is a winning alternative to both social services and investor capitalism.
The Worker Co-op Solution
An employee of Evergreen Laundry can begin to make contributions to ownership after six months and after eight years can have $65,000 accumulated.
Social services cannot ever turn a worker into a capitalist (the good kind: the capital-forming kind :=)
Investor capitalism is geared towards a return on investment for the owners and not towards empowering its workers.
Both systems suck resources out of the community and leaves it less resilient, whereas worker co-ops create worker-capital-formation and keep local money local, thereby boosting the local economy.
We have a choice here in North America.
We can do nothing and watch our economy, our environment, and our communities go down the tubes.
Or we can look towards solutions such as worker cooperatives. Investigate more, learn more.
(Check out http://gocoop.com/ - an example of Indian women working cooperatively to improve their lives and communities.)
See if your workplace can be transformed into a cooperative.
Think of starting one yourself.
Advocate and support community endeavours that promote workers cooperatives.
Resilient local economic development is a mind change away.
I look forward to your comments, advice and ideas.
Peace be with us, if we change our local corporatist businesses to worker co-ops,
gerrit
Comments
Not strictly cooperatives
But California may ease some permit requirements to make it easier for regular people to invest in local businesses, according to this:
http://www.shareable.net/blog/california-bill-would-make-investing-in-lo...
Would include non-profits.
Euterpe2
This is very important news, Euterpre2! TY for this. I hope to
post about local investing soon. There's a whole movement called Local Money afoot. This CA bill is exactly what the movement has been advocating.
Wall Street kleptocrats have cut off all the old legal ways for local folks to invest locally so that we would be forced to use WS investment vehicles. These then underperform like clockwork while the Wall Street banksters skim like crazy. But we're going to beat them with local money, invested locally, including local currencies, like the Berkshares and the Totnes Pound. Woot! Enjoy your day, my friend,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
It's a great way to go.
Why bother with Wall Street when one can invest directly in their local bakery?! Many places like Wally World have their own Shopping Cards for in-store purchases. I've thought it might be a good idea for an entire village or small city to offer their own Shopping Cards to be used at participating merchants in those villages /small cities, where one could purchase a $50 Village Shopping Card for $45, essentially saving 10% on all purchases made at participating merchants.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Yes it is :=) TY for this, Wink, local money circulating locally
that's how we beat Wall Street, K Street, the banksters, the lobbyists, and the crooked politicians. I'll post more on Local Money soon. Enjoy your day, my friend,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
Coops of various types are definitely an important part of
the solution, though they need not be formal coops in order to do so. I recall some informal forms of cooperative ventures back in the sixties such as neighbors gathering together to plan and then make joint bulk purchases at wholesale of consumables, stretching local revenues, and community gardens with labor, water, seed and expertise being contributed on a non-quid-pro-quo basis by those with the knowledge, time and skills, and harvests available to any who participated in any way.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Right on, El, at the grassroots level we can do so much co-
operatively without much formal legal stuff, until things grow organically big enough to need a legal framework. Ty, my friend,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
Right on, El, at the grassroots level we can do so much co-
operatively without much formal legal stuff, until things grow organically big enough to need a legal framework. Ty, my friend,
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.
yep. n/t
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
wow, nice g
I would highlight that, as their saying "We Couldn’t do it Without Our Anchor Partners" implies, a big part of their strategy is to partner with "Anchor Institutions," large, community based buyers, such as hospitals and universities, that that are not inclined to leave the area and therefor have a vested interest in the community's well-being.
Right you are, Greywolf, TY. That's exactly it, the anchor
institutions provide the base contract for the worker co-ops, so that they are guaranteed work and can branch out from there when they grow. The Cleveland Model really is a blueprint for every city and town in North America and the world. If anchor institutions like local hospitals, local governments, local educational institutions organize and act as anchors, they could boost countless local worker co-ops across our nations and revitalize local neighbourhoods. It's a win-win model.
Corporatists in the corporate and government worlds would oppose it because it would stop them from bleeping poor people dry as they do now. We must rise up to push for worker co-ops along the Cleveland Model and otherwise, and fight off the corporatist predators wishing to block local resiliency.
TY and best wishes, my friend. Jump in wherever you wish, you're the co-op expert :=)
Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.