Becoming Human: Worker Ownership On Tour

Series Editor’s Note: A few years ago, at a statewide gathering of the Massachusetts Solidarity Economy Network (MASEN), the Coalition for Worker Ownership and Power (COWOP) formed, bringing “together worker co-ops and developers, grassroots organizations and labor unions, and funders and investors to resource and coordinate the advancement of a worker ownership movement across Massachusetts.”

The following essay, reprinted in full with permission from the author, describes a recent happening hosted by COWOP that embodies this work—showing the importance of worker cooperatives in creating well-being for communities, the existing energy around the movement, as well as strategies to advance the work.

This short essay will appear in an upcoming issue of Our Common Wealth, a newsletter of the MASEN, COWOP, and the Center for Economic Democracy (CED). Boone Shear, Series Editor

Worker Ownership On Tour by Karen Ribeiro
On January 24, after a few months of determined planning by a multifaceted team of Coalition (COWOP) members, an exciting launch event – a “Legislative Tour” – was held. This tour was co-hosted by worker ownership policy champions Representative Paul Mark (D. 2nd Berkshire) and Senator Julian Cyr (D. Cape and Islands) who, coincidentally, are the legislators of the two participants in the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives’ (USFWC) inaugural Policy and Advocacy fellowship program, Karen Ribeiro and Abbie Zell. These two fellows orchestrated the tour as part of this USFWC program and are worker owners of PV Squared Solar in Greenfield and South Mountain Company in Martha’s Vineyard respectively.

Many COWOP members supported this Zoom webinar with tech, graphic design, and publicity support. Other presenters in the event were Mo Manklang from USFWC, Dara Nussbaum-Vasquez from ICA Group, and Alex Papali from the Center for Economic Democracy, with Spanish translation services by Erika Perez. The presentations touched on the resilient nature of worker owned businesses both in the longer start-up arc that occurs when by-laws and governance models are crafted with care, and in the staying power these equity-sharing businesses have even through economic dry spells and bizarre situations to manage together (like the current pandemic). 

Attendees learned interesting details about worker ownership trends such as: 

• Worker Owned businesses are 7 times (or 700%) less likely to lay people off than traditional businesses
• 57% of Worker Owners are people of color and 63% of the co-op workforce identify as female
• And Worker Owned businesses pay about 33% more in wages than traditional businesses while keeping the highest-to-lowest pay ratio down to 3-to1 instead of 351-to-1!

Statewide data was curated into a Massachusetts state brief on worker ownership which can be found here.

Fortunately, Sarah Assefa recorded the webinar and it is available on the USFWC YouTube channel here.

The momentum will continue with more events and discussions. A very exciting thing to have emerged adjacent to this legislative tour is the movement out of committee of one of the four main bills in the COWOP policy platform which means it has a solid chance of passing!