COLOR LINE 21ST CENTURY The
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The Full Participation Economy: How to Guarantee a Place for Everyone Event program and essay by Kimberly Westcott and Richard Wolff
The Community Service Society of New York (CSS) is an informed, independent, and unwavering voice for positive action representing low-income New Yorkers. CSS addresses the root causes of economic disparity through research, advocacy, and innovative program models that strengthen and benefit all New Yorkers.
www.cssny.org
COLOR LINE 21ST CENTURY The
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PROGRAM Introduction Opening Remarks
David R. Jones Kimberly Westcott Richard Wolff Mychal Denzel Smith
Panel Questions
Richard Wolff Mychal Denzel Smith
Q&A
Closing
JOIN THE CONVERASTION #21stColorLine
SPEAKERS Richard Wolff
@profwolff
Richard Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Visiting Professor at the New School University in New York. Wolff’s recent work has concentrated on analyzing the causes and alternative solutions to the global economic crisis. His groundbreaking book Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism inspired the creation of Democracy at Work, a nonprofit organization dedicated to showing how and why to make democratic workplaces real. Wolff is also the author of Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism and Capitalism
Mychal Denzel Smith
@mychalsmith
Mychal Denzel Smith is a Knobler Fellow at The Nation Institute and a contributing writer for The Nation magazine. He has also written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon, Feministing.com, The Guardian, The Root, theGrio, ThinkProgress, and The Huffington Post, and he has been a featured commentator on NPR, BBC radio, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera America, HuffPost Live, and a number of other radio and television programs.
Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It. He hosts the weekly hour-long radio program “Economic Update,” which is syndicated on public radio stations nationwide, and he writes regularly for The Guardian and Truthout.org. Wolff appears frequently on television and radio to discuss his work, with recent guest spots including “Real Time with Bill Maher,” “Moyers & Company,” “Charlie Rose,” “Up with Chris Hayes,” and “Democracy Now!.” He is also a frequent lecturer at colleges and universities across the country.
Kimberly Westcott
@CSSNYorg
Kimberly Westcott is Associate Counsel in CSS’s Legal Department and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work (CUSSW). A former labor and employment attorney with the New York City Transit Authority, her work with CSS includes: developing in-prison education and training opportunities to transform the nature of prison; removing barriers to employment for the formerly incarcerated; and creating living wage career pathways that resource communities of color. Ms. Westcott serves on several reintegration project development teams.
A graduate of Yale University and Rutgers University School of LawNewark, Ms. Westcott also has a substantive background in social welfare policy, receiving her MSW and PhD from Columbia University. Ms. Westcott developed and teaches CUSSW’s “Race, Representation, Criminalization and Exclusion: Black Americans in the United States Criminal Punishment System,” writes opinion pieces on race and social justice, and has published several articles that advance a life course development-human rights approach to changing the punishment paradigm, including Westcott, K. (2015). “Race, Criminalization and Historical Trauma in the United States: Making the Case for a New Justice Framework,” Traumatology 21(4), 273-284.
David R. Jones, Esq. David R. Jones, Esq., is President and CEO of the nonprofit Community Service Society (CSS). An outspoken advocate for the poor, Mr. Jones writes bi-weekly columns in The Amsterdam News and El Diario that serve to educate the public and government officials on important policy issues.
@CSSNYorg
Prior to CSS he served as Executive Director of the New York City Youth Bureau and Special Advisor to Mayor Edward I. Koch. A highly respected New York City leader on issues of urban poverty and economic advancement,
Mr. Jones has served on numerous boards and the transition committees for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. He is a member of the MTA Board and was recently named to a blue-ribbon commission advising Mayor de Blasio on structural changes to NYC Health + Hospitals. He is Chairman of the Nation Institute, and a board member of the Scherman Foundation and the Center for Community Change.
THE FULL PARTICIPATION ECONOMY by Kimberly Westcott and Richard Wolff
Prison Workers, the American Worker, and the Power of Cooperative Work The prison labor strike that began on September 9, 2016—the 45th Anniversary of Attica—is a metaphoric microcosm of the American workforce. On that day incarcerated persons in 12 states stopped performing prison work, which can range from administrative support for the superintendent, to staffing the mess hall that feeds hundreds per day, to the unseen labor of making furniture or answering phones for private or state agencies. The workers who perform these tasks are paid exploitive wages that span from no wages at all to 12 cents an hour to a dollar per hour. The justification is grounded in the Constitution and culture. Though prison labor predates the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment’s Exception Clause enshrines unpaid work by outlawing slavery in the United States except as punishment for a crime. American culture has continued to legitimate this practice through expressions like “[prisoners must] pay their debt to society,” which perpetuates a punitive conception of incarceration’s purpose in marked contrast to one that focuses upon rehabilitation and development.
The United States has spent more than $1 trillion dollars to build up prisons since the Nixon Administration,1 and spends $80 billion per year on its correctional budget.2 New York spends approximately $3 billion dollars on its annual correctional budget.3 Considering the vast amount of money that has gone into the prison industry, it is striking that prisons cannot pay a wage that would allow the incarcerated to reenter the workforce and community with dignity—an issue that should be included in the broader conversation around a living, minimum wage. Meanwhile, the non-incarcerated American worker is also trapped in an oppressive corporate economy, but under vastly different circumstances. Many are unable to locate work that pays a living wage under safe, non-dehumanizing conditions and that allows time for meaningful work/life balance and full participation in the social and political life of the community. Is there another way, outside of these corporate work systems? Research indicates that there is.
Cooperative work engages and galvanizes the collective strengths and resources of workers within a democratic ownership structure. Cooperative work also affords workers all the supports of solidarity while reducing the elements of risk associated with venturing into business as a sole proprietor under the entrepreneurial model.
Many are unable to locate work that pays a living wage under safe, nondehumanizing conditions and that allows time for meaningful work/ life balance and full participation in the social and political life of the community. The worker self-directed enterprise (“WSDE” or “Worker Cooperative”) is a democratic, self-directed, worker-owned structure that can support all types of businesses, such as a laundry, food cooperative, web design company, or advanced manufacturing plant. The WSDE builds upon the skill sets and experiences of the people who come together
to work in accord with a concrete business plan. More than a work culture, it is a business enterprise with a distinctly horizontal system of organization. The WSDE is especially effective in countering the isolation of those traditionally excluded from the labor market, namely those marginalized by institutional racism, the stigma of imprisonment, or those ghettoized by disadvantage and class. Teaching cooperative work in prison, which would include informing workers about cooperative work and, possibly, establishing cooperative work units within the prison, would allow workers to organize around the skills that they’ve developed or are in the process of developing and to learn how to form viable worker-owned businesses that would support their communities. At the same time, creating a climate that would support the formation and growth of worker cooperatives within communities of color and all New York communities should be a priority.
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Social Exclusion and the Full Participation Economy The conventional wisdom in American society is that ever-improving economic conditions will realize society’s goals and that a rising tide “lifts all boats.” Since the Recession of 2007– 2008, it has become increasingly clear that the economic structure works far, far better for the very few branded by the Occupy Movement as “the one percent.”4 Given the vast disparities between rich and poor—Oxfam reports that the world’s richest 62 people are as wealthy as half of the world’s population5 —full participation in United States society is a dream to be pursued. Displacement and loss define the experience of many, who are increasingly searching for a new relationship with work, community, and society. Anger is pervasive in the Age of Trump, even for those who have done “everything required”—attended college, diligently sought employment—and came up short. A few statistics reveal the enormity of the problem: While the national unemployment rate reported by the U.S. Department of Labor for July 2016 is comparatively low at 4.9 percent for the general population,6 the nature of available work cannot sustain
most persons. The federal minimum wage remains a grinding, Dickensian $7.25 an hour, prompting the “fight for fifteen” spearheaded by fast food workers and the SEIU that swept the country this year. Living wage work for persons without a college education is virtually non-existent. The National Center for Education reports that, in 2014, the median income for persons without a high school degree was $25,000, as compared with the marginally higher $30,000 for those with a high school credential.7 Generally both groups labor in workplaces without the prospect of the all-important “career ladder,” where skills are cultivated and progressively built upon over the course of one’s professional life. Credentials increasingly do not guarantee employment, as evidenced by the “Gig Economy,” a large sector of which is powered by young college graduates.8 Factor college debt into the equation and the prospects for mobility are all but nonexistent. Even those who have earned a college degree and can find work live precariously. The median earnings of $49,000 for persons with a B.A. is hardly the kind of income that
can support the four corners of traditional middle class life: a car, a home, marriage, and children. The 2015 median household income of $56,500 heralded as evidence that the U.S. has turned the economic corner is equally dispiriting.9 As a result, Millennials, the bellwether for the emerging United States economy, scarcely purchase or engage in most of these things.10
Black and brown people struggling in marginalized communities have come to understand that their place and participation in society is tenuous. At the same time, black and brown people struggling in marginalized communities have come to understand that their place and participation in society is tenuous. Among those persons who had not completed high school, whites had an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent compared with 16.6 percent unemployment for black Americans. Even among those who completed a bachelor’s degree or higher, the unemployment rate was
4.1 percent for black Americans compared to 2.4 percent for white Americans with the same degree.11 These numbers do not capture the colossal chronic unemployment rate that has resulted, in part, from the failure to train and equip persons for work in our current economy. The Atlantic reported in December 2015 that, still, a higher percentage of white Americans obtain college degrees: 41 percent, compared to the black population’s 22 percent. These disparities are compounded by the cavernous racial wealth gap in the United States.12 Median wealth for white families hovers at about $134,000, compared to black families at approximately $11,000 and Hispanic families at around $13,900.13 Predictably black home ownership rates are lower than all but the youngest segment of Millennials.14
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Historic Exploitation, Prisonization, and the Need for a Reintegration–Full Participation Economy in Low-income Communities of Color It is no longer controversial to state that the United States was built upon the appropriation of native lands and the exploitation of enslaved labor. As highlighted in The New Jim Crow, the police were developed, in part, to contain enslaved and exploited populations. Thanks to the Exception Clause of the 13th Amendment, prisons became sites of legalized enslavement and low wage exploitation—from the convict lease and chain gang systems, to today’s prison shops where many presently earn between .63 cents and a dollar an hour—conditions that catalyzed the under-reported 12 state prison labor strike that started on September 9, 2016. In three states, Texas, Georgia, and Arkansas, prisoners are forced to labor for no wages at all.15 Centuries of criminalizing race narratives are now perceived by many as synonymous with black identity. The relentless broadcast of lethal violence directed against black men and women in the years since the killing of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner has highlighted the state’s War on Crime tactics of containment and over-enforcement, which
culminated most recently in the deaths of Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Terrence Crutcher, and Keith Lamont Scott. Any casual viewer of Facebook now knows that when a person of color ventures onto the street or a public space, there is a greater than average likelihood that (s)he will be arrested, incarcerated, or killed. The abuse of state power, like police enforcement, coupled with Jim Crow and systematic economic discrimination, like redlining and the disparate use of urban renewal, confined large numbers of black and brown persons to low-income, inner city communities that resulted in extreme socioeconomic exclusion. Over the last 30 years, globalization and mechanization further reduced the size of the domestic workforce after the loss of manufacturing in the 1970s. Communities of color, like those in the South Bronx, and their inhabitants were, in effect, deemed unworthy of investment and treated as expendable surplus labor. The 1980s age of mass incarceration inaugurated the shift to a prison economy that largely
benefitted underdeveloped, low-income white communities like those in upstate New York (at the expense of communities of color), which became sites for prison construction subsidized by federal funds dedicated to supporting the Wars on Crime and Drugs.16 Now the wave of gentrification that has seized these same isolated New York City neighborhoods, like Brownsville, Bed Stuy, and soon East New York, threatens to displace members of these communities once more. People living at the margins who are disproportionately black, brown, and lowincome have borne witness to the ways in which mass incarceration has extracted thousands of working-age males and devastated low-income communities of color. Neighborhoods with “million dollar blocks” in New York City collectively suffer from high rates of youth and adult unemployment, and failing, under-resourced schools, which in turn drive the “school to prison pipeline” of the next generation. There is urgent need of a community development–reintegration
to full participation economic and legislative strategy that gives community members the opportunity to train, work, and autonomously chart development together.
People living at the margins who are disproportionately black, brown, and low-income have borne witness to the ways in which mass incarceration has extracted thousands of working-age males and devastated low-income communities of color.
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New York: A Case Study in Marginalization Of New York’s population of over 19 million, 83,608 were incarcerated and another 111,908 were on probation or parole in 2012.17 Of the 55,436 persons that New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (NYDOCCS) incarcerated that year, 47.5 percent came from New York City communities, amounting to 25,557 men and 873 women.18 In 2009, of the 25,060 persons released from New York State custody, 12,371 returned to New York City.19 Many returnees experience high rates of unemployment, housing instability, and health challenges, all compounded by the stigma of a conviction history. Laboring under these disabilities, civic and social participation is greatly impaired; many remain unable to vote or participate in jury duty.20 Incarceration erodes connection to family. Returnees’ best efforts to help support families and contribute to neighborhoods are often frustrated by relationships fractured by sporadic contact, the erosion of labor market skills, institutional discrimination, unemployment, and unaddressed trauma.21
Over 50 percent of New York’s formerly incarcerated are unemployed nine months to a year after their release.22 Thirty percent of New York City’s homeless shelter entrants have been incarcerated, with over 800 parolees residing in city shelters each day.23 Eradicating poverty might have seemed like a worthy goal if the United States measure defining the poverty threshold were not subsistence level. At $24,300 per year for a family of four,24 poverty-level income does not guarantee a life of dignity—for many working poor it will not get people out of shelters or off of the streets. Such marginal allotments ensure stress, malnutrition, want, and chronic exclusion from the activities of daily life. Faced with the government’s degrading response to human suffering, community members are redefining for themselves what it means to be part of society and to meaningfully participate in their communities, not merely subsist in or remain trapped in a cycle of exclusion.25 Compounding the devastating effects of poverty and under-employment are the
overarching forces of stratification and hierarchy, racism and white supremacy, sexism and patriarchy, nativism and xenophobia that cause cumulative harm, impact life chances for generations and result in intergenerational social exclusion. These very real social forces are obfuscated by the myth of individualism propagated by capitalism, which, in a nation built upon expropriated lands and exploited slave labor, fosters the cynical notion that all can achieve liberty, equality, and independence by dint of one’s hard work despite their particular race, gender, socio-economic location, immigration status, health, or other experience, which largely determines one’s place in the social pecking order. One way to defuse such false narratives is for the community at large to decide what kind of society we want to live in. How shall we value our labor, and in what environment shall we perform this work? This opens the door to broader questions: what basket of goods (and experiences) represent a decent life, what is needed to live, and how do we organize ourselves to achieve it? This examination should transcend the negative
liberties contained in the United States Constitution and give range to the more expansive principles expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly as elaborated upon by economist Amartya Sen and social theorist Martha Nussbaum.26 Because people have failed to realize change through customary political processes, it is time to form new economic relationships that transcend top-down hierarchical structures. These new relations should not replicate historic patterns of exploitation where resources from one community or class are extracted (i.e., commodities: labor, prison bodies) to benefit another, or rest upon an ideology supporting one group’s greater worth, purity, or humanity. Wayfarers in the cynical Age of Trump are searching for a way of working and living that reflects their values, affords input into the way their time is organized, how energies are spent, and how decisions are made. One solution is the WSDE, a leveling, anti-hierarchical structure that gives everyone a sizable stake in the success of a business and paves the way for democratic
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participation and work with dignity. A variant on the WSDE focused more expansively on community economic development, the Community Supported Worker Cooperative (CSWC) would integrate skilled and novice workers and, where necessary, train residents including youth, the elderly and those without formalized skills, and reintegrate returning community members, such as the formerly incarcerated. Notably the CSWC development process is “open platform� and promotes civic participation by inviting residents to identify and co-build the businesses and services they want in the community,27 then the CSWC incubates select local WSDEs and forms training links with community colleges and union cooperatives.28
Because people have failed to realize change through customary political processes, it is time to form new economic relationships that transcend top-down hierarchical structures.
Viable Models: Looking Abroad and in the U.S. Europe: Mondragon, Spain; Italy; and the UK One of most influential WSDEs is Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives located in the country’s Basque region. Mondragon cooperatives are united by a humanist concept of business, a philosophy of participation and solidarity, and a shared business culture. The framework of the business culture is set forth in its 10 Basic Cooperative Principles, which have laid the foundation for agreedupon wage ratios between executive work and field or factory work. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives, with the average being 5:1. The wage ratio is decided periodically by its worker-owners through a democratic vote.29 Mondragon was founded in 1956 by graduates of a local technical college; its first product was paraffin heaters. Today it is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people in 257 companies and
organizations in four areas: industry, finance, retail, and knowledge.30 Italy has a remarkably large number of worker cooperatives partly because of a deep cultural tradition of and sympathy for collective, solidaristic enterprises and partly because the state has developed a supportive infrastructure and committed resources to their development. For example, Italy’s Marcora Law, enacted in February 1985, promotes worker cooperatives in two ways, by: (1) establishing a general fund for the promotion and development of all types of cooperatives; and (2) creating the Compagnia Finanziaria Industriale (CFI), a special fund to help save companies in crisis. Most significantly the Marcora Law makes government unemployment funds available to unemployed workers as a one-time lump sum advance payment to be used as start-up capital for worker cooperatives, which returns the unemployed to work sooner and is much more socially effective than on-going unemployment payments.31 Little known to many is the long-term commitment of Britain’s Labor Party in promoting and supporting WSDEs. John
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The United States: Cleveland, OH’s Evergreen Cooperatives; The City of Oakland, CA; Seattle, WA; and Madison, WI’s IEM McDonnell, advisor to and colleague of recently re-elected Party leader Jeremy Corbin, has articulated their official program. It entails: (1) a commitment to build a major worker coop segment of the UK economy; (2) a commitment to legislation giving workers in every enterprise right of first refusal to buy any UK company if and when it proposes to sell itself to another company, to go public, or to close; and (3) to provide government funds to enable such worker buyouts. This is one key Labor Party response—helping to build a worker coop sector—to the growing problems experienced by the British economy’s capitalist sector. It is significant that a major political party in a major global economy has made this policy commitment in favor of fostering a cooperative economy.32
In the United States, the worker cooperative business structure is quickly gaining currency—it was even highlighted in Bernie Sanders’ 2016 political platform. Though in use in just a few states and several municipalities, such as Cleveland, Ohio; Seattle, Washington; Madison, Wisconsin; Richmond, Virginia; New York City, New York; Oakland, California; Austin, Texas; and across Massachusetts, Vermont, and Minnesota, citizens and elected officials are increasingly recognizing their individual and community level economic development potential. Though many WSDES tend to be in low-tech, labor-intensive businesses like food preparation or retailing, they are also viable structures for highly skilled work, as performed by Madison Wisconsin’s Isthmus Engineering & Manufacturing (IEM) company or information technology groups, and can be a potent tool for promoting business development in low-income areas.
Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives— community development and the anchor model The seeds of the Cleveland worker cooperative movement were sown following the demise of Ohio’s steel industry when the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company announced it would close its Campbell Works operation in September 1977 and almost 5,000 workers found themselves unemployed. Assisted by the Ecumenical Coalition of Mahoning Valley and Gar Alperovitz, then director of the National Center for Economic Alternatives, the workers’ strategy focused upon direct action and feasibility studies to determine how to carry out a community-worker takeover of the mill. Though the steel companies and even the United Steelworkers turned their backs on the idea of worker ownership of the mills, the effort inspired the formation of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University, which through its developing expertise in worker cooperative structures subsequently helped to foster the creation of the Evergreen Cooperatives in the heart of some of the most distressed neighborhoods in urban America.33 In 2005, the Cleveland Foundation along with some of the biggest anchor institutions
(i.e., hospitals, universities, and municipal government), businesses, and civic groups in the city, spearheaded the “Greater University Circle Initiative” designed to stimulate real and lasting development in the ailing neighborhoods around University Circle. The Evergreen Cooperatives, which emerged in 2009 as a result of this effort, is a holding company that, thus far, houses four businesses under its umbrella: Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, a “green” industrial laundry; Evergreen Energy Solutions, which installs solar panels and provides other environmentally friendly home and commercial energy services; Green City Growers, the largest hydroponic greenhouse in an American city; and the Greater University Circle Neighborhood Voice, a free, studentowned and student-run newspaper and online news source covering worker coop activity in Cleveland and other issues of concern to residents, which emerged in 2009 as a result of this effort.34 Though Evergreen shares many qualities with Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, it is decidedly more planning oriented and aims to create a “culture of community.” The Evergreen Cooperative
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The City of Oakland, California— promoting growth and equity through a procurement model Laundry provides laundry services for the Cleveland Clinic, Green City Growers provides food for the University Hospital, and Evergreen Energy Solutions provides weatherization and solar installation services for other local nonprofit institutions. A board of directors oversees the cooperatives, assuring they function not just for the workers but also for the surrounding communities. The board can also prevent any one cooperative from leaving the community, dissolving, or from selling itself to an outside entity.35
Other cities across the country have seen the benefit of fostering worker cooperatives as a community development and worker empowerment strategy. Most recently, the City of Oakland’s Council made a commitment to provide legal and financial supports for WDSEs by passing a resolution that followed up on Governor Jerry Brown’s signing of the California Worker Cooperative Act in August 2015, which cleared barriers to incorporation and relaxed rules to raising equity.36 The resolution supporting WSDEs passed largely because Oakland is distressed: Oakland’s unemployment rate increased from 5.6 percent to 16.9 percent between 2000 and 2010; in East Oakland, 31–35 percent are unemployed; and in parts of West Oakland, 44–45 percent are unemployed. The fact that the poverty rate in Oakland was 22.3 percent in 2010, compared to the 11.7 percent poverty rate in the East Bay as a whole, places the matter in context.37 As a consequence, more than 60 percent of people working at new WSDEs in 2012 and 2013 were people of color, according to a “State of the Sector” report by Oaklandbased Democracy at Work Institute.38
Community-level benefits of WSDEs highlighted in the findings of the City of Oakland’s model ordinance include: locallybased stores typically invest more in local labor and are also more likely to purchase goods and services from within their local economies;39 wealth generated by worker cooperatives tends to stay in the local economy because WSDE profits are generally distributed to workers or reinvested in the cooperative;40
As a consequence, more than 60 percent of people working at new WSDEs in 2012 and 2013 were people of color. poverty reduction is more likely with WSDE development, rather than traditional economic development, because WSDEs provide their workers with the opportunity to build wealth through joint ownership of the enterprise, rather than merely offering low-wage, deadend jobs;41 the shared ownership structure of WSDEs cause each worker-member to be less vulnerable to unemployment, withholding of payment, and low-wage exploitation, resulting
in less employee turnover and increased profitability and longevity;42 worker-members, rather than investors, control the business— employees have a say in their work conditions and the business is focused on member benefits rather than merely profit. For example, worker-owners in the Bay Area’s Prospera (formerly Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security) saw an increase of 158 percent in their incomes and an average return of 22 times their initial investments. Natural Home Cleaning Professionals, the largest WSDE that Prospera incubated, pays its members twice the average starting wage for commercial cleaners in the country and provides benefits such as health and dental insurance and flexible vacation time.43 Most significantly, studies have shown that communities where local businesses make up a substantial portion of the economy have lower crime and poverty rates, and their residents are more engaged in community and civic organizations. Conversely, as big-box retailers enter a community, civic engagement declines.44 In light of these findings, city action, particularly the city’s
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Madison, Wisconsin—fostering mutual development through an ecosystem approach contracts and procurement practices, was flagged for fostering stable markets for worker cooperatives and contributing to the economic development of the city, including: 1. Targeted purchasing and contracting with worker cooperatives to keep wealth from flowing out of the community and create empowering local jobs. Giving preference to worker cooperatives provides an alternative to relying on large corporations and minimum wage jobs to meet the city’s needs. 2. City investments could support worker cooperatives through strategies such as funding targeted training, capitalizing a revolving loan fund, offering guarantees on loans to worker cooperatives, and linked deposits. 3. Waiving land use fees and providing tax incentives to allow cooperatives to more effectively invest in their communities.45
Madison, Wisconsin has supported the development of worker cooperatives for decades and is home to some of the oldest worker cooperatives in the country. In total, the city has 75 cooperatives (including member and worker-owned), credit unions and mutual insurance companies. The State of Wisconsin has 773 cooperatives, creating 64,000 jobs and bringing in $27 billion in revenue and contributing $642 million in tax revenues to the state. Union Cab of Madison, one of the country’s worker cooperative success stories, was formed after a labor strike in 1978 and its predecessor, Checker Cab shut down. The workers then reorganized, incorporated, and opened Union Cab in 1979. Since then Union Cab has been fully worker-owned and each of its 220 drivers, dispatchers, mechanics and administrative workers own an equal share of the company for a $25 buy-in and has an equal vote in operations, including electing the board of directors. The company has many revolving committees and a general manager responsible for daily operations. Fully committed to interdependent networks among cooperatives within the community, Union Cab buys its health insurance from Group Health
Cooperative and gasoline from Landmark Coop. Workers eat, shop and pay rent in the community and have adopted an official buylocal policy. The idea: keep the surplus with the workers and in the community.46 Another success story is Isthmus Engineering & Manufacturing (IEM), owned entirely by its 32 employee-members and regularly doing more than $20 million in annual reserve. IEM’s business is factory automation. It builds custom machinery that produces everything from auto parts to baby pacifiers.47 IEM started as a partnership in 1980; in 1983 the group became a cooperative. Every member sits on the board of directors, which generally meets twice a month and makes the majority of IEM’s administrative decisions, such as who to hire or when to build a new building. Board committees handle matters like shop tools or finance. A salaried general manager and sales manager, accountable to the board, are responsible for the company’s daily operation. On a day-to-day basis, the coop worker answers or reports to one of the managers. IEM also has about 30 employees who are not members. All are eligible for membership
except the two salaried managers. When a member leaves, the company must buy back the member’s share. IEM does so over a fiveyear period, thereby minimizing the cash drain in any one year.48
Fully committed to interdependent networks among cooperatives within the community, Union Cab buys its health insurance from Group Health Cooperative and gasoline from Landmark Coop. Workers eat, shop and pay rent in the community and have adopted an official buylocal policy. The idea: keep the surplus with the workers and in the community.
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Seattle, Washington—WSDE as a site for training and economic development Seattle, the largest city in the Pacific Northwest with a population of over 652,000, is known for its green economy and is a model for sustainable business practices. Its population consists of nearly 70 percent whites of European descent, 14 percent Asians, 8 percent blacks of African descent, 7 percent Latino or Hispanic, 1 percent Native American, and 2 percent other. While the city is home to the country’s largest and oldest consumer cooperatives, such as food stores and retailers like Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI); Puget Sound Consumer Cooperative (PCC Natural Markets), a 53-year-old natural foods chain; and Group Health Cooperative, a 47-year-old health insurance and medical services group, there are only about six worker cooperatives in Seattle. One of the most prominent is the Equal Exchange Cafe, a spin-off of Equal Exchange in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, which pioneered fair-trade coffee and is one of the country’s most financially successful worker cooperatives.
Seattle’s low income workers are the prime beneficiaries of the federal government’s Small Business Administration (SBA) Program for Investment in Micro-entrepreneurs (PRIME), which funded a local business support group, the Center for Inclusive Entrepreneurship, to help train disadvantaged Seattle workers to develop worker cooperatives and homebased or cottage businesses. SBA PRIME provides assistance to organizations that help low-income entrepreneurs who lack sufficient training and education to gain access to capital to establish and expand their small businesses. SBA PRIME is also intended to facilitate cooperative development in the United States.49 Programs like these are crucial to the structuring of a cooperative economy for communities of all income levels.
The Worker Cooperative as a Bulwark against Social Exclusion To overcome social exclusion—and thereby the immense suffering and widespread social costs it entails—one key place to start is the workplace. That is where most adults spend most of their lives. That is where most adults earn the incomes that sustain themselves and any non-working dependents in their households. To the degree that exclusions are practiced in and by workplaces, they will ramify and replicate elsewhere in society. Social exclusion is created or worsened by exclusions at the workplace. We can significantly reduce social exclusion by removing workplace exclusions. There are basically two workplace exclusions confronting millions in the U.S. today. The first is unemployment: the failure of a society with needs for goods and services to organize and allocate the labor of all able-bodied adults to produce them. If the quanta of goods and services a society wishes to consume (taking account of its interests in preserving or protecting its natural environment) require a certain amount of labor, given the available technology, then all able-bodied adults could and should be organized to produce that
quanta of goods and services. There is no rational need for any able-bodied adult to be excluded from employment. If that means the society does not need 40 hours of labor per week from all ablebodied adults, then the work week for all can be reduced to 37, 35, 30, hours, etc. according to people’s preferences for income over leisure and according to the progress of the technology that governs human labor’s productivity in terms of outputs of goods and services. There is no need for some able-bodied adults to be excluded from employment, while others continue to do 40-hour weeks of labor. Unemployment is destructive of the physical and mental health of the affected able-bodied and of their relationships with family, friends, and neighbors. Unemployment incurs huge social costs. Unemployment is a workplace exclusion that engenders all sorts of derivative social exclusions. The solution for unemployment is a social commitment to full employment as foundational, as a top priority of the organization of work. The second workplace exclusion is exploitation
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defined very precisely as follows: the failure of workplace organization to enable all ablebodied employees to participate in deciding the key features of their work lives. These key features include what is to be produced, how and where to carry out productive activities, and how to use the net revenues of production (the “surplus” or “profits”). In conventional corporate enterprises within the United States (and many other countries as well), a tiny minority makes all these decisions. That tiny minority comprises the major shareholders and the boards of directors elected by shareholders. It systematically excludes the majority of workplace participants from participating in making those decisions. The exclusion of the majority from full participation in the key workplace decisions ramifies socially and engenders all sorts of derivative social exclusions. The solution for exploitation is basically to reorganize the workplace. Enterprises in modern society need to be democratized in the sense that all the persons participating in enterprise work have equal power—one person, one vote—in deciding what, how, and
where the enterprise produces and what is to be done with its net revenues. In societies genuinely committed to democracy on principle, such a reorganization of workplaces should have already been accomplished long ago. To undo social exclusion, such a reorganization should be accomplished now. Men and women who overcome the workplace exclusions of unemployment and exploitation will not likely tolerate comparable exclusions elsewhere in society. Full employment and democratically organized workplaces represent constantly reinforced models for such participation in residential communities and across the spectrum of community activity. Today’s excluded and marginalized populations, particularly those subject to the overlapping forces of racism and criminalization, repeatedly suffer either unemployment or exploitation when employed. These experiences reinforce or prevent recovery from whatever social exclusions they have already suffered. They worsen recidivism. Any serious commitment to and program for non-exclusion or reintegration of excluded populations must
overcome unemployment and exploitation. Otherwise exclusion will persist as will the suffering and social costs entailed by exclusion. To take a clear example, consider formerly incarcerated individuals seeking re-entry into communities. Jobs must be provided to them and they must be prepared for such jobs; otherwise exclusion will be maintained and likely recidivism will ensue. But more than jobs is needed to avoid exclusion or facilitate re-integration. Exploitation needs to be overcome. Full participation in production at the workplace is the necessary antidote for the exclusion suffered during incarceration, for the exclusions that contributed to being incarcerated, and for the exclusion risked once incarceration is terminated. The means to overcome both unemployment and exploitation are fully available, well known, and widely practiced throughout the world. They need only to be recognized for their specific anti-exclusionary virtues. Since the means to overcome unemployment are far better known that those to overcome exploitation, let us conclude with a few
sentences on the latter. Worker or producer cooperatives have a history running back thousands of years. In their contemporary form, a better term for them is “worker self-directed enterprises� (or WSDEs) because that term pinpoints their nonexclusionary focus.
Today’s excluded and marginalized populations, particularly those subject to the overlapping forces of racism and criminalization, repeatedly suffer either unemployment or exploitation when employed. In WSDEs, all the workers function, democratically and collectively, as their own board of directors. One person-one vote boards reach majoritarian decisions on all the basic dimensions and strategies of each enterprise. Each worker thus participates and has some control over the enterprise operations
THE FULL PARTICIPATION ECONOMY
that shape his/her daily work life (all its experiences and their associated relationships, experiences, emotions, and feelings) as well as generate her/his income. An interdependent solidarity is structured into everyone’s daily work life comprising not only how workers interact in actual production but likewise how they do so in making all key decisions about production and its products. To borrow from an earlier terminology, overcoming enterprise exploitation via reorganization into a WSDE is the antidote to that profound “alienation” that is today recast as exclusion. Given the limited successes of previous programs aimed at the reintegration of formerly incarcerated persons, a new program based on overcoming the social exclusions grounded in unemployment and exploitation via WSDEs comprised of such persons offers a real basis for hope. Given the multitude of social ills created or at least worsened by the exclusions practiced by unemployment and exploitation, a broad social movement for the development of a sizable WSDE sector of the economy is likewise desirable. The two European examples previously
discussed indicate how successful major sectors of worker cooperatives can be in both national and regional economies. The famous Mondragon Cooperative Corporation that is now Spain’s seventh largest corporation, a family of over a hundred worker cooperatives spanning many industries with a spectacular growth record over the last half-century, offers Spanish society a real, co-existing alternative to the country’s capitalist sector. The worker cooperative sector of the region in Italy known as Emilia-Romagna demonstrates, in quite different economic and political conditions, another large and successful worker cooperative sector.50 Their existence will enable the American people to observe, participate in, and sample the products of non-exploitative workplaces and their commitments to full-employment. Only then can an informed democratic decision be made as to what the optimal proportions should be between conventionally organized enterprises and WSDEs.
New York City: Where to go next? While New York City is already the site of several successful large worker cooperatives like Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), a business owned and run by home health aides located in the Bronx, and Si Se Puede, a cleaning service located in Sunset Park Brooklyn, there is room for much more growth across high tech, traditional trade, and other sectors. The Federation for Protestant Welfare Agencies’ (FPWA) informative 2014 report on New York City worker cooperatives highlights the legislative and economic initiatives that would support their proliferation across all communities. These include the increased allocation and availability of grant funding and low-interest loans, WSDE eligibility to bid for Minority/Women Business Enterprise contracts, and the formation of a dedicated coordinating and funding body, like the New York City Small Business Administration.51 As it turns out, several companies that have expressed a clear commitment to attracting and supporting the formerly incarcerated
throughout their training process into a developed career pathway, like the Refoundry furniture company,52 would be excellent candidates for converting to the democratic worker cooperative structure because it gives each member a stake in the business.
THE FULL PARTICIPATION ECONOMY
The Community Supported Worker Cooperative as a community economic development tool The Community Service Society believes that the WSDE generally, and the CSWC more specifically, is an ideal reintegration– community development mechanism that would not only assist in expanding training for living wage work in the prison and in the community, but would also serve to ground communities with a network of viable businesses—like Evergreen Cooperatives or the Madison, Wisconsin cooperative system— that could also provide a bridge to youth pre-apprenticeships in skilled work through long-term affiliations with unions and union worker cooperatives. This would entail expanding support for WSDEs in low-income communities of color and across all of New York City and New York State and teaching cooperative work while developing a WSDE structure within the prison system. Worker cooperatives also afford the opportunity for training alliances with community colleges and other educational providers, which could serve as the anchor for skill development. Sponsored by an individual or group of legislators in contiguous districts like those in the rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bed Stuy, Brownsville, and East New York, a
community supported worker cooperative would not only locate needed services to the area but also incubate local businesses that would dedicate resources to training community members across all age groups—a commitment far surpassing the city’s sporadic summer youth job funding. Action points include: •
Prisons and secondary schools should introduce education in cooperative work and training in business organizations, provide supports for preparing business plans, and link workers to organizations that can provide technical assistance.
•
The state and city should provide subsidies, low-interest loans, and technical support to certified worker cooperatives with developed business plans.
•
The city and state government, particularly community boards and local legislators, nonprofit organizations, and members of the community, should identify and inventory the business needs of each community district then commit to locally
use buildings, to promote and incubate cooperative economic development in low-income communities in the process of being gentrified like Coney Island, Bushwick, and East New York.
support and subsidize a small number of these businesses as community-sponsored worker cooperatives. •
•
Community leaders and legislators should work with prisons, communitybased institutions, and nonprofits like Democracy At Work-NY (DAW-NY), New York City Network of Worker Cooperatives (NYC-NOWC), and The Murphy Institute at CUNY to help locate and develop networks of cooperativelyowned enterprises in communities that have identified the need for their services and to make the connection with government offices that could award city and state contracts and locate other sources of funding. Linkages should be made with crucial education and training institutions like community colleges and union cooperatives that form training hubs to support incubating CSWCs. The city and state should commit significant resources like grants, tax breaks, low-interest loans, and low-no rent occupancy in deed-restricted public
•
The state should promote WSDEs and the CSWC model to support local economic development in upstate communities shifting away from a prison-incarcerationbased economy.
The history of capitalism over the last 300 years is a record of the endless ways in which governments have supported, subsidized, privileged, and assisted capitalist enterprises. The mechanisms have included corporate tax holidays and reductions, subsidies, infrastructures built to business needs, special training for corporate employees before and after employment, below-market interest rate loans, technical assistance at public expense, and so on. Given the extraordinary deficits of the capitalist model, at the very minimum forms of business enterprise alternative to capitalist corporations ought to receive comparable government supports.
THE FULL PARTICIPATION ECONOMY
The goal and point is to enable citizens to choose the form of business enterprise that works best for their goals and values, be it WSDE or capitalist corporation. This is not special treatment for WSDEs. It is simple even-handedness when government is called upon to support two alternative enterprise structures. At a minimum, CSS and Democracy at Work believe that government and political parties should support a reintegration–full participation community development platform that prioritizes full participation in the workplace. This deserves comparable funding and structural support as is currently allocated to programs for full participation in community life and community selfdevelopment. Many workers want their efforts to positively impact not only their families but to benefit their communities by transmitting learned skills and experiences. The workplace can be a site of productivity and skill transmission and a means to seed resources within the community—particularly those stunted by poverty and ravaged by mass incarceration. Structured appropriately, the workplace can
also be an integrating mechanism owned and controlled by the people who participate and are co-invested in the community—an anchor to foster the development of skills and income that is worker and community self-directed. The WSDE and the CSWC are concepts whose time has come.
Notes 1 O’Connell, K. (2015). “Over $1 Trillion Spent Since Nixon Began War on Drugs.” Mint Press News. Available at, http:// www.mintpressnews.com/war-on-drugs/211217/; M. McLaughlin, et al. “The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the U.S.,” Working Paper # CI072016. Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University St. Louis. Available at, https://concordanceinstitute.wustl.edu/ SiteCollectionDocuments/The%20Economic%20Burden%20 of%20Incarceration%20in%20the%20US.pdf 2 Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (2015). “Does the U.S. Spend $80 Billion a Year on Incarceration.” Available at, http://crfb.org/blogs/us-spends-80-billion-yearincarceration 3 Stier, K. (2015). “NYS Prison Budget Climbs, Despite Fewer Inmates.” City Limits. Available at, http://citylimits. org/2015/11/10/nys-prison-budget-climbs-despite-fewerinmates/ 4 Sommeiller, E., Price, M., and Wazeter, E. (2016). “Income Inequality in the U.S. by State, Metropolitan Area, and County.” Economic Policy Institute. Available at, http://www. epi.org/publication/income-inequality-in-the-us/ 5 Elliott, L. (2016). “Richest 62 people as wealthy as half of world’s population, says Oxfam.” The Guardian. Available at, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world’s-population-combined 6 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016). TED: The Economics Daily, Unemployment rate unchanged at 4.9 percent. Available at, http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/ unemployment-rate-unchanged-at-4-point-9-percent-injuly-2016.htm 7 National Center for Education Statistics, Fast Facts,
available at, https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display-asp?id=77 8 The Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that Millennial (persons aged 20-34 years old) unemployment and poverty rates ranged from 3.8 percent/5.8 percent for persons with a B.A. or more; 8.1 percent/14.7 percent for persons with a two-year college degree, and 12.2 percent/21.8 percent for high school graduates. Pew Research Center (2014). “The Rising Cost of Not Going to College.” Available at, https:// www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-ofnot-going-to-college 9 Applebaum, B. (2016). “U.S. household income grew 5.2 percent in 2015, breaking pattern of stagnation.” The New York Times. Available at, http://www.nytimes. com/2016/09/14/business/economy/us-census-householdincome-poverty-wealth-2015.html?_r=0 10 Home purchases are at all-time lows for persons in their 20s and 30s (34.1 percent compared with the national homeownership rate of 62.9 percent), as are the rates of marriage and childbirth (in 2010, 14 percent of Americans aged 20–24 were married; 42 percent aged 25–29; and 65 percent aged 30-34. Mack, J. (2016). Few Millennials are getting married, and the numbers behind that trend, MLive. Available at, http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/02/ few_millennials_are_geting_ma.html; Women in their 20s averaged 948 births per 1,000, the lowest birth rate for that cohort in history. Mangan, D (2015). “Baby bust! Millennials’ birth rate drop may signal historic shift.” CNBC. Available at, https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/27/baby-bust-millenialsbirth-rate-drop-may-signal-historic-shift.html 11 White, G.B. (2015). “Education gaps don’t fully explain why black unemployment is so high.” The Atlantic. Available at, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/ black-white-unemployment-gap/421497
Notes cont. 12 White (2015), note 11 above. 13 Vega, T. (2015, October 8). “Black wealth not protecting homeownership.” CNNMoney. Available at, http://money.cnn. com/2015/10/07/news/economy/black-wealth-net-worth/ 14 Compared with 2016’s second quarter national homeownership rate of 62.9 percent, the white (nonHispanic) homeownership rate was 71.5 percent; the Asian/ Pacific Islander homeownership rate was 53.7 percent; and the Hispanic and black rates were 45.1 percent and 41.7 percent respectively. Callis, R. R., and Kres, M. (2016). U.S. Census Bureau, Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division, U.S. Census Bureau News, Residential vacancies and homeownership in the second quarter 2016. Available at, https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/ currenthvspress.pdf 15 Schwartzapfel, B. (2014). “Modern-day slavery in America’s prison workforce.” Prison Legal News. Available at, https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2014/sep/19/ modern-day-slavery-americas-prison-workforce/; The Brian Lehrer Show, Interview with Beth Schwartzapfel, “Another word for mandatory prison labor,” WNYC, September 26, 2016. Retrieved from, http://www.npr.org/ podcasts/381444825/the-brian-lehrer-show 16 Elizabeth Hinton (2016). From The War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 17 The Sentencing Project (2014). Prison population 19802011. Retrieved from, https://www.sentencingproject.org/ map.cfm 18 New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (2012, January). Under custody report: Profile of incarcerated offender population under custody on January 1, 2012. Retrieved from, http:// www. doccs.ny.gov/Research/Reports/2013/UnderCustody_ Report_2012.pdf. 19 New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (2013, January). 2009 inmate releases: Three year post release follow-up. Retrieved from,
https://www.doccs.ny.gov/Research/Reports/2013/2009_ releases_3yr_out.pdf 20 Stevenson, B. (2015). “The Collateral Damage of Mass Incarceration.” Truthout (New York). Retrieved from, http:// www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/30487-thecollateral-damage-of-mass-incarceration# 21 Westcott, K. (2015). “Race, criminalization, and historical trauma in the United States: Making the case for a new justice framework.” Traumatology, (21) 4, 273–284. 22 New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (2013, January). 2009 inmate releases: Three year post release follow-up. Retrieved from, https://www.doccs.ny.gov/Research/Reports/2013/2009_ releases_3yr_out.pdf 23 Evelly, J. (2011, August 30). “Leaving prison, free… and homeless.” City Limits. Retrieved from, http:// www. citylimits.org/news/articles/4415/leaving-prison-free-andhomeless#.U2KQqoFdX0o 24 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Poverty Guidelines (2016, January 25). Retrieved from, https://aspe. hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines 25 The Movement for Black Lives (2016). “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom & Justice.” Available at, https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/ 26 Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum expanded upon the notion of human rights by introducing the Capability Approach, an economic theory conceived in the 1980s as an alternative to welfare economics. Sen’s core focus is on what individuals are able to do (i.e., capable of) rather than on abstract, undifferentiated rights granted as members of society. Martha Nussbaum extended Sen’s capabilities theory and frames basic human principles accorded to each person in terms of 10 capabilities based on personal and social circumstance. She contends that a political order can only be considered decent if it secures at least a threshold level of these 10 capabilities to all citizens. Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is centered on the value of individual human dignity. Sen, A. (1985). Commodities and capabilities. Amsterdam and New York, New York: Sole distributors for
the U.S.A and Canada, Elsevier Science Pub. Co.; Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: the human development approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 27 Clare Goff (2014). “Ten Ideas for Creating Cooperative Local Economies.” Abundance. Retrieved from, http:// abundancenc.org/ten-ideas-for-creating-cooperative-localeconomies/
fight-austerity-lets-boost-enterprise-by-giving-staff-a-stakein-the-companies-for-which-they-work/ 33 Posey, S. (2014). Learning from the Cleveland Model: Notes on the Next American Revolution, Urban Issues, Analysis. Retrieved from, http://www.hamptoninstitute.org/ cleveland-model.html#V9yGT73X-Fg 34 Posey (2014), note 33 above.
28 A union cooperative is a cooperative where the workerowners own an equal share in the business, operate under a collective bargaining agreement that sets wages, benefits and working conditions and one in which the worker-owners have an equal share in running the business and which operates under the Mondragon Principles. See Ifateyo (2015), note 46 below. 29 Herrera, D. (2004). “Mondragon: A For-Profit Organization That Embodies Catholic Social Thought.” Review of Business. The Peter J. Tobin College of Business, St. John’s University. 25(1):56-68, retrieved August 29, 2014. See also Navarro, V. (2014). The Case of Mondragon. Counterpunch. Available at, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/30/the-case-ofmondragon/ 30 Mondragon Annual Report 2012. 31 Nittoli, J. and Rieger, S. (2016). The Century Foundation, The Century Foundation Report: Economy and Jobs, Reducing Economic Inequality through Democratic Worker Ownership. Available at, https://tcf.org/content/ report/reducing-economic-inequality-democratic-workerownership/ 32 “It’s the new economics”—full text of John McDonnell’s co-op speech, Labour List (2016). Retrieved from, http:// labourlist.org/2016/01/its-the-new-economics-full-text-ofjohn-mcdonnells-co-op-speech/; John McDonnell wants to double the UK’s cooperative, Co-operative News, April 20, 2016, retrieved from, http://www.thenews.coop/101534/ news/co-operatives/labour-pledges-expand-co-ops-giveworkers-right; John McDonnell: As we fight austerity, let’s boost enterprise by giving staff a stake in the companies for which they work, Labour List, September 10, 2016, retrieved from, http://labourlist.org/2016/09/john-mcdonnell-as-we-
35 Posey (2014), note 33 above. 36 Burnley, M. (2015). “Oakland is Claiming Its Worker Cooperative Capital Title.” The Next City. Available at, https:// nextcity.org/daily/entry/oakland-worker-coops-support-citycouncil 37 East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (May 2012). “The State of Work in the East Bay and Oakland: Wealth Concentration Amidst Bottoming Out for Low and Middle Income Families,” 1. Available at, http://www.workingeastba. org/sowebo 38 Democracy at Work Institute (2015). Research Publication Series, “US Worker Cooperatives: A State of the Sector.” Available at, http:// institute.coop/sites/default/files/State_of_ the_Sector.pdf 39 Civic Economics (2002). “Economic Impact Analysis: A Case Study, Local Merchants vs. chain Retailers,” 6. Available at, http://www.civiceconomics.com/app/ download/5841748704/Lamar+Retail+Analysis.pdf 40 Cummings, S.L. (2011). Community Economic Development as Progressive Politics toward a Grassroots Movement for Economic Justice, Stan. L. Rev. 399, 475. 41 Caspar-Futterman, E. (2011). Back to (Non) Basics: Worker Cooperatives as Economic Development, Berkeley Plan J., 115, 124 42 Cummings, S.L. (1999). Developing Cooperatives as a Job Creation Strategy for Low Income Workers, N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change, 181, 187.
43 Alumni Prospera. Available at, http://prosperacoops.org/ alumni-co-ops 44 Mitchell, S. (2013). Locally Owned Businesses Can Help Communities Thrive—And Survive Climate Change. Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Available at, http://www.ilsr.org/ locally-owned-businesses-communities-thrive-surviveclimate-change. 45 Stephens, S. (2105). Draft Worker Cooperative Ordinance. Sustainable Economies Law Center. Retrieved from, https:// drive.google.com/file/d/0B_rgt0QdXUbySk52ZGlzTGVPZDQ/ view 46 Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo (2015). $5 million for Co-op Development in Madison. Grassroots Economic Organizing *(GEO), http:// www.geo.coop/story/5-million-co-opdevelopment-madison 47 Retooling Capitalism: The Next Generation of Business Enterprise (2015). Pathbreaker: Isthmus Engineering & Manufacturing. Retrieved from, http://www. retoolingcapitalism.com/2015/05/pathbreaker-isthmusengineering-manufacturing/ 48 Retooling Capitalism (2015), note 47 above. 49 Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo. Co-ops Get a Boost in Seattle: Low-Income Workers Get Help Starting Co-ops and Small Businesses, Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO), https:// www. geo.cop/story/co-ops-get-boost-seattle. 50 Duda, J. (2016). The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP, Yes! Magazine. Available at, http:// www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/the-italian-placewhere-co-ops-drive-the-economy-and-most-people-aremembers-20160705 51 Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (2014). Worker Cooperatives for New York City: A Vision for Addressing Income Inequality. Retrieved at, http://fpwa.org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/01/Worker-Cooperatives-for-NYC-A-Vision-forAddressing-Income-Inequality.pdf 52 Refoundry at, http://www.refoundry.org/our-story-2016/
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