71–80 of 88 posts
Curious that you include REI. It's a retail coop model, not a worker-owned coop. Apropos: the way they ended the REI Adventures program is behavior consistent with a normal big-box chain. That is, announce the end simultaneously to their customers and REI's partner adventure companies, provide refunds to customers, but don't forward the relevant same customer info to the partners for rebooking because that's REI's pr…
Appreciate the feedback and the info. I included REI in the directory (labeled as customer co-op not a worker co-op) but not in the search results but now I realize that's lame. I'm just gonna take them off entirely.
There are also worker-owned food co-ops (Rainbow Grocery in SF is one), as well as a few surviving customer-owned co-ops (nearest to the Bay Area I'm aware of is the Davis Food Co-Op), though at one time there were far more.
Occasionally one may stumble across old-school grocery co-ops in unexpected places. Three Rivers in Knoxville, TN, comes to mind.
There's a list of US food co-ops here: https://www.grocery.coop/all-coops/>.
I wonder of there is a version of this but for jobs?
I'm assuming access to capital is a big element.
good to see this but all of them pay taxes in the US. we need something like this in Europe as well. think global but act local ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_cooperatives>
There is Cooperatives Europe, though it does not seem to include a members / firms list:
https://coopseurope.coop/>
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is nothing inherently ethical about co-op owned organizations nor anything inherently unethical about privately owned organizations. The party vanguard of the worker co-op is exactly as capable of selfish or abusive behaviour as the private owner.
> There is nothing inherently ethical about co-op owned organizations nor anything inherently unethical about privately owned organizations. I disagree. Co-ops are inherently democratic. Privately owned business is inherently anti-democratic. The difference only becomes starker as the scale increases. That alone makes it seem more ethical to me, before you even get to examining the way democratic organizations obviou…
Producer co-ops are often hiding in plain sight, and may not match preconceived views of crunchy-hippy businesses. For a long time, Visa International (the credit card company) was a producer co-op of member banks (it began trading publicly in 2008). Its major shareholders remain banks and investment companies.
Producer co-ops are also common in agriculture and food, as well as some media / creative fields. Associated Press, Blue Diamond (almonds/nuts), Cabot Creamery, Land O'Lakes, Welch's, and Sunkist are all co-ops, largely producer-owned AFAIR.
In Switzerland we have the concept of a "Genossenschaft"[1] which is a legal form for a company entered in the official company register like every other company for co-ops. You need to be at least 7 people to start one.
The largest two food super markets are both co-ops (Migros and Coop) and also the largest car sharing company Mobility is a co-op.
[1] https://www.kmu.admin.ch/kmu/en/home/concrete-know-how/setti...