Workplace Democracy
ACIPCO Another Employee-Owned Co. (of some kind)
Submitted by MSemTerraRobinHood on Wed, 03/17/2010 - 19:55.United Steelworkers and Mondragon Internacional announce collaboration!
PITTSBURGH - The United Steelworkers (USW) and MONDRAGON Internacional, S.A. today announced a framework agreement for collaboration in establishing MONDRAGON cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada. The USW and MONDRAGON will work to establish manufacturing cooperatives that adapt collective bargaining principles to the MONDRAGON worker ownership model of “one worker, one vote.”
“We see today’s agreement as a historic first step towards making union co-ops a viable business model that can create good jobs, empower workers, and support communities in the United States and Canada,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard. “Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollowing out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants. We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”
Josu Ugarte, President of MONDGRAGON Internacional added: “What we are announcing today represents a historic first – combining the world’s largest industrial worker cooperative with one of the world’s most progressive and forward-thinking manufacturing unions to work together so that our combined know-how and complimentary visions can transform manufacturing practices in North America.”
Cooperative Laundry Brings Hope to Distressed Workers
Civic and city leaders are invest ing several million dollars in a unique, employee-owned business model to drive more wealth and jobs into the struggling neighborhoods around University Circle.
Several hundred people will gather on East 105th Street near St. Clair Avenue today to celebrate the opening of the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, a $5.8 million commercial venture featuring the latest in energy-efficient laundry equipment.
Solidarity Economy in Brazil
Photo: Brazil's Landless
Farmers Meet Venezuela Coop
Sugar Workers' Coop
Supports 4,300
Families at 48 Mills
By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 11 (IPS) - The Harmony Agricultural Company has become Brazil’s largest worker-managed business in the solidarity economy. It provides employment for 4,300 families who work 26,000 hectares of land, and its main activity is producing sugar at 48 mills.
When the company was in crisis in 1993, the first reaction of the workers and their unions was the usual one of trying to ensure that the 2,300 workers who were dismissed received back pay and severance pay. But two years later, the unions took another approach.
Their goal was to win back the lost jobs and maintain the remaining ones, while continuing an activity essential to the economy of Catende, in the northeastern state of Pernambuco.
They applied for the owners of the company to be forced to declare bankruptcy, and took over the firm’s administration, under the supervision of the justice system. Since then, they have resumed sugar production and diversified into other agricultural and industrial activities.
