Best Job in the Neighborhood—And They Own It: Worker co-ops are expanding despite the economy

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



Best Job in the Neighborhood—And They Own It
How worker co-ops are expanding despite the rust-belt economy.

by Susan Arterian Chang
posted Nov 10, 2011


“I can tell you before Evergreen, we felt like there was nothing left for us,” says Tim Nolen. He and his fellow Evergreen Cooperative worker-owners live in Cleveland’s Greater University Circle community, where the unemployment rate exceeds 25 percent and the median household income is less than $18,500. “Evergreen grabbed ahold of us and said, ‘Let us help you out.’ It is a great feeling when you have given up hope and someone gives you that hand and says, ‘You don’t have to feel worthless. Here, let’s give you a sense of self-worth.’”

In the heart of an inner city ravaged and abandoned by the global economy, the Evergreen Cooperative has emerged as one of the country’s most promising models of locally based wealth-building. Evergreen grew out of the Greater University Circle Initiative, an unusual collaboration spearheaded by the Cleveland Foundation and including the City of Cleveland, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, and local institutions (principally Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals).

In December 2006, Ted Howard,co-founder of The Democracy Collaborative, outlined for civic leaders the catalytic role that the spending of “captive” anchor institutions like hospitals and universities could play in community wealth generation in Cleveland. He talked at length with local civic leaders about how an anchor-institution-based, worker-cooperative business model might be the engine for the sustainable job creation and wealth-building that had thus far been elusive in Greater University Circle. Democracy Collaborative researchers determined that Case Western Reserve, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals alone spent more than $3 billion a year on goods and services—but they spent it almost entirely outside the community.

Howard and his fellow strategists began sketching out a compelling framework for what was to become the Evergreen Cooperatives. The business model involved supplying the needs of the anchor institutions to create steady revenue for a network of worker-owned, local businesses that would be built to be the greenest in their sectors. “Sustainability in the broadest sense can only be created if you can stick capital where it won’t get up and leave,” Howard explains. “You can think of Evergreen as an anchor institution designed to capture the capital flows of other anchors and circulate them locally.” ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/new-livelihoods/best-job-in-the-neighborhood-and-they-own-it

[RufusTFirefly]

1. K & R!

Arrangements like these give me some hope for the future.

[Old and In the Way]

2. A blueprint for the future American economy.

Decentralized investment in locally owned coop businesses focused on food, infrastructure, and energy can be a great model to start to revitalize urban areas that have been devastated by the global economy's restructuring of our economy.

[shanti]

3. Argentina did it, so can we

there's an excellent documentary out there about argentinians buying up all the unused factories and starting their own co-ops. it could happen here as well.

[Magoo48]

4. K and R

Need is producing wonderful new ideas as well as the retooling of some of the better old ideas....