Amy Dean

Why Unions Are Going Into the Co-op Business

As manufacturing in the United States continues in free fall, the USW aims to use employee-run businesses to create new jobs to replace union work that has gone overseas.

“Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollow out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants,” said United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard in 2009. “We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”

Gerard was announcing a formal partnership between his 1.2-million-member union and Mondragon, a cluster of cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain. read more »

Syndicate content