Madison cooperatives booming, both old and new
Posted: January 20, 2012 Filed under: Cooperatives, United States | Tags: CICOPA, Isthmus, John Kessler, Lisa Thoms, Madison, Mondragon, Rebecca Kemble, USFWC, Wisconsin, worker-owned 2 Comments »Madison is the state capital, seat of the University of Wisconsin, and home to several worker cooperatives that have been in business for over 30 years.
Cab driver Rebecca Kemble is board president of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and President of CICOPA North America.
Rebecca works at Union Cab, founded in 1979, which now boasts 228 worker members – drivers, mechanics, office staff, and dispatchers. Committed to environmental sustainability, they are replacing gas guzzling Crown Victorias with hybrid vehicles. And they designed their own computerized dispatch system to respond to calls for service with the nearest available vehicle, reducing mileage and improving service and efficiency.
Rebecca drove us around and pointed out other long standing Madison coops like Nature’s Bakery and Community Pharmacy. “Worker cooperatives are sustainable businesses, especially in hard times. They are more flexible with changes in the market and give the highest priority to people working in the business. In the U.S. few people are aware of worker cooperatives, but with the economic crisis we are finding lots of interest.”
Isthmus founder John Kessler
Inspired by Mondragón’s example, Isthmus Engineering was founded 25 years ago. The cooperative designs and builds state of the art automation systems for a broad range of industries. With 50 employees, the majority worker owners, Isthmus is highly project oriented. Self-directed teams of mechanical and controls engineers, plus highly skilled electricians and machinists, collaborate to design, build, and test equipment that meets their customers’ needs.
“The core principle is one worker one vote, not each dollar one vote,” says founder John Kessler. “We’re not giving up anything by being a worker cooperative. It’s an excellent way to run a business.”
Lisa Thoms
A proud workers coop, Isthmus holds weekly board meetings over a catered lunch, so members can more easily stay abreast of current projects. And finances are completely transparent, even how much each person is paid.
Engineer Lisa Thoms, Vice President of the cooperative, explained. “We vote on hourly pay rates every year, based on each member’s discipline, experience, and contributions. So we all have a say in deciding what our fellow worker/owners are paid. But no member is paid more than twice as much as anyone else.”
“We’re democratic with a small ‘d’,” says engineer Ole Olson, “Everyone can have input in a decision. It doesn’t always go your way, but you know how and why the decision is made and that’s different from a conventional company.” Ole, who sits on the Isthmus coop affairs committee, is active with the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and in MadWorCs, a budding network of Madison worker cooperatives that promotes support among coops in the area, and encourages creation of new coops.
Ole Olson
Inspired by the experience of Mondragón, where complex support networks among individual coops developed over 50 years, similar networks exist in Western Massachusetts. [Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives], the San Francisco Bay Area [Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives] and Austin TX [Cooperation Texas]. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland are being developed as part of a network from the outset.
Now Filming at the Mondragon Coops in Basque Country
Posted: October 11, 2011 Filed under: Basque Country | Tags: Fagor Cooperatives, Jose Maria Ormaetxea, Mondragon, Orbea, Spain, worker-owned 2 Comments »
“We started with nothing, and everything we have achieved was because of our own hard work and dedication,” explains Jose Maria Ormaetxea, one of the five founding members of the Mondragon coops in 1956.
We have to interrupt our reports on worker owned companies in the U.S., because we are now visiting the Mondragon coops in the Basque region of northern Spain. Our days are long and intense as we film in numerous factories, universities, research centers, the coop bank and social service agency. We’ve been given complete access to coop managers, regular workers and others in the region to report on what these remarkable cooperatives have achieved and the complex ways they work together to benefit their worker owners and the economy of the entire region.
People here are feeling the effects of the economic crisis, of course, but unemployment in the Basque country is half what it is in the rest of Spain. The cooperatives take a variety of measures to prevent layoffs of members. They can vote to reduce their own hours or pay, or workers may be transferred temporarily to other cooperatives that are not as affected by the downturn. These worker owned coops employ 85,000 people and had revenues of about 25 billion dollars in 2010.
Worker-owned Orbea builds some of the finest bicycles in the world. The Orbea sponsored mountain bike team now holds the world and Olympic championships.
We look forward to sharing more stories, both from here and from North America, in the coming weeks, as we wrap up our Mondragon filming and begin editing the documentary, Shift Change. Stay tuned.
Ohio Employee Ownership Center and EBO Group demonstrate success of employee owned companies
Posted: September 23, 2011 Filed under: Cooperatives, United States | Tags: Cleveland, EBO Group, Evergreen Cooperatives, Ohio, Ohio Employee Ownership Center, worker-owned Leave a comment »For over 30 years the Ohio Employee Ownership Center [OEOC] at Kent State University has provided technical assistance, financial expertise, and the training to help businesses become employee owned and successful. They have played a key role in designing and launching the Evergreen cooperatives in Cleveland. [View our recent post about the Evergreen cooperatives>]
Bill McIntyre
“On average employee owned companies are more efficient, innovative, and profitable,” explained Director Bill McIntyre, “but the biggest gains come when companies nurture an ownership culture. For an employee owned company to reach its full potential, workers – and managers – need to unlearn old habits and develop new ones.”
Karen Thomas
That’s where the training comes in. With an ownership culture, employees offer ideas for new products and services as well as ways for the company to work more efficiently. Karen Thomas points out, “In a traditional business, management develops plans and implementation. In an employee owned business every member has responsibility and influence.”
Not all worker owned companies are organized as cooperatives. Most operate under what is called an Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP. There are about 11,000 ESOP companies in the U.S. Many do not have a strong ownership culture, and the day to day experience for employees is not much different than in a conventional firm. But others truly encourage employees to participate in making the company better and the results can be striking.
Assembling clutches at EBO
We filmed at the EBO Group, an ESOP near Akron, Ohio. They design and build specialized industrial machinery, such as drive trains for heavy mining machinery, and clutches for the tunnel boring equipment used to create the Chunnel between England and France.
Dave Heidenreich
EBO also produces an innovative motorized hospital stretcher/chair. That product was suggested by one of the employee owners, who meet individually with their supervisors on a quarterly basis to offer their ideas to make the company more efficient and innovative. EBO was originally privately owned, but when some of the original partners were ready to retire, the owners decided to turn the company over to its employees. “It’s one of the best decisions we ever made,” according to Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Dave Heidenreich.
The success of the EBO Group helps other Ohio companies since EBO contracts with manufacturers in the region to produce parts for the equipment they design and build. And as the worker/owners at the EBO group aren’t interested in closing the Ohio company and moving it overseas, it remains a stable element in the local economy.
Is There a Cooperative Near You? Check Out This Interactive Map!
Posted: August 12, 2011 Filed under: Cooperatives, Resources, United States | Tags: Asheville, Englewood, Gallatin Valley, Ithaca, Kent, Madison, maps, New Orleans, Santa Cruz, US, West Bridgewater, worker-owned 1 Comment »
The Rainbow Grocery, in San Francisco, CA, is worker-owned and managed.
Once you start looking, you discover there are cooperative enterprises all around us. Did you know that Handwork in Ithaca New York is a worker cooperative? C4 Tech & Design in New Orleans? Blue Ridge Biofuels in Asheville NC? Equal Exchange coffee importer in West Bridgewater MA? CH2MHILL in Englewood, CO? Select Machine in Kent, OH? Pedalers Express in Sta. Cruz CA? Big Timberworks Eco Design and Builders, Gallatin Valley, MT? Union Cab in Madison, WI?
While there are many types of cooperatives – consumer, housing, marketing, etc., Shift Change will focus on worker owned and managed cooperatives. Take a look at this map of the expanding numbers of worker cooperatives in the U.S.
