Monthly Archives: September 2010

Ontario Court’s Bold Move Protects Sex Industry Workers

Posted on September 29, 2010 by John McNamara

In a stunning and potentially landmark court decision, an Ontario federal court struck down key criminal provisions related to prostitution and the sex industry yesterday. Essentially, prostitution is not, in and of itself, criminal in Canada; however, almost all of … Continue reading →

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A Vision of Our Movement (or a beginning of a discussion)

Posted on September 23, 2010 by John McNamara

Today, as this goes to post, I am about to start the first day of a two-day retreat for the US Federation of Worker Co-operatives board. The last several posts had a lot to do with this event as the … Continue reading →

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Can Syndicalism Help Worker Co-ops?

Posted on September 22, 2010 by John McNamara

If you talk to a lot of co-operative developers and community organizers in the United States about Mondragon, you will likely hear them extol the virtues of the Caja Popular (former the Caja Laboral Popular). The bank owned and controlled … Continue reading →

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The Agency Dilemma in Worker Co-operatives

Posted on September 21, 2010 by John McNamara

Last week at my other blog, Breathing Lessons, I discussed the Rochdale cul-de-sac as it applies to consumer cooperatives. This week, as part of this discussion over the future of US worker cooperatives, if not the labor movement in the … Continue reading →

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Roadblocks on the Path to Mondragon: The Theft of Labor

Posted on September 20, 2010 by John McNamara

The three English countries (UK, Canada, and the United States) have, at their core, a culture that promotes and accommodates the theft of labor in a way that simply didn’t exist in Euskera (The Basque Country). Really, it is a … Continue reading →

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Mondragon in America?

Posted on September 19, 2010 by John McNamara

Can Mondragon Really Happen Here? The Great Recession has brought renewed interest in worker cooperatives in the United States. It has also generated a lot of interest in Mondragon as an example of how to move worker coops beyond small … Continue reading →

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Is It Time for Neo-Distributism?

Posted on September 13, 2010 by John McNamara

One of the joys of not actually being enrolled in a graduate program arises in the ability to actually read the assigned books from some of the classes! It isn’t that I didn’t complete my assisgnments, but often only a … Continue reading →

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Happy Labor Day!

Posted on September 6, 2010 by John McNamara

Well, in most of the world, Labor Day  is on May 1st. In the United States, Grover Cleveland made it the first Monday in September specifically to avoid the connection of May 1 and the Haymarket Square Tragedy. The struggle … Continue reading →

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