Tag Archives: US Federation

The Big (Wide) Tent of Worker Ownership

Posted on February 24, 2014 by John McNamara

Last month, I flew to Washington DC for a day to represent the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives as a member of the organization. The event was a series of meetings on Capitol Hill sponsored by the American Sustainable Business … Continue reading →

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Putting Your Money Where It Helps: Become a US Worker Coop Sustainer

Posted on November 25, 2013 by John McNamara

There is an old saw that “money is like manure, it only works if you spread it around!” Too often money gets conflated with “profit” and the idea of raising capital seems a bit wrong. As a result, worker movements … Continue reading →

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The Open Door Policy of Worker Co-operatives

Posted on August 22, 2011 by John McNamara

The 6th Principle of Co-operatives is called, somewhat reflexively, “Co-operation Among Co-operatives.” I have talked about this in a previous post. Today, I want to focus on it from a different perspective provided to us by the spiritual guide of … Continue reading →

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Creating a Roadmap to 2040

Posted on October 11, 2010 by John McNamara

In high school, one of my teacher, John Gray, would joke about giving a pop quiz in which the students had 5 minutes to write down everything that they knew. The joke was that given the enormity of that task, … 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 Democracy at Work Conference

Posted on June 28, 2010 by John McNamara

I took last week off due to a couple of things. The most important of which involved my wife and I becoming “Domestic Partners” in Dane County. Five years ago, we married ourselves in a handfasting ceremony at one of … Continue reading →

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The Cleveland Model–Take One

Posted on February 18, 2010 by John McNamara

Recently, The Nation sent out a broadcast with an article about the emerging worker cooperatives of Cleveland asking those of us in the bog-o-sphere to comment. As someone who has been an active member of a worker co-operative for over … Continue reading →

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#23 Co-operation Among Co-operatives

Posted on February 15, 2010 by John McNamara

I usually make the snarky comment that the only time that I hear about this principle is when some slacker co-op wants a discount or donation. . . that is horribly unfair, of course. Also, we should discount each other—we … Continue reading →

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Sometimes It Doesn’t Always Work

Posted on October 17, 2006 by John McNamara

During 2006, The US Worker Cooperative movement suffered a couple of losses! Interestingly, both were subjects of a 2003 documentary on US Worker Co-ops called “Beyond the Bottom Line: American Worker Cooperatives” by Headlamp Pictures. It is always disappointing to … Continue reading →

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