immigrant worker owned cooperatives: a user’s manual
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Immigrant Worker Owned Cooperatives: A User’s Manual. Worker Empowerment Through Democratized Knowledge. History: El Centro Humanitario and Green Clean for Life, LLC Why Worker Coops Fail: Coop Governance and Ownership Issues - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Immigrant Worker Owned Cooperatives: A
User’s Manual
Worker Empowerment Through Democratized
Knowledge History: El Centro Humanitario and Green Clean
for Life, LLC
Why Worker Coops Fail: Coop Governance and Ownership Issues
The Immigrant Worker Cooperative Manual: An El Centro-UC Denver partnership
El Centro Humanitario
El Centro Humanitario: The Women’s Project Scales Up
2009: Growing record of success of informal women’s empowerment project + economic desperation resulted in desire to “scale up” and found a professional, registered immigrant women’s cooperative cleaning business
U.S. Worker Owned Cooperatives: about 350 worker-owned coops at end of decade
Immigrant worker owned cooperatives in operation or in preparation: 40
El Centro Humanitarion and Green Cleaning for Life,
LLC
El Centro Humanitario: Coop Incubator Organization
Incubator Organizations
o New York’s Center for Family Life incubates Si Se Puedeo California’s Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security—
WAGES—incubates Green Cleaning Coopso El Centro Humanitario incubates Green Clean for Life, LLC
WAGES vs. El Centro
►Vision ►Fundraising►Tech support
►Strong Professional manager
►Goal: income increase first
WAGES ►Vision
►Fund raising►Tech support
►Weak professional manager
►Goal: ownership firstWhy? Social justice
El Centr
o
Workers
Workers
Governance and Ownership Challenges:How to Build Worker Ownership
Membership Structure(provisional members vs. permanent members vs. second-class members)
Board of Directors Structure (Homogenous Boards vs. Hybrid Boards) and tensions between Board and Worker Owners
The role of the coop manager vs. the role of coop members
Coop management structures (Centralized, professional management vs. elected executive committees vs. decentralized operations without management)
The Immigrant Worker Coop Manual
The Immigrant Worker Coop Manual
University-Community Partnership: El Centro’s Founding, Organizational Development and Coop
Growth
Producing the Worker Coop Manual
Community-University Partnerships:Issues
“Banking” model versus “Participatory/Dialogic” model of popular education
University Partnerships: Worth the Political Effort & Funding?
o HUD’s Office of University Partnerships declining funding
o COPC (“Community Outreach Partnership Centers”) defunded since 2005
Community-University Partnerships:Issues
In the end, how much of our challenge is educational, versus raw access to capital and power
Series of University-Community Partnership Studies
