Worker Cooperative Initiative of Long Island

Increasingly, we are seeing globalization cannibalize local businesses, destroy jobs, and drain money from the local economy. At the same time, working people are being placed in the position of having to compete with low cost labor in non-union states without serious environmental protections, or with exploited labor in Third World countries, or simply told that their jobs will be transferred overseas. Meanwhile, local communities lose the capacity to control their quality of life, preserve their environment, and plan for sustainable economic development. Thus, they cannot preserve family-supporting jobs and keep profits circulating in the local economy, sustain local business, and provide an adequate tax base for local services.

To address these pervasive challenges, the Long Island Progressive Coalition has inaugurated its “Worker Cooperative Initiative of Long Island,” as part of our contribution to the growing national movement to create a more Cooperative Economy. Worker cooperatives are viable businesses in which the workers are the primary decision-makers. Workers elect a board of directors on the base on one worker one vote. As worker-owners they hire and supervise management, and guarantee that the business remains local, and the profits circulate in the community. Thus they protect workers from outsourcing or exploitation by large multi-nationals, empower them on a daily basis, enhance the workplace experience, and give workers a legitimate experience of pride and ownership. And given the large number of successful Long Island family-owned businesses whose baby-boom owners have no succession plan, they offer an effective means to preserve numerous viable local businesses for their workers and the community.

The LIPC has initiated a series of related campaigns that can contribute to the creation of a Cooperative Economy Ecosystem capable of sustaining a growing local cooperative economy. These efforts include:

• Exploring possibilities of worker buyouts of existing businesses as a way of addressing the “Silver Tsunami” of aging family owned businesses.
• Exploring possibilities for the creation of new small businesses, with particular focus on addressing unmet needs for jobs, products, and particular services of minority communities.
• Working with Sepa Mujer to create a minority owned worker cooperative for its members.
• Working with the Hofstra Law Clinic and with faculty at LIU Post on research and development.
• Developing close working relationships with major cooperative development organizations, including The Working World, the Center for Family Life, the Democracy Collaborative, the Union-Coop movement, and the North American office of the Mondragon cooperatives.
• Creating materials for, and organizing, a public education campaign.
• Becoming part of The Working World’s Peer Network.
• Creating a Long Island Task Force on Building Community Wealth.
• Creating a LIPC Board Steering Committee for the Worker Cooperative Initiative.
• Developing a Professional Resource and Technical Advisory Board.

If you have any questions or comments, feel fee to share them with me.