Building Solidarity Economies—Stories from Worker Co-op Members

Editors’ note: This piece is from Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine’s summer 2024 issue, “Escaping Corporate Capture.”

The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) is the grassroots labor organization serving worker-owned and -governed businesses. Now in its twentieth year, the USFWC has witnessed strong, transformational leadership within its member co-ops via the worker–owner model—leadership that is strengthening both the workplaces and the communities in which they are embedded. The stories that follow provide a window into the lives of three worker–owners in this field. 

Finding Joy and Dignity in Our Work

by Sabiha Basrai, Design Action Collective

As a young Muslim activist coming of age in the antiglobalization movement surrounding the World Trade Organization 1999 protest in Seattle and the antiwar movement of the early 2000s, I had been searching for ways to work at the intersection of graphic design and social justice organizing. I found my way to Inkworks Press and Design Action Collective in 2003, having discovered that many of the campaign materials that were part of my own political education had been designed and printed by these shops. I knew that this was where I wanted to be. I worked toward an ownership position at Design Action Collective, and I joined as a member of the cooperative in 2006.

My colleagues at Design Action Collective have supported my personal and professional growth over the years, which helps me to see myself thriving here for many more years to come. —Sabiha Basrai, Design Action Collective

At first, I took it for granted that social justice values are baked into the worker co-op model; but I soon learned that reflecting shared values in the way we work with one another and how we serve clients requires daily practice. I and my fellow Design Action members leaned into the necessary challenging conversations about the ways in which systems of oppression, such as White supremacy and cis-hetero patriarchy, were manifesting in our operational policies and shop culture. We committed to planning from a place of abundance instead of scarcity, to articulating policies that see us as whole people and not just workers, and to staying accountable to the changing needs of the social justice movements we serve. We invested in anti-oppression trainings for all members that support the lifelong work of unlearning unjust systems. And we joined political formations, such as Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Third World Resistance, and the Design Justice Network, so that we could develop the long-term relationships that make our movements stronger. (It is these relationships of trust that enabled Design Action Collective to work on such projects as the original Black Lives Matter logo and the “No Ban No Wall Sanctuary for All” poster, an answer to Trump’s Muslim travel ban that went on to anchor the immigrant rights protests of the Trump era.)

My colleagues at Design Action Collective have supported my personal and professional growth over the years, which helps me to see myself thriving here for many more years to come. They have helped me to develop my skills in conflict communication, democratic decision-making, and project management through compassionate feedback and intentional accountability processes. These skills transfer to all aspects of my life, inside and outside of the cooperative. Collaborating on projects for nonprofit organizations dedicated to such issues as environmental justice, labor rights, racial justice, and queer liberation has helped me to embody our shared political points of unity. As I reflect on the aspirations I had at the beginning of my career, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this co-op. The design industry can be very exploitative of young workers—I hope more designers today will embrace the worker co-op model and find joy and dignity in their work.

Leading Change in Our Communities

by Yvette Beatty, Home Care Associates

Being part of a worker–owner company is beautiful. Being a worker–owner means that I have a voice—I can share my opinions and I can make decisions for/with my organization. It also means receiving a level of support not normally available at non-co-op organizations. At my co-op—Home Care Associates—for example, I received free training to excel in my career and was provided with the tools to become a homeowner, put my daughter through college, and be self-sufficient overall.

Worker co-ops include employees in their strategic planning and decision-making processes; they also provide opportunities for their employees to grow in their industry and contribute to the community. At Home Care Associates, we have many committees managed by the worker–owners, and through these I serve a number of roles: mentor, community ambassador, policy-action group member, safety committee member—roles that empower me to go into the community and learn what people need from the industry and what we can do to better support them. Worker–owners are shown why the company makes certain decisions, and we are given space to share our opinions.

Working for a co-op is like having an extended family of people who are like-minded when it comes to success and supporting our communities. Employees are helped to achieve both their personal and their professional best. —Yvette Beatty, Home Care Associates

At Home Care Associates, worker–owners promote and help to enable independent, healthy lifestyles. We run errands, assist with personal care, and organize social activities. We also recruit community members who are interested in joining the co-op and receiving a quality of home care service not offered by non-co-op home care organizations. And co-ops help to change their industries for the better. During my tenure as a worker–owner in home care, I have seen come into being better pay, better benefits, and better support for our communities.

Working for a co-op is like having an extended family of people who are like-minded when it comes to success and supporting our communities. Employees are helped to achieve both their personal and their professional best. Home Care Associates not only provided me with training to be a home health aide but also helped me to find day care and built up my confidence through tutoring.

Home Care Associates has given me options that I thought I would never have as a single Black woman. My co-op supported me when I was struggling, and provided me with a loan and taught me about managing my finances so that I won’t be in that struggle again. I’m proud of the success in my life gained through working in a co-op, and it means a lot to me to now be able to reach out my hand and give my time to people in a moment of need.

Bringing a Human Focus to Our Workplaces

by Andrew Gansenberg, New Frameworks Natural Design Build

In every company I worked for prior to New Frameworks Natural Design Build, there was an implicit (if not explicit) focus on the business as the primary entity: employees had to fit into the roles that the business required. The company might adapt and change its products and services to stay competitive in the market, or it might try to implement new, more efficient business processes, and as a result, employees’ roles would change. A few companies I worked for tried to bring more of a human focus to their workplace—offering to learn what new available roles might interest me, for example, and providing professional-development opportunities to support working toward those roles—but their overall design remained the same. At New Frameworks, however—a worker-owned natural design, manufacturing, and construction cooperative—I saw the dynamic of the company as primary and workers as secondary flipped on its head. Here, there is a recognition of the company as a collection of people—and the interests, skills, and capacities of each worker are elevated as primary with respect to informing and shaping the work that we do. We are here together, building a business around the careers that we want.

At New Frameworks…I saw the dynamic of the company as primary and workers as secondary flipped on its head. Here, there is a recognition of the company as a collection of people. —Andrew Gansenberg, New Frameworks Natural Design Build

In their seminal book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business, 1994), Jim Collins and Jerry Porras—well-recognized thought leaders in business strategy and management—present the concept of “preserving the core and stimulating progress.” The idea is that visionary, long-lasting, successful companies have a relatively fixed core ideology and are willing to change every other aspect of their business, including culture, location, products and services, strategy, and so forth. I think Collins and Porras come close to recognizing that a democratically owned and controlled business is structured in a way that encourages this visionary approach—they go so far as to say that “the drive for progress arises from a deep human urge—to explore, to create, to discover, to achieve, to change, to improve”; it is this human-centered approach that I have experienced with New Frameworks, and it is one that has driven our innovation and success.

I don’t want to give the impression that when you join a cooperative, you get to do whatever you want and you will be successful. A cooperative provides an advantageous structure for workers, but market forces must still be considered and members’ work must be complementary. Since I joined New Frameworks almost five years ago, I have had many transparent conversations with my coworkers about my interests and the type of work I want to be doing. I have learned that my ambitious individual interests are very well-aligned with our collective core ideology, and that there is support from the co-op to figure out how to work toward creating new offerings that would allow me to pursue those interests. This has been a slow process in which the primary challenges are ensuring that I have the capacity to hold the roles I am already in while developing strategies that not only meet my interests but are also sound business decisions. We have found potential roles for me that are a compromise of what I want and what the company currently needs. I trust that the intent is there and I see progress actively happening, even if my more far–reaching goals do not yet fit what we are doing (examples of support of other workers’ interests can be seen in the approximately 20-year evolution of the co-op).

Much like my interests becoming integrated into New Frameworks’ ever evolving strategy, looking back, I can see how the interests and skills of the founding members formed a core ideology of social, ecological, and environmental justice and steered the strategic direction of the co-op toward transforming the construction industry, leading them to more scalable and shareable business offerings—for example, prefabricated straw-bale insulated panels (a natural/nontoxic building assembly). Now, other architects and builders have been reaching out to us, expressing interest in developing their own businesses around the panelized systems we have developed. The work I have been wanting to do—which includes cooperative and business development—is now finding a home in my new role as the Seed program manager. Our Seed program offers training for straw panel design, manufacturing, installation, and business plan development, including exploring cooperative approaches—and we recently launched our inaugural cohort with mission-and values-aligned collaborators around the country. This, of course, is not the end of the story—and we continue looking forward to the many possible opportunities for what else may sprout from this work.