By Kenzie Love Co-operativism has a rich history within the Black diaspora, one that had long been overlooked but is gaining new attention through books such as Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard’s Collective Courage. Reviewing the history of co-ops in Black communities offers important lessons for the wider co-op movement. As Gordon Nembhard notes, there have … Lessons from the Black Co-operative Movement
By Kenzie Love Inflation is top of mind for many Canadian small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) these days. A recent survey of Canadian SMEs found 90 percent of them had been impacted by inflation, and another survey of 500 Canadian accountants revealed inflation as the most significant financial threat to Canadian SMEs. With the vast … Inflation Poses Unique Challenges for Worker Co-ops
Co-operatives Are At a Pivotal Point By Kenzie Love When the United Nations General Assembly declared 2012 as the first International Year of Co-operatives, it seemed to herald a bright future for the movement. With the theme of “Co-operative Enterprises Build a Better World”, the International Year of Co-operatives had three main objectives: increasing awareness, … Co-operatives Are At a Pivotal Point
By Kenzie Love In 2012, thousands of Quebec students engaged in protests over the provincial government’s increase in post-secondary tuition fees. With the repeal of the fee increase later that year, it might have seemed to some as though the issue was over. But the activists and organizers continued to meet and decided their work … Solidarity Co-op Members SEIZE the Opportunity, in Quebec and Beyond
By Kenzie Love At first glance, the idea of a multi-stakeholder co-op might seem an improbable model for success, given the different and apparently conflicting interests involved. It would be hard for a food co-op, for instance, to provide both the cheapest groceries possible to its consumer members and the highest wages possible to its … Diversity of Perspectives Benefits Multi-Stakeholder Co-ops
By Kenzie Love and Hazel Corcoran As Simon Kinsey observes in his recent case study, Value and Challenges of the Worker Co-op Model, the value of the worker co-op model, in offering workers the power to be collectively self-employed and to be able to disengage from the exploitative wage labour market, is clear. It’s also … How CWCF Is Addressing the Challenges of the Worker Co-op Model
By Simon Kinsey, CWCF intern A cursory glance at worker cooperative history reveals the worker cooperative model to be remarkably flexible. Just in Canada, we have seen examples of people turning to worker cooperatives to save their jobs, to create new jobs, to provide a service to their community, to pursue greater autonomy, to experiment … Value and Challenges of the Worker Co-op Model
By Kenzie Love The problems with the big social media platforms are well known: the concentration of ownership, the lack of control or privacy, the ability to spread misinformation, and more. Despite these and other problems, however, “their use is still practically compulsory in order to advertise a person’s work or spread urgent news.” The … Fediverse Model Offers Social Media a Second Chance
Like all businesses, worker co-ops are obligated to pay their workers a minimum wage. As recent studies have shown, however, paying the bare minimum is no longer sufficient to cover even basic expenses such as rent in many cities across Canada. Hence the concept of the “living wage”, a figure which theoretically covers the actual … Even for Worker Co-ops, Paying a Living Wage Is a Complex Issue — Kenzie Love
By Kenzie Love Growing up in Canada as the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Andria Barrett was familiar with the Jamaican concept of “partner”. What she only learned later in life was that while it has sometimes been overlooked in Western histories of the co-operative movement, partner is just one name for a Rotating Savings and … ROSCAs Are an Overlooked But Vital Part of the Co-operative Sector