By Kenzie Love
Most worker co-ops in Canada are small and centralized in their operations. For many people, this is an appealing feature of the model: they can feel confident that a given worker co-op’s members care about their customers’ community because it’s their community as well. At the same time, however, few of the major issues facing the world today are confined to a single community or country, which is what has led one Canadian worker co-op, SSG, to look beyond national borders. Encountering both challenges and opportunities, here’s some of what they’ve learned in the process.
Connecting across borders requires intentionality
For SSG, expanding into the US and Chile was helped by the fact that its operations were already fully remote and spread out across Canada. But as Emily McQuarrie, SSG’s Director of Finance observes, there were still some obstacles to deal with in the process.
“It’s always a little trickier when you’re online,” she says. “But then add to that difference in language, difference in culture, really trying to be able to communicate well and understand each other well. It just takes a little more intentionality.”
It’s a complex process
While globe-spanning operations are nothing new for conventional businesses, they remain a rarity in the worker co-op sector, with the notable exception of Spain’s Mondragon. This makes it hard to find knowledgeable professionals who can help with the finer details of operating in different countries, something SSG has experienced. There may be lawyers or accountants who are familiar with multinational companies or worker co-ops, but finding one who’s experienced in dealing with both is rare.
“You need to go to a lot of different people to get information about how you want to do things,” says McQuarrie, “because there isn’t just a one-stop shop, whereas if you were a typical corporation, that would probably be a lot easier.
But in contrast to a conventional business, SSG has no desire to hoard the knowledge it’s gained in the process. While McQuarrie isn’t sure how easily replicable SSG’s experience would be for other worker co-op, she suggests contacting them as a first step.
“Reach out to us if you’re going to do it,” she says. “Knowledge sharing would be helpful so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
It’s different for worker co-operatives
Expansion for most conventional businesses is driven by the same force that motivates all of their actions: the thirst for profit. For a worker co-op, however, things are different. Climate planning is required everywhere, but while SSG is exploring new opportunities and what pursuing those in other countries would look like, it’s taking a thoughtful approach to how it expands its operations further instead of racing ahead with it.
“There’s the business piece,” says McQuarrie, “We need to continue to fund our operations. There’s the vision piece: we’re looking to grow our impact. And there’s the membership piece of what’s actually interesting to our members.”
In short, if SSG does expand further, it will be driven by the same co-operative principles that inspired it to look abroad in the first place.