Worker Cooperatives

The Center for Family Life (CFL) is a nonprofit, social service organization focused on promoting positive outcomes for children, adults, and families in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.  Aiming to help area residents secure fair wages and dignified employment, CFL began incubating worker-owned cooperatives eight years ago.  Recognizing the potential of the model to create job opportunities for hard-to-employ populations, in 2012 CFL launched a NYC Worker Cooperative Development Initiative, which provides 12 months of training and technical assistance to other community-based groups in Read more about Center for Family Life...

Wellspring Collaborative is a community-based cooperative development organization with a mission to create a network of worker-owned firms in inner-city Springfield, Massachusetts, which will provide on-the-job training, employment and wealth creation opportunities for low income and unemployed residents of the city. Wellspring’s approach is to generate businesses that meet the demand for goods and services from local nonprofit universities and hospitals. Read more about Wellspring Collaborative...

Blending a commitment to ecological stewardship in textile production along with empowering, stable, and non-exploitative labor for its largely immigrant worker-owners, Opportunity Threads is a cooperatively operated cut and sew plant in Southern Appalachia. Read more about Opportunity Threads...

Formed by the workers who occupied their Chicago factory in 2008 and again in 2012, the New Era Windows Cooperative was formed with the support of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Union (UE) and the Working World, an organization that formerly helped finance worker-run businesses in Argentina.  Buying out the equipment from their former employer, 24 worker-owners started production of energy efficient windows in the new factory in 2013. Read more about New Era Windows Cooperative...