June 24, 2025: Worker Owned Cooperatives

Worker owned cooperatives democratize the workplace, giving the workers control over their work environment--products and their ingredients, worker compensation, marketing, managing profit and loss, and more.  Mike Barr joined VoR&R this week from Rockford, Illinois, to share his expertise worker cooperatives, including a paving coop he formed with three friends and coops he has visited and patronized.  He also provided numerous resources that are available for start-up and management of worker cooperatives and they are listed below.

In GA, 3 organizations provide education, networking and technical assistance to those seeking to form a worker cooperative

Georgia Cooperative Development Center:  info@georgiacoopdc.org

Georgia Center for Employee Ownership:  gaceo@org

The Workers Center at the Economic Justice Coalition:  info@ejcathensga.org

Additional resources include:

Dr. Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work:  d@w Inc.

Democracy at Work Institute:  Home | Democracy at Work Institute (https://institute.coop)

International Cooperative Alliance:  About International Cooperative Alliance | ICA

Wikipedia Worker Cooperative:  Worker cooperative - Wikipedia

Thanks to Mike Barr for taking the time to educate us regarding worker cooperatives.  Please visit VoR&R's Facebook page at https://www/facebppl/cp,/VoRSav/ to eave comments or questions that can be passed on to Mike Barr and shared on VoR&R.   

Next week is the midpoint of the year, and we plan to summarize the year to date in our community, state, country and the world.  Thank you for listening.