Nithin Coca: The Platform Cooperative Japan Consortium (PCJ) is the first organization in Asia focused on promoting the idea of platform cooperatives — businesses that bring the structure of traditional cooperatives, including worker ownership and governance — to the digital world. PCJ was founded by Mathias Sager and is directly connected to the New York City-based Platform Cooperativism network (Shareable is… Continue reading
SolidFund is a (relatively) new initiative designed to support the creation and sustainability of worker cooperatives. Members pay at least £1.00 per week and the resulting funds go into a common pool – a solidarity fund – which is used to support cooperatives around the UK. The fund currently has over £74,000 at its disposal…. Continue reading
The latest episode of the Upstream podcast takes a deep dive into the Worker Cooperatives movement: a broad selection of organizations, activists, and cooperatively structured workplaces that advocate for—and embody—workplace and economic democracy. The 21st century has seen an explosion in interest around Worker Cooperatives—particularly since capitalism’s 2008 crisis. In Part 1 of this 2-part… Continue reading
Presenting a new report from CICOPA (the International Organisation of Industrial and Service Cooperatives). Here is the press release. The organization of work and of the production of goods and services is experiencing profound changes that may strongly alter the way we work and the future of work itself. Cooperative employment tends to be more sustainable… Continue reading
In this interview we caught up with Felix Weth, founder of Fairmondo. Fairmondo, a co-operative social business, is a fair mass marketplace that aims to fight corruption and give power back to the consumer and crowd. Felix Weth talks about Fairmondo, whom we recently profiled in our Commons Transition Primer. This interview was originally published by… Continue reading
Adding to the body of existing tools and training material on cooperative development, ILO now launches Think.Coop, a new training tool for those interested in cooperation and its benefits for improving businesses of potential members. A great new initiative from ILO to encourage new cooperators! Think.Coop is an orientation tool that helps participants understand how mutualism… Continue reading
One of the key differences between private platforms (platform capitalism) and cooperative platforms (platform cooperatives) lies in how they are designed, by whom, and for whom. Indeed, technology and design, and all the invisible architectures that govern our lives and influence our choices and behaviour, are ‘value sensitive’. This point is very well argued and… Continue reading
Reposted from CICOPA’s Website. Brussels, 25 September 2017 – CICOPA, the international organisation of industrial and service cooperatives, published today its second global report on “Cooperatives and Employment” [PDF]. . For Bruno Roelants, Secretary General of CICOPA: “Employment is one of the most important contributions made by cooperatives throughout the world. This report shows that people involved… Continue reading
Institute for Local Self-Reliance: Christopher Mitchell, the director of ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks initiative, interviews Hannah Trostle and Karlee Weinmann, research associates for the Community Broadband Networks and Energy Democracy initiatives, respectively. The three discuss the cooperative model of ownership and how this model can enable investment in gigabit internet connections for their member-owners, but also… Continue reading
Incubator.coop is an incubator for new CoOp businesses. Incubator.coop is a CoOp itself. This means we exist to serve our Members. To be even more precise, we are type of CoOp known as ‘non-distributing’ – so any surplus at the end of the year goes into improving the incubator – not distributing funds to… Continue reading
Nithin Coca: For Socorro Aguirre Cruz, a home care worker in Staten Island, New York, with nearly 50 years of cleaning experience, many of the challenges faced by gig workers today have been part of her life for decades. Work has been precarious for her long before the emergence of massive, venture capitalist-funded gig platforms… Continue reading
The following infographic and texts are republished from Platform.coop’s “About” page. About Platform Coops The Internet is slipping out of ordinary users’ control. Internet technologies are transforming our workplaces, relationships, and societies. Companies like Uber, Amazon, and Facebook are capturing vital sectors of the economy such as transportation and phenomena like search and social networking…. Continue reading
Reposted from Cooperatives UK, regarding the EU’s “European Agenda for the collaborative economy“. Over the last year we have curated a series of critical commentaries on the initial resolution. Cooperatives Europe commends the ’s recognition of the growing interest for the cooperative model in the collaborative economy. This positioning sends a positive signal towards actors… Continue reading
The P2P Foundation is serializing video highlights from last year’s Platform Cooperativism conference. Click here to see all conference videos. (13 mins) Josef Davies-Coates – Josef will be speaking about recent exciting platform and digital co-operative activity in the UK, and why the legal framework that exists there could serve platform co-ops particularly well. This… Continue reading
This post by Hal Plotkin was originally published on creativecommons.org The Creative Commons upcoming Global Summit is the first major opportunity to introduce our community to the newly-born Platform Cooperatives Consortium and to look for ways our two movements, which share many core values, can collaborate. We have just entered a time of potentially enormous… Continue reading
The P2P Foundation is serializing video highlights from last year’s Platform Cooperativism conference. Click here to see all conference videos. Camille Kerr, ICA Group — Platform cooperativism has the potential to completely transform the caregiving industry – including childcare and homecare – into dignified jobs where people make a livable wage and have control over… Continue reading