CECOP-CICOPA Europe has decided to give a voice directly to young people and those working with them. Here is the result! Three videos illustrating employment and entrepreneurial opportunities that cooperatives in industry and services provide to young people across EU.

Cooperatives are riding the wave of changes. They represent a valuable and secure employment and entrepreneurial option for young people. Moreover, they give young workers and entrepreneurs access to ownership and control over their own future. For excluded youth, cooperatives provide not only work inclusion but also sense of belonging and place where to be heard.

To illustrate our point, CECOP-CICOPA Europe has decided to give a voice directly to young people and those working with them. Here is the result! Three videos illustrating employment and entrepreneurial opportunities that cooperatives in industry and services provide to young people across EU.

Social cooperative FAJNA SZTUKA, Poland: www.fajnasztuka.org

The cooperative was established in 2012 in Warsaw to do film and music production, photography and animation. “We try to work on films and campaigns that talk about important topics, that promotes the activities of NGOs or associations for example. Something decent! Because it is more motivating, and one cannot constantly create ads about pads and tampons…”, said to us Kuba, one of the co-founder. “The cooperative gives us the opportunity to express ourselves. Each one of us has its own style and opinions. We can create a company that does not stifle our beliefs and allows us to develop further in the direction we want.”

Cooperative ERSE, Italy: www.erseambiente.it

The cooperative was founded in Tuscany by a group of young environmental officers. “Our education and training started in university and continued afterwards while working. Each of us had gained a great deal of experience in the field, but because of a difficult economic context, none of those were long-term experiences. Then our trajectories met and we got together” explains Filippo. Why is ERSE a cooperative of independent workers? “Because it’s democratic, mutualist and people-focused. It aims at improving the working conditions of the members. A cooperative also entails a lot of responsibilities. At the end it comes down to running an enterprise and this represents for us an added value.”

Cooperative Le Relais, France: lerelaisrestauration.com

Le Relais is located in a disadvantaged area characterized by high youth unemployment. It is a multistakeholder cooperative gathering workers, users and local authorities in its governance. But beyond being a cooperative, it is a citizen project. Its main objective is the training and work inclusion of young people and adults in difficult economic and social conditions. In 25 years, the cooperative has enabled 2,300 young people to achieve their professional integration by receiving training and a first experience in the catering sector.

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Mill workers of Mumbai have a 150-year tradition of struggle. When the mills went into decline in the 1980s and 1990s, they continued to fight, first for their jobs, and when mills closed anyway, for their right to live in the city. Six hundred acres of mill lands belonging to 50 or so textile mills had become prime real estate and was developed into luxury offices, apartments, clubs and malls. This was land that had been given to mill owners over a century ago solely for industrial purposes. Workers demanded a part of the land for workers’ housing. The struggle resulted in legislation granting rights over a portion of the land. 8,000 apartments have been offered so far and construction of a further 18,000 units is ongoing. The government says it is looking for more land to meet the target of 100,000-150,000 units. The struggle continues.

GKSS, an independent mill union/committee set up in 1990, organised demonstrations, occupations, lobbying with parliamentarians, negotiations with government, media advocacy, street barricades, sit ins, and marches. The state overtly and covertly supported the mill owners. What worked in the end was dogged persistence, an effective strategy of broad and multiple alliances, the political and electoral importance of mill workers, and the sympathy of lower level police and bureaucrats who were from mill families.

This struggle is unique for its strategies, and the importance of fighting for concrete gains for the constituency and for the broader community.

Would you like to learn more about this initiative? Please contact us.

Or visit the Mill Workers Action Committee’s Facebook

Transformative Cities’ Atlas of Utopias is being serialized on the P2P Foundation Blog. Go to TransformativeCities.org for updates.

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The interviewer, seemingly a little bemused by Rushkoff’s (to him) radical proposition that creating ‘jobs’ in and of themselves, might not be the answer to all America’s problems, falls back on the old ‘isn’t this all a bit simplistic?’ line of questioning – often used by embedded mainstream journalists to muddy the waters and suggest that things might not be as straightforward as is being proposed by the interviewee. I seem to remember a great deal of that kind of criticism aimed at the Occupy movement – ‘too simplistic, too naive’. When we see where the ever-increasing complexity of financial derivatives and company law is leading us, I feel inclined to suggest that a little more simplicity might be in order. Rushkoff is of course equal to the questioning and it makes for a fascinating interview.

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