worker ownership

This episode focuses on is how to organize money so that it fosters the flourishing of where we live and work through generating different kinds of institutions and ways of building wealth in a community to those that dominate the existing economy.  Alternative, more democratic forms of economic production and investment and ways of structuring work and ownership are needed to address economic inequality, issues of racial equity, and the need for environmentally attuned forms of business. To discuss what is sometimes called the "solidarity economy," I talked to Felipe Witchger and Molly Hemstreet about the imaginative ways they are organizing money, how this work is embodied in a particular form of economic democracy - the cooperative - and how they envision a more just and generous kind of economy.

Guests

Molly Hemstreet is the Executive Co-director for The Industrial Commons. She co-founded the organization in 2015 to support industrial workers across her region. She is a native of Morganton, North Carolina where she continues to work and raise her family. After leaving university and working for a bit as a teacher, she worked for the Center for Participatory Change organizing economic development initiatives across rural Western North Carolina in a response to the need for fair livelihoods, and then, in 2008, she founded Opportunity Threads, currently the largest, US based worker-owned company that does cut and sew work. She also co-founded the Carolina Textile District in 2013, which supports the resurgence of textiles across the Carolinas. Molly has also served on the national board of the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) and the Board for the NC Employee Ownership Center.

Felipe Witchger organizes at the intersection of cooperatives and financial investment. He co-convenes the US Economy of Francesco, at network of Catholics responding to Pope Francis’s call for a more holistic vision of economic development, serves on the Board of Start.coop, and is Co-Founder of the Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA). Felipe has spent 10 years organizing education and faith leaders into a purchasing cooperative which is designed, governed, and owned by the communities it serves.  Prior to CPA, Felipe led energy research and consulting initiatives with agencies such as Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) and Groundswell.

Resources for Going Deeper

Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni, Civil Economy: Another Idea of the Market, trans., N. Michael Brennen (Agenda Publishing, 2016);

Gary Dorrien, ‘Rethinking and Renewing Economic Democracy,’ Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice (Columbia University Press, 2010), Ch. 9;

Vera Zamagni, “A Worldwide Historical Perspective on Cooperatives and Their Evolution,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mutual, Co-Operative, and Co-Owned Business, ed., Jonathan Michie, Joseph Blasi, and Cario Borzaga (Oxford University Press, 2017), Ch. 7;

Jean-Louis Laville, “Social and Solidarity Economy in Historical Perspective,” in Social and Solidarity Economy: Beyond the Fringe, ed., Peter Utting (Zed Books, 2015), Ch. 1;

Jessica Gordon Nembhard, ‘Introduction: A Continuous and Hidden History of Economic Defense and Collective Well-Being,’ Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice

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• For readings to download relevant to or discussed in an episode visit: https://ormondcenter.com/listen-organize-act-podcast

Paris Marx is joined by Liz Pelly to discuss how the Spotify model of streaming music continues a long trend of exploitation in the music industry and why musicians need to organize around a vision for a different world of music.

Liz Pelly is a freelance writer and critic who has spent the past decade working with community arts spaces. She is also a contributing editor and columnist at The Baffler. Follow Liz on Twitter as @lizpelly.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Read the plan for the future of the show and supporter benefits on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network and follow it on Twitter as @harbingertweets.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Liz’s work looks at many aspects of Spotify, including the model it’s pushing on musicians and increasingly on podcasters
• Paris has written about how consolidation and the emergence of streaming is having similarly negative effects in film and television
• Naomi Klein explains how New Deal arts programs funded 225,000 musical performances which reached 150 million Americans — and much more
• Cherie Hu tweeted a diagram showing how different streaming and music companies have stakes in one another
• The Verge obtained Sony Music’s contract with Spotify
• How Galaxy 500 and Pavement had random songs take off on Spotify
• Spotify CEO says artists need to record music more frequently
• Henderson Cole’s proposal for an American Music Library
• The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers launched the Justice at Spotify campaign

More Than a Shop presenter Elizabeth Alker chats to two people convinced that the UK economy would be transformed if more businesses were worker and employee owned. Hear a fascinating discussion between Elizabeth and Beau Bulman from Suma – Europe's largest equal pay employer – and James Wright, from Co‑operatives UK - the UK's national association of co‑operative businesses or all shapes and sizes. The episode also features Leeds Bread Co‑op – a worker owned co‑operative bakery in Leeds.

Subscribe to future episodes wherever you get your podcasts or find out about the More Than a Shop podcast at morethanashop.coop. A transcript of the episode is available here: https://www.uk.coop/resources/more-than-a-shop

Special thanks to:
•  Beau Bulman, Suma: www.suma.coop
•  James Wright, Co-operatives UK: uk.coop
•  Leeds Bread Co-op: leedsbread.coop

More Than a Shop is a collaboration between Co‑operatives UK, The Co‑op, Co‑op News, The Co-operative College and The Co‑operative Heritage Trust.

The series is presented by Elizabeth Alker. It is produced by Geoff Bird on behalf of Sparklab Productions.

Please note: The More Than a Shop series was recorded before the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Presented by BBC broadcaster and journalist, Elizabeth Alker, More Than a Shop welcomes guests with something new and radical to say about the big issues of the day and doing business the right way.

Each episode covers a big topic from climate change and food, to mental health and education. The chat is lively, energetic, sometimes controversial, always entertaining – in the spirit of the worldwide co-operative movement.

Co-ops proudly offer radical alternatives to mainstream ways of getting things done. They are indeed so much more than a shop. Find out more at morethanashop.coop

More Than a Shop is a collaboration between Co‑operatives UK, The Co‑op, The Co‑operative College, Co‑op News and The Co‑operative Heritage Trust. This series is produced by Geoff Bird on behalf of Sparklab Productions.