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Please join Melissa Hoover from Democracy at Work Institute and Rebecca Lurie from the Murphy Institute as we gather with workforce training professionals and cooperative developers to discuss, debate and strategize on the efficacy and potential for worker-owned coops to create good jobs and healthy community economic development. Steven Dawson, (visiting Fellow at The Pinkerton Foundation and former president of PHI) and Adria Powell, (Executive Vice President and President-elect of Cooperative Home Care Associates) each have spent years developing this work in the Bronx and in the home care industry. They will help us to dig deep into these approaches that lift the floor for jobs standards and lift the spirit for workers as they become owners and exercise control in their workplace.

Cooperative Home Care Associates is the largest worker-owned business in the nation, with over 2,300 worker-owners in the Bronx. Over 15 years ago they signed a contract with SEIU1199 and are also the largest union represented worker coop in America. While the movement for worker-ownership grows and expands with support from our city government, we will have the chance to ask hard questions, challenge our thinking and together think about the direction this strategy can take towards more just work place and better businesses.

Event Co-Hosts

Democracy at Work Institute expands the promise of cooperative business ownership to communities most directly affected by social and economic inequality. The Institute is the only national organization dedicated to building the field of worker cooperative development, with a focus on scale and equity. It meets a growing need for research, coordination of existing resources, development of standards and leaders, critical discussion of models, and advocacy for worker cooperatives as a community economic development strategy.

The Joseph S. Murphy Institute Center for Labor, Community and Policy Studies at the City University of New York serves as a resource center to labor, academic, and community leaders seeking a deeper understanding of labor and urban issues. The Center designs workforce development programs in partnership with unions and their labor-management training funds. The institute has a Bachelor’s degree in Urban and Community Studies and Master’s programs in Labor and Urban Studies. The Community and Worker Ownership Project is designing education and training programs for cooperative ownership and community engagement. RSVP by November 11th.