Worker co-ops are owned and governed by their employees. You'll find them across numerous industries, including child care, food service, technology and manufacturing. In addition to providing meaningful jobs and asset-building opportunities for workers of all income levels, worker co-ops support movements for economic justice and social change. As institutions where real democracy is practiced on a day-to-day basis, they are a model for the empowerment necessary to create change.
Business and employment cooperative
Main article: Business and employment co-operative
Business and employment cooperatives (BECs) are a subset of worker cooperatives that represent a new approach to providing support to the creation of new businesses.[citation needed]
Like other business creation support schemes, BECs enable budding entrepreneurs to experiment with their business idea while benefiting from a secure income. The innovation BECs introduce is that once the business is established the entrepreneur is not forced to leave and set up independently, but can stay and become a full member of the cooperative. The micro-enterprises then combine to form one multi-activity enterprise whose members provide a mutually supportive environment for each other.[citation needed]
BECs thus provide budding business people with an easy transition from inactivity to self-employment, but in a collective framework. They open up new horizons for people who have ambition but who lack the skills or confidence needed to set off entirely on their own – or who simply want to carry on an independent economic activity but within a supportive group context.[citation needed]
[edit] New generation cooperative
New generation cooperatives (NGCs) are an adaptation of traditional cooperative structures to modern, capital intensive industries. They are sometimes described as a hybrid between traditional co-ops and limited liability companies. They were first developed in California and spread and flourished in the US Mid-West in the 1990s.[25] They are now common in Canada where they operate primarily in agriculture and food services, where their primary purpose is to add value to primary products. For example producing ethanol from corn, pasta from durum wheat, or gourmet cheese from goat’s milk.[26]
