Most worker co-ops in Canada are small and centralized in their operations. For many people, this is an appealing feature of the model: they can feel confident that a given worker co-op’s members care about their customers’ community because it’s their community as well. At the same time, however, few of the major issues facing the world today are confined to a single community or country, which is what has led one Canadian worker co-op, Sustainability Solutions Group (SSG) to look beyond national borders. Encountering both challenges and opportunities, here’s some of what they’ve learned in the process.
Connecting across borders requires intentionality
For SSG, expanding into the US and Chile was helped by the fact that its operations were already fully remote and spread out across Canada. But as Emily McQuarrie, SSG’s Director of Finance observes, there were still some obstacles to deal with in the process.
“It’s always a little trickier when you’re online,” she says. “But then add to that difference in language, difference in culture, really trying to be able to communicate well and understand each other well. It just takes a little more intentionality.”
Read the rest at Canadian Worker Co-operative Federation
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