Strategies for Change

Cooperative development is the most important social change work that a person can do.

Unions and co-ops go together. This session outlines the practice of labor neutrality — when an employer commits to taking no position for or against their workers organizing and to voluntary recognize a labor union without requiring an election facilitated by a third party (commonly through a "card check" process) — and how workers in cooperatives can benefit from their employer proactively supporting their rights.

The unique communities described in great detail in the recently published Worker Cooperatives and Deep Democracy are utopian in vision but thoroughly practical in their everyday functioning.

Nottingham Trent University researcher Maimoona Waseem and Genevieve Shanahan of Cardiff University have recently published an academic paper that highlights Equal Care Co-op as an example of 'transformative social entrepreneurship.'

The 2025 Union Co-op Symposium took place from October 17-18, offering workshops, panels and conversations on how the cooperative and labor movements can work together to build a democratic economy. This year’s theme was From Breakdown to Breakthrough, focusing on how we can meet this moment of system breakdown with cooperative solutions. 

What might the world look like if climate change is not stopped? What if societies refuse to, or cannot rein in capitalism and its relentless growth and exploitation of nature? 

An MCLE webinar providing political education on the history of worker co-op conversions and suggesting strategies to negotiate worker co-op conversions focused on the workers.

Centered on Argentina’s Chasqui Project, an e-commerce platform for socially and cooperatively produced goods, the report examines the project’s decade-long development as a collaborative endeavor between public universities, tech cooperatives, and grassroots organizations.

Practicing Social Ecology: From Bookchin to Rojava and Beyond, from Pluto Press, offers a compelling synthesis of ethnographic research, journalism and political analysis, combining the author's field research and her own activist experiences in a highly engaging and superbly accessible manner.

Cecosesola is a remarkable federation of Venezuelan cooperatives that artfully manages multiple ventures as commons while deeply immersed within a system of capitalist markets.