How America’s Largest Worker Owned Co-Op Lifts People Out of Poverty

[eridani]

http://www.nationofchange.org/how-america-s-largest-worker-owned-co-op-lifts-people-out-poverty-1408111421

Before Zaida Ramos joined Cooperative Home Care Associates, she was raising her daughter on public assistance, shuttling between dead-end office jobs, and not making ends meet. “I earned in a week what my family spent in a day,” she recalled.

After 17 years as a home health aide at Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), the largest worker-owned co-op in the United States, Ramos recently celebrated her daughter’s college graduation. She’s paying half of her son’s tuition at a Catholic school, and she’s a worker-owner in a business where she enjoys flexible hours, steady earnings, health and dental insurance, plus an annual share in the profits. She’s not rich, she says, “but I’m financially independent. I belong to a union, and I have a chance to make a difference.”

Can worker-owned businesses lift families out of poverty? “They did mine,” Ramos said. Should other low-income New Yorkers get involved in co-ops? She says, “Go for it.”

New York City is going—in a big way—for worker-owned cooperatives. Inspired by the model of CHCA and prodded by a new network of co-op members and enthusiasts, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council allocated $1.2 million to support worker cooperatives in 2015’s budget. According to the Democracy at Work Institute, New York’s investment in co-ops is the largest by any U.S. city government to date.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. Co-ops can work.

But people shy away from calling it socialism because they think it's communist. Everyone that ever called me a socialist didn't know the diff between socialism, communism and fascism. They don't know that fascists and socialists are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. It's just a name to call people that they don't understand.

My family were liberal Democrats. We had three pictures of John F. Kennedy on the wall when he was President. Being a socialist was acceptable; being a Communist was not acceptable.

[tea and oranges]

2. Hooray for good news!

What a sensible business model! Glad to hear de Blasio's helping his constituents.