This week, cooperators and union members discuss the benefits of unionization for worker co-ops, and argue that "labor neutrality" should be the new standard that all types of cooperatives adopt in regards to unionization.
Then, members of Codeberg - a democratic, non-profit software development platform - discuss why their membership recently voted to ban LLM generated code, and how the boom in so-called AI is creating threats to the open-source software commons. Â
Unions, Co-ops, and Labor Neutrality
by US Federation of Worker Cooperatives
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.
Protecting Our FLOSS Commons from LLMs
by Bastian Greshake Tzovaras, Otto Richter, William Zijl
The Codeberg e. V. annual assembly is the meeting that puts power into the hand of our active members. Proposals are discussed live, and later voted on asynchronously. Since Large Language Models (LLMs) are an emerging but controversial technology, it is not surprising that two of the votes were concerned with Codeberg's position about this technology. The 14-day voting period ended yesterday and both proposals were accepted.
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New media cooperative in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Progress — Welcome to the Pittsburgh Progress, a news organization forged by a team of union journalists and community members. That’s us. We own this thing. It’s a cooperative. You can be an owner, too. You should. We don’t have to live in a world dominated by media companies focused on fattening the wallets of a few at the top while workers and communities pay the price. The Progress proves that point...
Fruity Ceramics Cooperative
Co-operatives First — The studio was initially founded as a for-profit venture, but it was evident early on that that model wasn’t viable. The work of running the studio in a sustainable way was too much for one person, so this talented group of artists decided that shifting to a co-operative, where the ownership and responsibility were shared, was the perfect fit. Today, Fruity operates as a community service co-operative, which was incorporated in late 2025...
Willy Street Impacted Workers Fund
Give Lively — Our community has been directly impacted by the shooting of Corey Ruiz on Williamson Street on July 22nd. In an effort to offset the loss of wages due to the shooting, we have started the Willy Street Impacted Workers Fund. Funds raised will go directly to employees impacted by lost wages in the immediate area of the shooting. Employees impacted by lost wages can apply for funds here. Impacted employees can apply for a maximum of $500 per round of funding. We hope to secure enough donations to have multiple rounds of funding. MadWorC will verify lost wages and disperse funds to individual employees...
A 4,000-year-old city became richer by sharing prosperity
Science Daily — Researchers examined differences in house sizes across the city and found that wealth became more evenly distributed as Mohenjo-daro matured. The city also appears to have been more equal than comparable societies in Mesopotamia and Greece. Instead of producing increasingly dramatic differences between wealthy and ordinary households, Mohenjo-daro saw the size gap between its largest and smallest homes become narrower over time...
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