This week, attorney Ariana R. Levinson  writes about labor negotiations in union co-ops, and how they differ from negotiations in traditional businesses. 

Then, Cathy Edwards, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Co-operatives First, gives a detailed breakdown of how to make a useful strategic plan for a co-op, and shares some tips for getting the most out of strategic planning sessions.   

And the latest issue of our print journal, focuses on union co-ops, is hot off the presses! You can receive future issues by becoming a sustaining donor.

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Are Union Co-op Negotions a Win-Win and for Whom?

by Ariana R. Levinson
Interviews with participants in union co-op collective bargaining and a review of several union co-op collective bargaining agreements suggest that many union co-op labor negotiations are more similar to interest-based negotiations than traditional labor negotiations. Those involved described these negotiations as more transparent, involving greater exchange of information, and oriented more toward cooperative problem-solving than traditional negotiations.

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Strategic Planning for Your Co-op's Future

by Co-operatives First
Every co-operative needs a strategic plan. Whether this is a formally designed, written document or notes that you’ve captured on a whiteboard, your team needs to be on the same page when determining the work your co-op will undertake. A good strategic plan will help your team chart a course for the next 3-5 years, delivering on your purpose, meeting the needs of members, and growing your co-operative. 

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Connecting Cooperatives: World Map Updates

DotCoop Newsletter (MailChimp) — The Cooperative World Map (CWM) is an interactive, up-to-date digital map that aims to unite and showcase all cooperative entities worldwide! Recently, we added some visual changes to worldmap.coop, highlighting which cooperatives on the map have been through a verification process with DotCoop to ensure that they are real, authentic cooperative businesses...

Peer Supervision: A Quiet Revolution in Support Work

Equal Care Co-op — Support work can be isolating. Even in a team, you might find yourself working alone most days, with little time or space to reflect on how things are really going. At Equal Care, we’ve been developing a different way of doing things - one that values listening over telling, and connection over hierarchy. Peer supervision is a small but important part of that shift. It’s not about checking up on people, it’s not therapy, and it’s definitely not a performance review! It’s a simple, structured conversation with someone who understands your work and is trained to support you...

Tour of a Strawbale Home at Dancing Rabbitt Ecovillage

Kirsten Dirksen (YouTube) — Dan Durica has lived at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Missouri for two decades, in a home he built himself out of local straw bale and earth. Today his monthly costs are almost nothing: about $50/month to lease land from the community land trust, plus a few dollars to tie into the village's micro-grid, which is now itself connected to the larger utility grid, giving him a backup layer he didn't have in the early days. 

 

Rehearsing the Future: The Thought and Practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs

AK Press — Rehearsing the Future explores the work and legacy of James and Grace Lee Boggs, two of the most influential American radical thinkers of the twentieth century. Grace Lee Boggs earned a PhD in philosophy in the 1940s, though facing obstacles to an academic career as a young Chinese American woman, she left and became a political organizer in Detroit, where she met and married James Boggs, a Black autoworker and labor organizer from Alabama who had moved North during the Great Migration. Over the course of more than forty years of partnership and participation in labor, civil rights, Black Power, anticolonial, and feminist movements, the Boggses articulated a philosophy of long-term revolutionary strategy they called “dialectical humanism.”...

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