Legal Eats teaches culinary entrepreneurs to stay within the law.

The Berkeley Student Cooperative is proud to announce our 3rd annual $10,000 Cooperative Development Grant! Applications due March 14th!

What: Growing Clean Energy Jobs in Oakland

When: Saturday, April 5 from 11 am to 2 pm

Where: Youth Uprising - 8711 MacArthur Blvd in East Oakland.

Who: East Oakland community organizations, schools, youth, families, and green job training organizations, solar and energy efficiency businesses, unions, worker justice organizations and food justice organizations.

Click here to view or download the flyer.

Co-op 101: An introduction to the cooperative economy

NoBAWC Event

BREAKING NEWS:

Worker-Owned Job Creation on the Rise: Assemblymember Bonta Introduces California’s First Limited Liability Worker Cooperative Act to Facilitate Worker-Owned Business Development

Bill introduced in the California State Assembly would eliminate cumbersome requirements of existing law so that local worker-owned and managed businesses can thrive.

BREAKING NEWS:

Worker-Owned Job Creation on the Rise: Assemblymember Bonta Introduces California’s First Limited Liability Worker Cooperative Act to Facilitate Worker-Owned Business Development

Bill introduced in the California State Assembly would eliminate cumbersome requirements of existing law so that local worker-owned and managed businesses can thrive.

This article was originally published on Shareable

The legal problems of the sharing economy just got real. The latest lawsuits against "ride-sharing" companies Lyft and Über could be game changers. The plaintiffs are drivers who give rides to strangers for money, paying a portion of their earnings to the companies. The class action lawsuits argue that the drivers should be classified as employees of the companies. Regardless of the outcome, the lawsuits call attention to the potential harms arising from the non-sharing parts of the sharing economy. It’s a good opportunity to declare that the so-called “sharing economy” needs a new business model.

You can’t truly remedy today’s economic problems by using the same business structures that created the economic problems. Because of their current ownership structure, Airbnb, Lyft, Über, and TaskRabbit could be bought out by ever larger and more centralized companies that won’t necessarily care about the well-being of people using the services, or about the overall abundance of jobs in our economy...

There is only one way to ensure that a company will make decisions in the interests of the people it serves: Put those people in control of the company.

"The rules for the new economy haven't been written yet. Well, they have...it's just that they were written 50+ years ago when the 9-to-5, 30-years-and-a-gold-watch career path was the rule, not the exception. They haven't kept up with the changing economy or the new workforce."

Read the whole interview with Sara Horowitz of the Freelancer's Union

An interview with SELC Executive Director Janelle Orsi on the laws and regulations laws guiding the new economy, and what needs to come next. 

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), Project Equity, and the Green Collar Communities Clinic (GC3) invited cooperative members, developers, and supporters to join us in a brainstorming discussion about ways to help Californians learn about cooperatives. The questions we used to prompt the discussion were:

• How might K-12 schools, colleges, and graduate schools begin to incorporate education about cooperatives into their curricula?
• What skills and knowledge should be included in a program to learn about cooperatives?
• What policies might promote greater infusion of cooperative education into various levels of education?

We took notes (below) so we could share the insights that were brought forth during the discussion. We will integrate these and future ideas into the East Bay's very first Worker Cooperative Academy!

An interview with SELC's City Policies Program Director, Yassi Eskandari, on the legal foundations of more sustainable cities.

By Bronwen Morgan, Post Growth Institute

Ordinary people, perhaps frustrated with the inertia of government policies and large-scale corporate routines and practices, are experimenting with different ways of moving around, powering themselves, securing food and making a living, with as little waste as possible. [...] Much more rarely explored is the question: what kind of legal and regulatory support structures will help such experimental initiatives to flourish? We think four things will matter most.

The Worker Cooperative Policy Coalition held two public feedback forums to solicit feedback on the proposed provisions of the worker cooperative policy that will be (hopefully) going to the California legislature in February 2014. Below are the notes of the feedback forums, one held on December 2nd at the Sudo Room in Oakland and the other held on December 7th in San Francisco at the Main Public Library.

Overall, the Sustainable Economies Law Center advocates for a more in-depth community-based renewable energy proposal from both PG&E and SDG&E as well as clear guidelines for implementation.  In doing so, SELC defines true community-based renewable projects to include the following attributes: