AB 816 PASSED BECAUSE OF YOUR SUPPORT!

Because so many of you signed the Coalition's petition below the legislators in Sacramento knew that their constituents, YOU, wanted to see more cooperative enterprises take root in California! 

NOTE: If you'd like to keep up to date with future worker cooperative state or local policy initiatives, SELC's worker cooperative publications (like our legal guide for Cooperative Conversions), or receive invitations to educational events about worker cooperatives, please sign up below! Thanks!

“We are in this together, learning from each other.
We are the midwives, the seeds, and the sprouts of what the world can be and where the world will turn to when they understand that the current systems are pushing us off a cliff.
For me, that is why we come together. To remember this in our bodies.

At a time when immigrant communities are facing multiple threats and vulnerabilities, it is critical to fill the gap in resources for immigrant cooperatives and to support the leaders who are building economic resilience for their communities.

What if you were forced to leave everything you had ever known and move to a completely new place? What if this new place didn't value your contributions and demonized your community? Unfortunately, that's what's happening now. There is an increasing hostility toward immigrants in our workforce and in our communities. This resentment is pushing immigrants to find new pathways toward economic stability and self-determination.

In the past few years, immigrant-owned worker cooperatives have emerged as a vehicle for asset building and community resilience. Cooperatives are unique in their legal, financial, governance, and management structures, and they need regular support just like conventional businesses. Around the U.S., the growth of immigrant-owned worker cooperatives have outpaced that of cooperatives owned by non-immigrants! Those cooperatives, and more in formation, are seeking technical and legal support but finding little to none.

Immigrants have started building cooperative economies, but they lack culturally relevant and accessible resources to scale. That's why we're collaborating to fill the gap.

Sustainable Economies Law Center and Prospera, two backbone organizations supporting immigrant-owned worker cooperatives, have joined forces and began mapping out how to meet the needs of our immigrant-owned cooperatives! Read here about some of our past work with Prospera. 

Prospera has helped establish more than a dozen immigrant-owned worker cooperatives over the past decade, and in recent years, has developed a range of programs to train and support immigrant leaders and entrepreneurs in developing cooperatives.

The Sustainable Economies Law Center is one of the only organizations in the U.S. that provides free or low-cost legal services and resources to worker cooperatives, and the Law Center is widely viewed as a leader in developing legal structures, policies, and other strategies to support the growth of a worker cooperative movement.

Prospera and the Law Center are now collaborating to develop trainings, events, support networks, clinics, and resources to meet the initial and ongoing legal and technical support needs of immigrant cooperatives. We are planning on rolling out these resources for Spanish and Tagalog speaking cooperatives in the Bay Area that will then be replicated for cooperatives across the country.

Prospera and the Law Center are planning on:

• Building leadership and training peer support providers: We plan on training Spanish and Tagalog speaking cooperative members on legal, financial, governance, and operational matters essential to the success of cooperatives. This will provide a growing team of cooperative members the ability to provide leadership within their own cooperatives and support their peers in other cooperatives. In addition, the Law Center will provide substantial legal training to one or more members of Prospera’s cooperative development team.

• Training lawyers and other professionals to support cooperatives: We plan on providing training to Spanish and Tagalog speaking lawyers and other professionals, in order to begin growing a network of technical support providers. The Law Center has provided similar training to lawyers across the U.S., helping the legal community gain cooperative literacy, but have been unable to connect with bilingual or multilingual lawyers to serve our immigrant communities.

• Hosting regular gatherings and events to serve as a “one-stop-shop” for immigrant cooperative members seeking legal support: At least every six weeks, cooperative members and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area will be invited to attend an event that will combine workshops, discussions, a legal advice clinic, and a space in which cooperative leaders can build community, support their peers, gain access to a wide variety of resources, and build power for a growing immigrant cooperative movement. The Law Center has already provided legal advice to more than 700 entrepreneurs during similar events (called “Legal Cafes”) over the past four years. Early this year, the American Bar Association gave the Sustainable Economies Law Center the Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access, in recognition that this model of service provision has been highly effective in meeting legal and other needs of low- to moderate-income entrepreneurs. Now, Prospera and the Law Center will collaborate to host similar events in which most or all content and advice will be delivered in Spanish.

• Developing multi-lingual trainings, webinars, videos, online resources, and sample legal documents for immigrant cooperatives: Prospera and the Law Center are collaborating to develop a suite of linguistically and culturally appropriate resources for immigrant cooperatives across the U.S., including highly accessible and engaging legal documents, such as this cartoon LLC Operating Agreement, which was created by the Law Center for a cooperative incubated by Prospera. Resources will be made available on both organizations’ websites and on Co-opLaw.org (a resource site maintained by the Law Center).

• Providing direct, ongoing support to immigrant-owned cooperatives: Both organizations plan on providing critical legal support and technical assistance to cooperatives in the Bay Area and beyond. This would include assistance with matters such as employment law, contracts, entity structure, financial operations, tax, governance, management, member training, workplace culture, and enterprise development.

• Providing support to other cooperative development organizations: A growing number of community-based and economic development organizations have been reaching out to Prospera and the Law Center for help to develop programs to support or incubate cooperatives in immigrant communities. We plan on continuing to provide training and assistance to these organization as they develop their programs.

To address the root causes of wealth inequality and institutional racism, we need to put ownership and control back in the hands of those most marginalized by the dominant economy. We are working with communities across the Bay Area and beyond to create new models of equitable development that build community wealth (not just individual wealth), empower everyday people as agents of positive change, and embed democratic control in the very fabric of the economy. 

Photo Credit: Boss Tweed

In the Bay Area, for example, there is currently no native Spanish speaker providing legal services to immigrant-owned cooperatives and there is no where immigrant cooperative members can go for legal advice, technical assistance, or peer support. Across the U.S., there are very few Spanish-language legal resources, guides, and sample documents for cooperatives. We are here to change that and build the cooperative economy that is centered on those marginalized by our current legal and economic systems. 

Find all the events that Repaired Nations hosts to build cooperative power in black communities in the San Francisco East Bay! 

Sustainable Economies Law Center and Repaired Nations have joined forces to begin a concerted effort to bring cooperative resources to Black Communities, starting in East Oakland and Richmond, CA. Repaired Nations was created in 2018 as a container for Greg Jackson's Equal Justice Works fellowship, hosted by the Law Center. Greg embarked on a 2 year fellowship that focused on expanding the impact the Law Center has in African American communities, an explicit effort to be more equitable in the creation of cooperatives for the liberation and autonomy of frontline, marginalized communities. 

Please, help us get the word out about our upcoming Repaired Nations events. Share with your friends or networks on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn! If you're interested in an event, someone you know will probably be interested too. Share the love!

Our mission is to cultivate a new legal landscape that supports community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment. We provide essential legal tools - education, research, advice, and advocacy - so communities everywhere can develop their own sustainable sources of food, housing, energy, jobs, and other vital aspects of a thriving community. The Law Center focuses on worker cooperatives and other democratically-governed enterprises because they provide pathways out of poverty, economic stability for working families, and wealth generation for thriving, resilient communities.

During our years of supporting movements toward democratic, employee ownership, there has been an exponential growth of community-focused entrepreneurs launching cooperatives and existing business owners seeking to sell to their employees. Both groups face a glaring gap: competent legal expertise and legal resources critical to entrepreneurs as they transition to worker ownership. In the Fall of 2018, the Law Center began on an ambitious path to addresses these gaps through funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Through a multi-pronged approach of seven integrated projects, we are beginning to address the gap in legal expertise and legal resources for a national transition towards democratic employee ownership. These projects described below will be shaped and evolve based on the input from stakeholders across the country. However, even as these projects adapt to the needs of our communities, we thought you should know about the initial concepts. 

Want to stay up to date on our project listed below? Subscribe to email updates or update your to email preferences about our worker cooperative resources, trainings, & events at the bottom of the page.

Community Education Video Series

Our Community Education Video Series will demystify and build understanding of the various models of worker and employee ownership for entrepreneurs and community based organizations (CBO) integrating employee ownership into their social enterprises. Ricardo will lead the Community Education Video Series covering the various forms of worker ownership featuring conversations with experienced attorneys, worker-owners, and thought leaders. A decision matrix guiding entrepreneurs through appropriate worker ownership options will complement the video series which will published online in thematic modules.

Our Community Education Video Series will provide an overview of the various forms of worker ownership and describe the legal advantages/drawbacks of choosing one form over another. By the end of the funding cycle, this video series will be used by 100 cooperative attorneys, entrepreneurs, and CBOs and published on Co-opLaw.org. 

Co-opLaw.org

Our comprehensive worker-owner legal resource library, Co-opLaw.org, will provide a central legal resource hub for attorneys and entrepreneurs ready to dive deeper into cooperative law and serve as a place to disseminate the resources created through this project. These resources will lower the cost of legal services needed to launch a worker cooperative or transition a business to worker ownership.

Co-opLaw.org will be redesigned to increase usability and expand cooperative law concepts. By the end of the funding cycle it will included a detailed analysis of cooperative formation options and sample documents for all 50 states.

National Cooperative Law Fellowship

Our national legal incubator for cooperative attorneys, the National Cooperative Law Fellowship, will support a national system for attorneys learning cooperative law and providing legal services to low-income communities and communities of color.

A National Cooperative Law Fellowship will provide incubation resources to Fellows including monthly calls where Fellows present and ask questions to other attorneys in a confidential, safe space. Fellows will also attend two in-person convenings per Project Year featuring intensive training, networking, and mentorship. By the end of Year 2, the program will be designing a pilot system helping Fellows get hands-on experience in cooperative lawyering. By the end of the funding cycle, up to 15 new attorneys will be Fellows in the incubation program, and up to 15 attorneys in their first six months as Fellows will receive stipends.

Legal Practice Guide for Advising CA Cooperatives

Our California Practice Guide for Attorneys Focused on Worker Cooperatives, the first of its kind in the nation, will help to mainstream the practice of cooperative law and will be crafted for easy replication and adaptation in other states nationwide. A comprehensive Legal Practice Guide for Advising California Cooperatives will provide fully developed, step-by-step procedures for attorneys advising cooperative clients, including tips and tactics, strategic options, and lists of what to consider and how to proceed when advising employee owned enterprises.

Online Training Program for Cooperative Attorneys

Our Intensive Online Training Program for Cooperative Attorneys will empower attorneys to specialize in serving democratic, employee-owned businesses and deepen their legal expertise via an anytime, on-demand, massive online open course. An Online Training Program for Cooperative Attorneys will be developed with materials created and refined through the Fellowship’s intensive in-person trainings and other resources. By the end of Year 3, this training program will be online and tested by at least 30 attorneys.

Cooperative Professionals Guild

The national association of worker cooperative attorneys, the Cooperative Professionals Guild, will convene cooperative attorneys and accountants in a peer support network with ongoing learning opportunities.

An expanded Cooperative Professionals Guild, operating as a project of Sustainable Economies Law Center, will provide peer support, ongoing training, and networking opportunities. By the end of Year 3 at least 50 attorneys who specialize in providing legal and technical assistance to worker-owned enterprises will be participating in the Guild which will coordinate at least one national conference for cooperative attorneys and accountants each year of the project.

Law for Economic Democracy Network

Our integrated online technology platform, the Law for Economic Democracy Network (formerly known as NextLegal.org), will provide an online social network for attorneys learning cooperative law, a space for training, mentorship, and networking, and an entry to the broader cooperative law community. This online community will provide legal professionals a place to learn, share, and support each other in providing high-quality legal services to cooperatives of all kinds. By the end of Year 3, NextLegal.org will have increased its membership by 200+ legal professionals.

Get email updates about worker cooperatives resources, trainings, & events!

Subscribe to the Law Center's email updates about worker cooperatives resources, trainings, and events, which we only send occasionally and usually based on your interests, below! Want to subscribe to email updates about our different programs, such as our Food and Farmland, Housing, and Energy programs? Please visit our general sign up page here.

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Hi there! I'm Ricardo, the Director of Economic Democracy at the Sustainable Economies Law Center and below you'll find some of my favorite, go-to resources for worker cooperatives, democratic organizations, and worker self-directed nonprofits. I update this once or twice a year, so if you find any broken links or would like to suggest another resource to post on this page, just email me at [email protected]. Thanks!

Looking for direct legal support?

The Law Center created this list of attorneys, accountants, and technical assistance providers to give you a place to start your search for a lawyer to help with your project. We aren’t vouching for or recommending these people, we just know that they service small scale food businesses, cooperatives, shared housing, nonprofits, and social enterprises. Shop around for the right fit!

Not ready for ongoing representation or unable to afford an attorney right now? Come to the Resilient Communities Legal Cafe where we provide direct legal advice on issues like cooperative business ownership, employment law, financing your coop, and more! We host multiple Legal Cafes per month in Oakland and Berkeley, so hopefully you'll be able to find one that fits your schedule. You can find our Legal Cafe calendar here and find out what types of legal advice we do give by clicking here.

Since there's a lot of stuff below, click the following links to drop down to the place you want:

• Do-It-Yourself legal resources for all types of cooperative enterprises

• DIY resources & training for worker cooperatives

• Resources for converting existing businesses to democratic, employee ownership

• Resources for cooperative development

• Resources on transitioning nonprofits to worker self-directed organizations

• Subscribe to email updates about worker cooperatives resources, trainings, & events

My recommendations for Do-It-Yourself legal resources for all types of cooperative enterprises:

Have a legal question but not quite ready to read a full legal guide? Then try our free, downloadable Bite-Sized Legal Guides for issues like How To Make Decisions in a Cooperative, How To Run a Co-Op Child Care Arrangement, How to Incorporate as an LLC or Partnership, and many more!

If you want to do online research on the legal issues the worker-owned cooperatives have to navigate, including template bylaws and cartoon operating agreements, who is an employee and who isn't, how to capitalize worker coops in non-extractive ways, and our legal guide to cooperative conversions, then check out Co-opLaw.org. We're constantly growing our online resource pages on Co-opLaw.org, to provide more legal information, best practices, and supporting tools for cooperatively owned businesses and organizations. Try searching your legal questions there as a starting point for any of your cooperatively related legal questions.

Starting a food justice enterprise? Look through our free, comprehensive Legal Eats handbook that covers California-specific legal topics for small and medium sized food enterprises, including restaurants, farms, and grocery stores. You can also watch our Legal Eats workshop online!

If you want to know about the different options for non-extractive financing your food, cooperative, or farm enterprise enterprise, then I would suggest perusing our Grassroots Finance Guide for California Farmers! Even though it says "Farmers," most of the strategies in the guide can be used by any cooperative enterprise!

My recommendations for DIY resources & training for worker cooperatives:

If you're looking for our comprehensive legal manual for starting and operating a worker-owned cooperative, Think Outside the Boss: How to Create a Worker-Owned Business, you can download it for free on our website here. We regularly put on workshops and teach-ins specifically for cooperative entrepreneurs, existing business owners, and economic development professionals to help folks understand the concepts in our Think Outside the Boss manual. Please visit our events calendar to see if any are coming up! You can also watch our Think Outside the Boss workshop online!

If you're a start-up cooperative, the Democracy at Work Institute hosts a monthly webinar for groups and people at the very early stages of their worker cooperative project on the first Friday of each month. You can register here.

If you're looking to connect with the national hub for worker cooperatives, the professionals who serve them, and the organizations that support them, visit the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives' resource page. The USFWC, along with its affiliated organization, the Democracy at Work Institute, maintains a large library of model and working documents from and for worker cooperatives, as well as academic and practitioner research.

For one time or ongoing technical support, try reaching out to the resources of the USFWC Co-op Clinic, formerly the Democracy at Work Network (DAWN). The Co-op Clinic has a network of peer advisors, all with strong social and professional ties, who provide technical assistance services to worker cooperatives. The Co-op Clinic aims to meet the demand for technical assistance and development advice with high-quality services and to increase worker cooperative technical assistance capacity from inside the movement.

If you're supporting, thinking about, or are a cooperatively owned farm, check out the Greenhorn's guidebook, Cooperative Farming: Frameworks for Farming Together.

If you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and looking to connect with the worker coop community there, see the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives website and attend one of their upcoming events. NoBAWC (pronounced "No Boss") is a grassroots organization of democratic workplaces dedicated to building workplace democracy in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Find out how to get involved, when their next General Membership Meeting, or upcoming NoBAWC events are on their website, nobawc.org!

For introductory materials on cooperatives and the solidarity economy, check out the Asian American Solidarity Economies Network Webinar Series on cooperatives!

My recommendations for converting existing businesses to democratic, employee ownership resources:

Here's our fairly comprehensive Legal Guide to Cooperative Conversions.This guide gives a legal roadmap for business owners interested in cooperative conversion, aka transitioning their businesses to democratic employee-ownership. It was prepared as part of a project to increase worker-ownership for low- to moderate-income workers. We were aiming to provide an overview of the legal steps involved for selling owners to convert their businesses to employee-ownership. We have provided a few models of how to convert a business, the issues raised in valuing a business, and related financing, governance and employment law considerations. Finally, we closed with a few case studies that illustrate the points we raised in the guide. I hope you find it useful!

My two go-to organizations with publicly available materials on converting existing businesses to worker cooperatives are Project Equity and the Democracy at Work Institute (not to be confused with Richard Wolff's organization, "Democracy at Work"). For lots of good resources and referral info, visit the Democracy at Work Institute's resources page on Becoming Employee Owned and for a high-level but very useful toolkit for business owners interested in converting to worker cooperatives, check out DAWI's Becoming Employee Owned handout here.

Also, visit Project Equity's website for more info and to schedule a consultation with them about converting your business to a worker cooperative. One great free resource from Project Equity is their "CASE STUDIES: BUSINESS CONVERSIONS TO WORKER COOPERATIVES - Insights and Readiness Factors for Owners and Employees."

My recommendations for resources for cooperative development:

A great intro to the where we're at as a field with worker coop development is Hilary Abell's Worker Cooperatives: Pathways to Scale (Project Equity). This white paper that aims to help build the field of U.S. worker co-op development by providing a current view of the cooperative landscape and by analyzing factors that inhibit or promote cooperative development.

To understand how to enter or refine cooperative development strategies, check out DAWI's "Development Frameworks" webinar. Worker Cooperative Development can mean different things to different people, encompassing a broad range of activities, and also a range of philosophies and underlying principles. This self-assessment tool helps worker cooperative developers clarify their model, and its assumptions, and consider whether they are organized in a way to achieve the impacts they desire.

Visit Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) to watch, listen, and read news, analysis, and engage in open forums on grassroots organizing to build and finance worker- and community-owned, democratically run, solidarity-based, ecologically sustainable enterprises and organizations. Here are two of my favorite articles:

• My go-to article on Arizmendi Bakery’s replication strategy, The Replication of Arizmendi Bakery: A Model of the Democratic Worker Cooperative Movement.

• GEO’s Worker Cooperative Development Models (pdf version here and online version here) provides case studies on cooperative development strategies used in the United States.

For introductory materials on cooperatives and the solidarity economy, check out the Asian American Solidarity Economies Network Webinar Series on cooperatives!

My recommendations for resources on transitioning organizations to worker self-directed nonprofits:

Here are some resources that my coworkers in our Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits program put together to support nonprofits to better embody the more just, democratic, and sustainable world they are working toward:

• Recorded webinar: “Worker Self Directed Nonprofits: Implementing Workplace Democracy in Nonprofit Organizations"

• Peer network: Join our Google Group and/or our Facebook Group to participate in an informal peer network for active and aspiring worker self-directed nonprofit practitioners. Connect with others, ask questions, and share resources about nonprofit workplace democracy.

• WSDN: TV for Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits: ”WSDN” sounds so much like the name of a TV station that we couldn’t resist: We started a news show featuring short clips discussing various facets of worker self-direction. Check out our playlist below!

SELC has also created resources for democratic organizations to replicate and use as inspiration. Find our Peer Review Questionnaire, the accompanying Self Assessment Questionnaire, and our internal Operational Policies here.

Interested in our theory of change for worker cooperatives? Check it out here!

Get email updates about worker cooperatives resources, trainings, & events!

Subscribe to the Law Center's email updates about worker cooperatives resources, trainings, and events, which we only send occasionally and usually based on your interests, below!

Want to subscribe to email updates about our different programs, such as our Food and Farmland, Housing, and Energy programs? Please visit our general sign up page here.

Want to unsubscribe? Please visit our unsubscribe page.

"We can by consumers and producers co-operation, . . . establish a progressively self-supporting economy that will weld the majority of our people into an impregnable, economic phalanx." - W. E. B. Du Bois

Photo Credit: Shareable

REPAIRED NATIONS focuses on building wealth in Black communities by giving youth the tools needed to remain rooted: access to land and access to capital. Bookclubs, Workshops, and Trainings will educate and inspire communities to engage in cooperative effort, while giving grounded, practical skills for collective ownership. We repair the effects of colonization and oppression by helping to weave interconnected communities into thriving, sustainable networks to equitably provide the essentials of life.

Our immediate goal is to educate youth of color in California about cooperative enterprise and develop necessary infrastructure for cooperative development in under-resourced, disadvantages communities.

We are guided by the cooperative successes seen across the globe: Black Cooperatives in the US during the 19th Century (read Collective Courage) and today, Italy’s cooperative approach to unemployment, MONDRAGON’s multi-billion dollar annual revenue, South America’s recuperation movement of abandoned factories, Indigenous lending circles . . .

"African Americans have a long, rich history of cooperative ownership, especially in reaction to market failures and economic racial discrimination. However, it has often been a hidden history and one obstructed by White Supremacist violence." - Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Below, please find information on:

• Think Outside the Boss Workshops for Black Communities

• Cooperative Book clubs Black Communities

• Year of Return Exchange Trip

Sustainable Economies Law Center and Repaired Nations, have joined forces to begin a concerted effort to bring cooperative resources to Black Communities, starting in East Oakland and Richmond, CA. 

Repaired Nations was created in 2018 as a container for Greg Jackson's Equal Justice Works fellowship, hosted by the Law Center. Greg embarks on a 2 year paid fellowship that focused on expanding the impact the Law Center has in Black Communities, an explicit effort to be more equitable in the creation of cooperatives for liberation and autonomy of frontline, marginalized communities. 

The Sustainable Economies Law Center is one of the only organizations in the U.S. that provides free or low-cost legal services and resources to worker cooperatives, and the Law Center is widely viewed as a leader in developing legal structures, policies, and other strategies to support the growth of a worker cooperative movement.

View Our Calendar Here to RSVP

Click Here to Download Documents from our Workshops and Bookclubs

The Law Center, Repaired Nations, and the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative are collaborating on a new learning pedagogy for cooperative education in the Black Community through cooperative book clubs held in East Oakland and Richmond.

We will honor the cultures whose ancestors relied on oral histories and education; comprehension and intelligence go deeper than Eurocentric Training. We tap into the organic intellectual streak present in communities often not included in Eurocentric, institutional learning environments. We bridge two spaces: (1) the natural learned expertise and expertise of underrepresented communities and (2) the bodies of literature they may otherwise not engage as sources of information. We cross the divide between education and soul activation. We translate solutions into a medium that is expertise, but is often overlooked because of value propositions. We gather to show people the power inherent in themselves, and facilitate community reflections that evidences greatness and deep knowledge.

We aim take away all borders to participation and use non judgmental,  non violent, constant communication. We uplift those who were shamed and disconnected from their opportunity to learn. Everyone is always right for participating. We create psychological safety in our group settings through very intentional facilitated discussions.

We make information more accessible by distilling large bodies of text into micro-modular segments. We confirm the natural intuition of Black Communities through our micro-modular summaries and facilitate conversation to elicit learning rather than rote instruction. We facilitate the discovery of culturally relevant conclusions, solutions, and pathways to meaningful, structural change.

View Our Calendar Here to RSVP

Click Here to Download Documents from our Workshops and Bookclubs

We are organizing a cultural exchange trip that is primarily focused on creating pathways for African Americans to re-invest in Ghana regeneratively, without perpetuating the problems of capitalism perpetuates. Our Culutural Exchange invites East African, West African, and U.S. cooperatives to begin dialogue for a co-created equitable development policy for Ghanaian economic development, and beyond. Dialogue is the key to our trip, for only through dialogue can two distanced peoples begin to find synergies between themselves, and only through dialogue can new arrivals to Ghana know what Ghanaians want for Ghana and how to help steward this vision. Co-created equitable development policy can only be built upon discussion, upon exchange of ideas and. information.

We are a group of cooperative- minded people seeking to learn how Ghanaians structure their collective efforts, to offer our experience and expertise to local projects, and to engage critical conversation regarding international cooperative exchange of resources. Attendees will form relationships that bloom into cultural content,  import/export agreements, thought partnership, and real estate development.

Interested? Click Here for more information

UPDATED July 2019

We want to live in a society where enterprises and assets are owned and controlled by the communities that depend on them for livelihoods, sustenance, and ecological well-being.

Sustainable Economies Law Center's Cooperatives Program works to vastly expand the legal resources and cultivate a fertile legal landscape for the growth of cooperatives for the benefit of workers. We provide education, advocacy, research, and advice for worker centered cooperatives, including the creation of legal documents and guidance for best practices. Sign up below to receive updates about our Cooperatives Program work.

Our Center prioritizes cooperative ventures for a simple reason: We believe that enterprises and assets should be owned and controlled by the communities that depend on them for livelihoods, sustenance, and ecological well-being. The legal architecture of organizations and enterprises is, in many respects, the architecture of our economy. Legal structures dictate how wealth flows through our organizations and how decisions are made. Traditional enterprise models are designed to grow the wealth of people who already have wealth, giving all decision-making power to those same individuals. By contrast, cooperatives put wealth and decisions into the hands of workers and consumers, building community well-being and transforming local economies.

Want to stay up to date about our worker cooperative and worker self-directed nonprofit resources, events, and policy campaigns? Sign up below!

Want to subscribe to email updates about our different programs, such as our Food and Farmland, Housing, and Energy programs? Please visit our general sign up page here.

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Reflections on the 2018 Worker Cooperative National Conference

By Ricardo Samir Nuñez, Director of Economic Democracy

     This September we hit a milestone: the ten year anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis that crippled the global economy. Institutions of international capital crumbled while the housing market collapsed. We had come as close as ever to proving that “it has become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” The systems that extract wealth from our communities proved incredibly resilient. It is only now, ten years on, that people are starting to see what a world beyond capitalism could look like.

     That’s why spaces like the Worker Cooperative National Conference (WCNC) are so critical: they help expand the frontiers of our collective imagination and show us the future of work in action. These spaces show us the many paths being forged for a future where workers are compensated fairly and encouraged to show up as their fulls selves at work. The voices and stories I heard at the WCNC provided a radical vision of a future of de-commodified labor and comfort that we are a strong and growing movement.

NoBAWC members representing at the Conference!

BERKELEY, CA (August 6, 2018) — In a milestone moment, over a dozen Berkeley worker-owners gathered Monday to testify before Berkeley City Council members during a Small Business Subcommittee meeting.

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, a champion for worker cooperative businesses, presided over the meeting. In 2016, Arreguin sponsored a City Council Resolution to support worker cooperatives, and is now sponsor of a proposed ordinance that would solidify Berkeley’s place as a national leader of grassroots economic development.

“Worker cooperatives present an opportunity for upward mobility at a time when our broader economic model creates broad disparity and inequality,” said Mayor Arreguin. “This is a progressive strategy that represents our values and will make Berkeley a model.”