Hey friends,

Brian from The TESA Collective here. I wanted to let you know that TESA has a new article in Truthout: Pandemic Crash Shows Worker Co-ops Are More Resilient Than Traditional Business.

In this article, we demonstrate how a co-op's democratic ownership and decision-making model makes them more likely to survive in tough times, when compared to traditional business structures. Because worker co-ops are collectively owned by the employees, they share the benefits in the good times, and they share the burdens in the hard times.

We talk to three different worker-owned cooperatives for the piece to see how they are navigating the coronavirus crisis. We also chat with leaders of the co-op movement to understand how building a cooperative economy will create more resiliency and sustainability for workers. Here's an excerpt:

Some cooperatives have even teamed up to shift their production models to meet aid and relief needs of other cooperatives. Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), the largest worker cooperative in the United States with over 1,000 members, offers home care visits throughout New York City. But shortly after the pandemic struck, CHCA began running out of masks for its staff. Meanwhile, there was a national shortage of surgical masks, and price gouging was making purchasing them in bulk almost impossible.

That’s when CHCA came up with a creative solution: members reached out to another worker-owned cooperative they knew that was skilled in the textile industry. Opportunity Threads, which employs over 50 people and primarily immigrants, typically makes products like special order t-shirts. But by working with CHCA to refine their production line, the worker-owners of Opportunity Threads were able to begin manufacturing the surgical masks for CHCA’s home care workers — offering a desperately needed resource to protect the co-op’s staff and their clients.

You can read the whole thing here. Feel free to also share this article widely with anyone you think would find it of interest!  

And don't forget, TESA is a worker-owned cooperative, and we make games about building a more cooperative future, like Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives. We also work with other organizations to build co-op programs for their communities.

Stay safe out there,

The TESA Collective

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