The Cooperators Podcast Episode 7 Frank Shipper on Worker Ownership

Worker owned businesses just are better.

Don't believe me. Believe Frank Shipper, an emeritus professor at Salisbury University in Maryland and editor of a book, Shared Entrepreneurship.

Shipper is a scholar who has spent years studying worker owned businesses - both ESOPs and worker cooperatives - and he really is convinced that in many cases worker owned businesses just outwork their conventionally structured competitors.

Why aren't there more worker owned businesses? Partly it's ignorance. Most of us just don't know that much about them, and many of us confuse them with communes.

There also are issues around raising capital, especially with worker cooperatives.

Shipper, for his part, has worked hard to dispel the ignorance.  And that's what this podcast is about.

Listen to the Shipper podcast here.

The Cooperators Podcast Episode 6 Melissa Hoover, DAWI, on Worker Cooperatives

The deep dive into Workers Cooperatives continues in the Cooperators Podcast.  A few weeks ago we talked with Esteban Kelly of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. This week it's Melissa Hoover, executive director of Democracy at Work Institute, self described think and do tank that is doing a lot of thinking about worker cooperatives and how to form more of them, and how to position them to succeed.

Hoover throws out lots of big ideas in this podcast but a key thought is that just maybe for many of us, as home ownership becomes but a dream, the real way to personal equity is a share of a business.

According to her for many workers that just may be a new, 21st century reality and it is a compelling driver for the belief that we will be seeing a surge in the numbers of new worker cooperatives.

Many of those co-ops likely will be in service businesses. Healthcare. Home care. Gateway jobs into the economy and if the worker can also be an owner, how great is that.

A technical point. We started this podcast using one service but ran afoul with technical difficulties.  In this podcast you will hear my recap of that short conversation.  And then you will hear the actual podcast recording - using a different service - with Hoover.

I kept that four minute starter recording however. For those who want to hear it, here's the link.  It's audible but the clicks and strange noises are annoying.

The full Hoover DAWI podcast is here.

The Cooperators Podcast Episode 5 Paul Bradley on Co-Ops and Mobile Homes

Owning a mobile home park is like owning a Waffle House where the customers are chained to the table.

That quip is attributed to a leader in the mobile home industry.

It's a thought Paul Bradley, president of ROC USA in New Hampshire, often mulls. That's because his company is in the business of helping mobile home park residents join together into a cooperative to buy the land their mobile home sits on.

Understand the weirdness. Mobile homes aren't mobile, not usually. If they are, it would cost the owner thousands of dollars to move it.

They are in a poor position when it comes to dealing with rent hikes.

But when they are owners, everything changes.

Not one of the hundreds of deals Bradley has put together has gone bust. Not a one.

It's a tremendous example of cooperative principles really working to transform lives.

A lot more can be done and, in this podcast, Bradley calls out for more efforts to bring cooperatives to the economically disadvantaged.

What's stopping you?

Listen to the podcast here.

The Cooperators Podcast Episode 4 Esteban Kelly U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives

That sound you hear just may be a tidal wave of worker owned cooperatives.

At least that's what Esteban Kelly, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, is hoping for and working for and dreaming about.

He believes that just now be the time for worker owned cooperatives.

Why? Because for so many of us our economic lives are grim. Income inequality is the economic buzz work du jour but it's just that old saying, the rich are getting richer and the poor, well, you know what's happening with them.

Kelly says that in a decade maybe 0% of Americans will have zero assets.

That's busted, baby.

Worker ownership of businesses just may be the cure.

And a lot of it is happening today. Retiring Baby Boomer entrepreneurs are selling their companies to their employees, often as a worker co-op. Home health workers are joining together and forming co-ops. So are cleaning crews.

There's soaring recognition that it just is better to own a slice of the pie.

Listen to this provocative half hour podcast.

And know we have three or four more worker cooperative podcasts in the pipeline.  Now's the time to learn more about this movement. And The Cooperators Podcast is where to learn.