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6 years ago Articles
How Innovative Funding Models Could Usher in a New Era of Worker-Owned Platform Cooperatives
As the gig economy grows, more and more stories of worker exploitation are coming to the fore. And as reports of shady labor practices at Uber, Lyft, Taskrabbit, Postmates, and Amazon Mechanical Turk show, these issues run rampant across all sectors of the gig economy. In the home services industry, the platform Handy has made a name for itself, connecting people with pre-screened professional cleaners, fixers, and other professionals. Within three years of its founding, however, the company already faced lawsuits for allegedly underpaying workers and making them pay severe fees for minor transgressions.
Cooperative models
Business and employment cooperatives (BECs) are a subset of worker cooperatives that represent a new approach to providing support to the creation of new businesses.
Like other business creation support schemes, BEC's enable budding entrepreneurs to experiment with their business idea while benefiting from a secure income. The innovation BECs introduce is that once the business is established the entrepreneur is not forced to leave and set up independently, but can stay and become a full member of the cooperative. The micro-enterprises then combine to form one multi-activity enterprise whose members provide a mutually supportive environment for each other.
BECs thus provide budding business people with an easy transition from inactivity to self-employment, but in a collective framework. They open up new horizons for people who have ambition but who lack the skills or confidence needed to set off entirely on their own – or who simply want to carry on an independent economic activity but within a supportive group context.
The Co-operative Group
The Co-operative Group, trading as The Co-op, is a British consumer co-operative with a diverse family of retail businesses including food retail; electrical retail; financial services; insurance services; legal services and funeralcare, with in excess of 4,200 locations. It is the largest consumer co-operative in the UK and owned by more than 4 million active members.[4] Membership is open to everyone aged 16 and over in the society, provided they agree to subscribe £1 sterling in the capital of the society out of their first share of the profits and share the values & principles upon which the group was founded. Members are democratically involved in setting business strategy, decide how social goals are achieved, and share in its profits - in the 2016 £19m was returned to members and their chosen local community causes via the 5+1 scheme. No year end dividend was paid in 2015
Websites
https://www.shareable.net/blog/how-innovative-funding-models-could-usher-in-a-new-era-of-worker-owned-platform-cooperatives