With a New Fund, Evergreen Cooperatives Looks to Spread the ‘Cleveland Model’
Since their inception ten years ago, the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio have served as a promising model of economic development in a post-industrial city. The three worker cooperatives—an industrial laundry company, a green energy services contractor, and a hydroponic greenhouse (pictured above)—collectively employ over 200 individuals, many of whom have become worker-owners. In a city where median household income hovers around $18,500, these companies pay their workers a living wage and share with them the profits they produce.
Now, the Evergreen Cooperatives network is taking matters into its own hands with a new fund that will acquire existing companies from retiring business owners and sell them back to the employees. The Fund for Employee Ownership, as the Evergreen fund is called, is the latest and perhaps most potent initiative aimed at expanding employee ownership and the principles of democratic governance.
On this day, 16 May 1934, Minneapolis truck drivers in the Teamsters union went on strike, shutting down almost all commercial transport in the city. The dispute lasted over three months, ending with most of the workers’ demands being met and opening the way for more workers’ organisation in Minneapolis. With its months of fierce battles between striking workers, on one side, and scabs, protected by police and private guards, on the other, it also became one of American labour history’s most iconic events of the 20th Century. This is an exciting history of the strike by Jeremy Brecher: https://libcom.org/history/minneapolis-teamsters-strike-1934-jeremy-brecher
Pictured: one of the battles between strikers and police, where the strikers emerged victorious https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1125699620948520/?type=3
See the whole comic in WEREWOLVES VERSUS: MUSIC. Download the entire issue for any price here, and explore the entire WEREWOLVES VERSUS catalogue here.
More of Laura “OC” B’s work can be found here and here.
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