Drive to change. (BILLNOLL/GETTY IMAGES)

Reinventing the School Bus-iness

BY JOHN SAMUELSEN

DANIEL GARODNICK

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, July 17, 2017, 5:00 AM

For years, the yellow school buses traveling New York City streets have had parents, elected officials — and even school bus workers — seeing red.

The Board of Education pays more than $1 billion a year to private bus companies that have little incentive to upgrade or improve service. The buses are prone to breaking down, lack air-conditioning and spew diesel pollution that harms our planet. Concern about wages prompted the de Blasio administration to subsidize the wages of bus drivers through the School Bus Drivers Grant Program — shelling out tens of millions of dollars through a program of questionable legality that skirted the city’s procurement process by rewarding the very contractors that were willing to pay their drivers less. Even with the program, many bus drivers, mechanics and on-board monitors are still struggling to make ends meet.

There is a better route forward.

The city’s Transport Workers Union Local 100 — yes, the same men and women who run city buses and subways — are proposing a pilot program that will demonstrate how New York City can ensure better school bus service, reduce pollution, give parents a seat at the table and create good union jobs with solid wages, affordable health care and good pensions.

Here’s our plan. Let’s establish a unionized, worker-owned cooperative to transport students in non-polluting (and air-conditioned) electric school buses. For the pilot, we envision the worker cooperative entering into a contract with the Board of Education to provide service on approximately 15 existing routes that are not permanently assigned to any private company. !

Why electric buses?

There are approximately 9,000 diesel and gas-powered school buses traveling along thousands of school bus routes in New York City. These buses emit tons of pollution into our environment and contribute to global warming.

A group of leading scientists last year outlined what was in store for our city in the coming decades unless the burning of fossil fuels is curbed: By mid-century, the number of heat waves per year could more than triple, the number of days over 90 degrees annually could double, and the sea level could rise by nearly two feet. By 2100, the city’s flood zone could cover 99 square miles.

It’s 2017 — long past time the nation’s biggest city to adopt an Earth-friendly alternative. Electric buses are made in New York State, and a contractor providing bus service in Copiague on Long Island started using all-electric buses in September.

A pilot program utilizing all-electric buses could support local manufacturing and the creation of much-needed blue-collar jobs in the region. If New York City starts to shift towards electric school buses, more manufacturers would look to set up shop in the state. !

Why a worker cooperative?

Establishing cooperatives — where the workers themselves own the business — is a smart way to address the daunting problem of income inequality. Instead of enriching faceless investors in multi-national corporations or a small group of individual owners, profits are directed toward ensuring that workers are paid good wages and benefits on which they can raise their families. The workers themselves have strong motivation to deliver a good product: job security and a better quality of life.

City Hall has already recognized the personal and societal gains worker cooperatives offer. Two years ago, the city’s Department of Small Business Services, along with partner organizations, launched the Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative. With more than $3 million in funding provided by the City Council, the it has been providing technical, financial and educational support to help create or sustain worker cooperatives.

In both fiscal year 2015 and 2016, nearly 50 worker cooperatives were created or assisted by the initiative, including a grocery store in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; a catering company in the Bronx; a landscaping business in Queens, and a janitorial services outfit in Manhattan.

“Worker cooperatives have the potential to provide entrepreneurs with access to meaningful and stable employment and improve the economic landscape across New York City,” Small Business Services Commissioner Gregg Bishop and City Chief Procurement Officer Michael Owh wrote in the latest SBS report on the project.

A board of trustees would govern this school bus cooperative. Workers would elect representatives, with some seats being set aside for other stakeholders, including parents. The board would hire a chief executive officer and staff to handle the day-to-day operations, while families would have a real voice and direct access to the highest level of the operation.

The yellow school bus situation has been an intractable mess for far too many years. It’s time to give the green light to a solution that’s better for kids and workers alike. !

Samuelsen is international president of the Transport Workers Union. Garodnick represents Manhattan in the New York City Council

Farther.Faster.Together

IN MEMORY OF FRANK ADAMS

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Liz Anderson
Honoring of Frank Adams

1934-2017
The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the Democracy at Work Institute deeply mourn the passing of Frank Adams. Frank was a tremendously influential worker cooperative advocate, developer and educator, and a founding board member of the USFWC.
In memory of Frank we share here an obituary from Rebecca Bauen, Senior Program Director at DAWI:

This week we mourn the passing of Frank Adams, a giant in the worker cooperative movement. Frank is known best for his seminal work, Putting Democracy to Work: A Practical Guide to Starting and Managing Worker Owned Businesses (with Gary B. Hansen). We also know Frank as a champion for building a movement of worker cooperatives, as a founding board member of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives (2004-06).
Frank was an educator, historian, writer. He was also a colleague and mentor to  many of us.

Frank was the best teacher I have ever had. He embedded in me the belief that education is foundational for shared ownership to really take hold. And, he was committed to exploring this right to the end. When I visited Frank in Knoxville, a year ago this March, I was looking for ideas about how to form a school to teach participatory management and the culture of worker ownership. Frank shared with me his research on a little-known school called the Work People’s College organized by the IWW in the early 1900’s, in the upper Midwest, that taught immigrant workers to become managers and owners of their own businesses.

Frank Adams from U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops on Vimeo.

This wasn’t the first time we’d talked about education for ownership. It began in the winter of 1996, when Frank shared his library with me, and we met weekly in his Boston home and talked about the books he had had me read on the English levelers, Kant, management theory, organized labor, worker self-management, and radical adult education. He helped me build a theoretical, historical, philosophical and practical foundation for starting worker cooperatives, teaching about them, and now, through my work at DAWI, building the leadership of the next generation of worker cooperative developers.

Frank offered the gift of his intellect, experience and insight to so many of us committed to changing the nature of work, the direction of capital, and expanding the power of ownership. His often times thorny provocations made us tougher for the battle.

The work continues, and Frank, your legacy lives on.

[Photo of Owen Brown, son of Rob Brown, CDI Coop and Conversions Developer, 2017]

Browse Frank’s voluminous work, which is a testament of his influence and dedication to the worker cooperative movement.

Cooperative Organizing
Adams and Hansen – Putting Democracy to Work (3rd edition) (book)
Adams – Starting a Worker Owned Cooperative
Hansen and Adams – ESOPS Unions and the Rank and File

Education
Adams – Making production, Making Democracy: a case study of teaching in the workplace
Caspary – Education for and by Worker-Owners The Vision of Frank Adams

Workers Owned Sewing Company
Adams and Shirey – Workers’ Owned Sewing Company Making the Eagle Fly Friday
Egerton – Workers Take Over the Store

Blue Ridge Paper Company
Loveland – Under the Workers’ Caps: From Champion Mill to Blue Ridge Paper (book)

Southern Appalachian Center for Cooperative Ownership (SACCO)
Bothwell – Taking Democracy to Work
Hansen and Adams – ESOPs and you
Adams – Remarks to the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit

Highlander
Adams and Horton – Unearthing Seeds of Fire: the Idea of Highlander (book)

Gary Hansen
Meeting Frank Adams and Writing Putting Democracy to Work

Maine lobstermen’s union votes to buy Hancock County lobster business Portland Press Herald

Posted February 25
Updated February 25

Maine lobstermen’s union votes to buy Hancock County lobster business

Purchase of Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound’s wholesale operation means lobstermen will have more control over the prices they get for their catch, a spokesman says.

BY PENELOPE OVERTONSTAFF WRITER

The Maine Lobstering Union voted Saturday to buy a wholesale lobster business near Mount Desert Island to help its fishermen net a bigger share of the profit in the booming, $1.5 billion-a-year industry.

At a closed-door meeting in Rockport, members voted 63-1 to buy the wholesale side of the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound, which includes a tank that can hold up to 180,000 pounds of lobster, for $4 million, said Local 207 President Rocky Alley.

“We can’t wait to start buying and selling our own lobsters,” Alley said. “Right now, fishermen sell at the dock, and we get what we get, with no control. But there is lots of money made off lobsters after they leave the dock, and some ought to stay with us fishermen.”

The vote enables the Maine union to borrow money from a Kansas City bank and to borrow $1.1 million from fellow locals in the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers as far south as Maryland to purchase the Lamoine-based wholesale business.
Rocky Alley of Jonesport listens to Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher during a 2014 meeting about the state of the lobster industry. Staff photo by Gabe Souza

The Trenton Bridge manager, Warren Pettegrow, will stay on as the chief executive officer of wholesale operations, as will the employees. The operation will continue to ship live lobsters nationally and abroad, including to the European Union and Asia.
Pettegrow said he wasn’t looking to sell Trenton Bridge, a pound that’s been in his family for four generations. When he started talking to the union about two years ago, Pettegrow said it was “all about how to help better the lobstermen’s position in the industry.”

“This really is all about putting lobstermen in the best position to secure their future and their way of life for future generations,” said Pettegrow, who operates a boat that transports lobsters and has been buying MDI lobsters for years.

Eventually, the lobstering union expects to buy Pettegrow out, officials say, but he will still be owner of the family’s well-known retail operation on Route 3 in Trenton, located just over the bridge on the drive to Mount Desert Island.
When the purchase is finalized, union lobstermen from Jonesport, Mount Desert Island and Vinalhaven can sell their lobsters directly to the union cooperative, which was established in 2013, for storage at the Lamoine facility and eventual sale.
Union fishermen who sell to the co-op will get market price for their lobster, but they will also receive a share of cooperative profits, or a dividend, at the end of the year once operational costs, like trucking and employees, are covered.

In time, the union hopes to expand its buying territory to the whole Maine coast.
Reached after the vote, Alley said he wanted to thank IAM president Robert Martinez and the executive board for believing in the lobster fishermen of the state of Maine.

“This has been a dream of ours for two years, and we couldn’t have done it without them,” he said.

The Maine Lobstering Union formed in 2013 in the wake of an infamous 2012 spring glut that drove boat prices to a season average $2.69 per pound, down from about $4 per pound during recent years and the lowest yearly average in 20 years.
The union has lobbied the Maine Legislature on behalf of its members, and has raised some objections to local projects that would affect their members – such as dredging in Searsport and in Casco Bay – but it has long wanted to launch a statewide cooperative.

Lobstermen often complain about the large gap between the boat price for lobster and what a consumer pays to eat a lobster, even in a Maine restaurant. They don’t understand why rising consumer prices don’t always translate into higher boat prices.
“Now we’ll be able to track how the price system works, and we’ll be able to get a piece of the back end,” Alley said. “It will be huge. This is going to change the lobster industry in Maine. It was our goal from the first day we unionized.”

The union has about 500 members who have been active at some time since its launch, but not everyone pays the $62.70-a-month union dues on time. That is why the vote tally on Saturday was so low, union organizers said.

There had not been a fishing union in Maine in more than 75 years, when efforts to revive an earlier union ran afoul of federal price-fixing laws. But IAM lawyers found a loophole in a 1934 fishing law that allows a union to negotiate prices on behalf of fishermen.

Canadian fishermen have been organized for decades, but most don’t negotiate catch prices. Deep-sea fishermen that work on halibut, sablefish and crab boats off Washington and Alaska have union representation, too.
David Sullivan, the head of IAM’s eastern territory, applauded the results of Saturday’s vote.
“The members of the Machinists Union are proud to stand beside the lobstermen of the state of Maine as they fight to preserve their communities and their way of life,” Sullivan said.

Penelope Overton can be contacted at 791-6463 or at:
povertona@pressherald.com
Twitter: PLOvertonPPH

http://laopinion.com/2017/02/22/carwasheros-celebran-su-negocio-de-lavado-de-autos-en-el-sur-de-los-angeles/

BY:JACQUELINE GARCÍAFEBRUARY 22, 2017

After a battle to get unionized, the Vermont Gage Car Wash was one of 16 businesses that did it in 2014. But before enjoying the benefits of the union, the workers had to face a crisis.

Miguel Cruz was one of the 13 unionized workers of the car wash who already enjoyed worker protections. In 2015, the 31-year-old Mexican, who lived near work, saw one night that they were getting things out of business.

” The owner closed the business without telling us anything, ” recalls Cruz.
The next day the employees came to work and the car wash service did not open nor did the owner appear.

“We were waiting three days for answers and for our check and she told us that she had already given it to the union,” said Cruz, saying it was a lie.

They Form a Cooperative

The disappointment of losing their job, instead of cowing them, strengthened the 13 workers who decided to start the business themselves . With the help of their union United Steelworkers Local 675 and the Los Angeles Union Cooperative (LUCI) they began to raise funds.

The group registered the business again but this time as a workers’ cooperative . In this case the business is controlled by the workers who have invested some money. The profits of the business are equitable and the board of directors of the cooperative is in charge of voting in the decisions. Workers continue to benefit from their union and LUCI advises them on business development.
Union representative Manuel Ramirez said United Steelworkers Local 675 represents about 30 car wash businesses ranging from San Diego to Pasadena.

” We strive for workers to have safe drinking water, on-time breaks, overtime paid, contracts with a percentage above the minimum wage, and we also negotiate holidays and get paid for sick days that they do not use ,” Ramirez said.

Most important, in this case, is that workers now feel they have a voice and feel they are being heard, the representative added.

Happy employees

José Manuel Zúñiga, 56 and part of the group of 13 carwashers that make up the cooperative said that when he saw the strength of his colleagues to fight for the business he decided to join. Zuniga had a little fear of losing his job, but he did not lose faith.

” I am happy to be part of this group because now I know it is a very strong obligation ,” he added.

Rusty Hicks, executive director of the Los Angeles County Labor Federation (AFL-CIO), who was present at the car wash celebration said that this group of employees is a role model.

” The fight for workers to have a better life began in this same place four or five years ago and now we are back where the employees have advanced and they have shown us that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself ” , Hicks said congratulating them on having the courage to continue the business under his command.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1321429297909365/?ti=as

LUCI Member , Niki Okuk, gives a TED talk at TEDx Crenshaw October 2016.  Today it was released to the public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3h9I4vcX00

Quoted from TEDxCrenshaw: http://www.tedxcrenshaw.com/speaks/niki-okuk/

Why Are Unions Interested in Worker Co-ops?

• Adds to labor union membership
• Allows the labor force to respond to economic downturns with flexibility by decreasing workload and pay rather than laying people off
• Workers empowered through ownership and control of management
• Businesses less susceptible to attack and decimation from capital
• Builds member wealth in the form of enterprise ownership and sustainable wages
• Helps redirect labor unions toward more democratic practices
• Involves organized labor in constructive vs resistance work

Why Are Worker Co-ops Interested in Unions?

• Immerses workers in broad and deep economic analysis
• Encourages solidarity with the union movement in advocacy on workers rights
• May offer benefits through the union
• Provides research and organizing expertise, and capital for co-op formation
• Provides model collective bargaining agreements, operating procedures and rules, and grievance procedures with neutral facilitators
• Provides solidarity purchasing arrangements

http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/uber-unionized-worker-owned-co-op-denver-cabbies

What If Uber Were a Unionized, Worker-Owned Co-Op? These Denver Cabbies Are Making It Happen

Workers at app-driven companies like Uber don’t have the rights of full employees. But with the help of traditional unions, some are banding together into worker-owned cooperatives.

Drivers gather to sign up as affiliate members of the CWA on March 14. Photo by Erin McCarley.

Mary Hansen posted Apr 10, 2015

Wolde Gebremariam is one of more than 160,000 people nationwide who drive their own cars for Uber. Based in Denver, Gebremariam, age 28, drives his Chevy SUV for the company and occasionally works as a private limo driver.

“The labor movement has to bring ownership and equity into the picture.”

Uber built its $40 billion business around a mobile-based application that connects drivers with riders. Hailed by some for shaking up a stagnant taxi industry, others criticize the company for how it treats drivers, who pay for their own cars, gas, and maintenance. It’s also been criticized for dictating rates and for deactivating drivers’ accounts, essentially firing them, without warning.

The ride-hailing app company may be innovative from the perspective of its customers—and its owners—but for the driver the experience is very similar to that of a traditional taxi driver, as Gebremariam can attest.

After he moved to Denver from Ethiopia in 2006, he worked minimum-wage jobs at the baggage claim in the Denver International Airport, and then at a nursing home. Though he enjoyed working with seniors, he wanted to go back to school and study pharmacy. The flexibility of driving a cab seemed like the right way to go. “I could work Friday, Saturday, and Sunday driving,” he says. “Then, I [could] go to school full time.”

That’s how he thought it would work, anyway. But the reality turned out to be more difficult. In 2012, he spent six months driving for a company called Metro Taxi, with a lease that required him to pay $800 per week for the use of the vehicle, dispatch, and other services. The need to earn that much every week, in addition to what he needed to live, pushed him to drive 10- or 12-hour days, seven days a week.

Gebremariam wasn’t finding the flexibility he was looking for, and turned to Uber instead. But, after driving for the company for a few months, Gebremariam says it was more of the same. “They are taking like 20 percent of our income,” he says. “We have to be on the road all the time.”

Gebremariam isn’t just complaining about it. Instead, he and 644 other drivers are on a mission to form a new taxi company that will be both worker-owned and unionized. The new co-op, Green Taxi, will have a fleet of hybrid or high-efficiency vehicles, and will offer a ride-hailing app.

The drivers aren’t going it alone. The Communications Workers of America Local 7777 union is playing a key role in helping them break into Denver’s heavily regulated taxi industry.

The new cooperative faces many legal barriers before they can get taxis on the road. For example, the Public Utilities Commission, which oversees the industry, requires potential new companies to prove that they have a viable business plan, that more drivers are needed, and that the new company won’t put existing ones out of businesses. This is just one hoop a new transportation company must jump through, and one that, Gebremariam points out, Uber never had to attempt. But the CWA, with its lobbying experience, will be there to help Green Taxi.

The partnership between the co-op and the union could show one potential way forward for workers in the app-driven economy.

Nuru Shafi, a worker-owner at Union Taxi since 2009, stands with his hybrid cab. Photo by Erin McCarley.

The (unionized) future of sharing

Taxi and Uber drivers are independent contractors, not employees. As such, they are not guaranteed a minimum wage or other labor protections, nor can they unionize.

Uber drivers provide most of the capital needed for the business and all of the labor.

In California, two groups of drivers for Uber and Lyft (a competing ride-hailing company) are taking steps to change that. In separate court cases, they are seeking to be recognized as employees. The companies would then be required to pay drivers minimum wage, and reimburse expenses that drivers are covering now, like gas and car maintenance. It would also allow the drivers to unionize.

Gebremariam and 1,000 more drivers took a different approach in Denver toward improving their working conditions. They joined the CWA as affiliate members in October of last year. Because they weren’t employees, these new members couldn’t sign collective bargaining agreements—documents that authorize the union to negotiate with the cab companies to improve working conditions on the drivers’ behalf. But the union can still lobby for driver-friendly regulation or fight for recourse with the local government if companies treat their drivers poorly.

And, with the support of the CWA, Gebremariam and 644 other drivers made a $500 commitment each to bond and insure their new cooperative. Instead of fighting for recognition as employees of a company owned by faraway shareholders, they are attempting to build and own their own company.

Companies like Uber represent unique potential for this kind of thinking. Mike Konzcal and Byrce Covert at The Nation made the argument back in December that the company is in a perfect position to transition to a worker-owned cooperative. Uber has contributed the innovation of its mobile app, but drivers now provide most of the capital needed for the business (the car, gas, maintenance, etc.) and all of the labor.

Big upfront capital costs are usually a challenge for startup cooperatives, but as the drivers already provide most of the equipment, worker-ownership could be a logical next step. Jeff Spross at The Week echoed this idea when covering another new taxi cooperative, Transunion Car Service, based in Newark, New Jersey.

What makes Transunion Car Service and Green Taxi unique is that they are both union-backed cooperatives. The union-backed cooperatives combine the solutions of classifying Uber drivers as employees and of socializing the company’s ownership.

It’s not the first time a labor union has helped a worker-owned co-op get on its feet, and some observers see major potential in this type of partnership for the labor movement. Michael Peck is the U.S. representative for the Spanish cooperative Mondragon and co-founder of 1worker1vote.org, a nonprofit organization that promotes and supports unionized cooperatives. He believes that the Green Taxi drivers’ strategy has a value that goes far beyond Denver city limits.

“The labor movement has to bring ownership and equity into the picture,” Peck says, “because otherwise we’re going to be reduced to fighting for less and less.”

Partnerships like the one around Green Taxi could help it do that. If unions create worker-owned, union-backed cooperatives like Green Taxi, Peck argues that this would strengthen the co-op model and breathe new life into a labor movement that has seen a steady decline in membership. The resulting co-ops would provide alternatives to the Uber-like companies proliferating into other services, like Urban Sitter for child care or Washio for laundry service.

Further, the partnerships give unions more choices. They offer an alternative to the uphill battle for important yet limited issues like living wages, job security, and safe working conditions. Supporting worker-ownership presents an opportunity for unions to help create situations where workers define their own labor conditions.

But what is so powerful about being a unionized worker-owner?

A taxi driver signs paperwork making him an affiliate member of the CWA. Photo by Erin McCarley.

Why co-ops go union

Traditionally, unions fight for fair treatment of workers and better wages by negotiating collective bargaining agreements with a company’s management and owners. But in a worker-owned cooperative, the workers are the owners. They set their own wages and working conditions, but also make business decisions like whether to invest in a new building or offer a new product.

Those two types of decisions are often in conflict.

New cooperative owners might not have experience in negotiating wages or benefit plans.

“A lot of times, people form a cooperative,” Peck says, “and think, ‘We’ve got this really great democratic structure—it’s going to be perfect.’ And they end up spending the first few years figuring out where all the stop signs are, when what they really should be doing is focusing on the business.” In other words, new cooperative owners might not have experience in negotiating wages or benefit plans.

One way to manage this tension is for worker-owners to also be union members, he argues. That way, the union negotiates with the cooperative’s management or board of directors when it comes to concerns like pension plans or safety and training programs—areas in which unions traditionally have a lot of experience.

What it boils down to is ensuring an equal emphasis on the “worker” and “owner” of being a worker-owner.

“When people talk about disruptive innovation, it’s always on behalf of the consumer,” Peck says. “But who’s thinking about the worker? When you have a model that can do both, that’s a much better way to go.”

Being able to hail a taxi, or find a baby sitter or order groceries, from your phone is innovative and exciting. Green Taxi could show that we can have this convenience while supporting secure, worker-owned jobs.

Erin McCarley contributed reporting for this story.

Here’s the video about progressive economics and labor, that the times
prospective article was formed from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPEedATWMQM&feature=youtu.be

Our Story

An Electricians Coop was always a goal for Raph Christian.
Having a business that supported his community was always a goal for Somerset Waters.

While both were at a crossroads in their careers in early 2013, The LA WORCS business incubator had started doing their entrepreneurial meetings at the LA Eco-Village. Both Raph and Somerset hit these meetings with strong plans already in gear and forged a partnership that got them incorporating their business by the end of 2013.

Both Raph and Somerset have years of being engaged with the IBEW Electrical Union through their careers. They both have seen where the Union can have their back, but also see the 1000+ laid-off electricians that hit the union books on a regular basis.

They both have also seen what a well oiled machine a company could be from their common history at SolarCity. What they both saw possible was a well oiled shop that didn’t exploit their workers and supported their community through creating jobs, keeping their jobs in their community “consistuency,” and creating more energy independance through their solar program that doesn’t rob their clients.

Pacific Electric Worker-Owned LLC is the first modern Worker-Owned Coop in the Los Angeles Area. Inspired by the extensive history of Cooperatives, and a recession that brought many to their knees and others to a lavish perch, the goal of both is to create some democracy where they can, and spread it around.

Our first prospective owner is Kat Rae Johnston. An electrical apprentice and community member of the Church of Fun.
Our first prospective salesman is Jason Morris. So far our reception has been rich.

 Contact Us
Feel free to contact us for any of your electrical needs for your home or business, including:

• 24-hour emergency service
• Free consultations for solar, energy efficiency, off-grid or new construction
• Quote-by-phone for service-repair*

You can reach us by phone or email at:

• (213) 400-0614 (please no non-emergency calls after 4pm)
• OWNERS@pacificelectric.coop

Thank you for the opportunity to serve you!

The PEWOC Team

* quotes for convenience only – estimates subject to actual service/repair conditions, but our members want your referrals and continued business, and do our best to accurately set our customers’ expectations.