Worker Coop Meeting w/Michael Peck (Mondragon/CUCI)

ORA's Committee on Worker Cooperatives is focused on building a more just, inclusive, and democratic society by expanding the share of worker-owned and -operated cooperative enterprises within the local, regional, and state economy. We believe that worker cooperatives are an underutilized and important tool for ensuring equitable community development. We are working to raise awareness of this indispensable community wealth building model and encourage our elected officials to focus some of Arlington's economic development efforts on fostering the creation of cooperatives - particularly within the neighborhoods of the country that are experiencing the greatest economic hardships.

At our next meeting, we will be talking with Michael Peck, co-founder & executive director of the 1worker1vote movement (www.1worker1vote.org; https://www.facebook.com/1worker1vote), a NY-registered 501c3 dedicated to co-launching and co-scaling profitable hybrid worker ownership enterprises and projects with local stakeholders, inspired by sixty plus years of the Mondragon cooperative ecosystem experience.

As movement co-founders, the Cincinnati Union Cooperative Initiative (http://www.cincinnatiunioncoop.org) operates as the prototyping “living lab” for the 1worker1vote movement while CUNY Law School’s Community Economic Development Clinic (http://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/clinics/ced.html) leads 1worker1vote’s pedagogic and alliance structuring work.

Michael has served as Mondragon’s first and only USA delegate (Mondragon fields four global delegates) since 1999 (www.mondragon-corporation.com), and is also a board member of the American Sustainable Business Council (www.asbcouncil.org) with over 250,000 triple bottom-line (people, planet, profit) business members, a Blue Green Alliance corporate advisory board member since its founding in September 2006 (www.bluegreenalliance.org), and founded the MAPA Group mission-driven, business development consultancy in 1994 (www.mapagroup.net).

Michael also played an important part in lobbying for the recently passed Main Street Employee Ownership Act of 2018 (S 2786 and HR 5236), which makes employee-owned businesses eligible for Small Business Administration (SBA) section 7(a) loans for the first time:

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/08/14/employee-owned-businesses-sba-loans/

If you plan to attend, we encourage you to read the following the articles from Michael's 1Worker:1Vote site:

http://1worker1vote.org/reimagining-humans-back-workplace-equation-2017-report-card/

http://1worker1vote.org/cooperatives-unionize-unions-cooperativize/