1worker1vote is building a national network of unionized worker-owned cooperative businesses to overcome opportunity, mobility, and income inequality. Union co-ops are based on the Mondragon principles dedicated to growing equal share equity for workers, fomenting solidarity, and building local living economies. Union co-ops operating under the Mondragon principles make sure no worker community – organized, unorganized, or alternative – is left behind.
1worker1vote is a U.S.-based, nonprofit economic development catalyst that believes all American workers need to “own their labor and rent their capital” instead of the reverse and that individual worker ownership is the original and ineluctable American system condition. 1worker1vote.org is designing and fielding hybrid worker owner empowerment models with local stakeholder civic equity as a natural byproduct. A direct result of the historic 2009 United Steelworkers (USW) collaboration with Mondragon and subsequent launching of the 2012 USW-Mondragon USW-OEOC (Ohio Employee Ownership Center) union co-op model template, 1worker1vote.org is developing a nationwide cadre of unionized worker-owned and managed cooperatives reflecting 60 years of Mondragon principles, values and experiences to overcome domestic structural (racial, gender, geographic) inequalities of opportunity, mobility, and income.
Incorporated in 2015 (the CUNY Law Foundation serves as fiscal sponsor), 1worker1vote.org works with a growing multitude of like-minded local and national organizations to facilitate existing businesses transitioning to a union co-op structure and launch new union co-op businesses by providing technical assistance, education, mentoring, templates, and access to supporting finance.
1worker1vote:
- Supports the creation, building, and launching of union worker cooperatives and initiatives across the country under the 2009 USW-Mondragon “one worker, one vote” collaboration framework
- Creates a national network of union cooperatives (key to the 60-year-old Mondragon model, winner of the 2013 Financial Times “Boldness in Business” award)
- Inclusively intersects with all participants in America’s growing National Worker Ownership Movement to increase “1worker1vote” ownership nationwide (in partnership with the American Sustainable Business Council)
1:1 infuses the existing and embryonic U.S. worker cooperative community with:
- Enhanced solidarity culture, critical mass, and a trained & skilled workforce in diverse fields such as manufacturing through more robust collaboration with America’s Labor Movement while providing a tested and proven worker equity framework
- An integrated nationwide network that captures Mondragon-style organizational and financial support mechanisms to increase employment, share investment opportunities, and cross-train worker-owners
Read more about our Goals, Activities & Tasks, History and Allies.
* If you are looking for internship opportunities, we encourage you to learn more about the Internship Program at the American Sustainable Business Council.
