The following comments were delivered on Saturday, June 9th, 2018 during the NYC Worker Cooperative Conference hosted by the CUNY Law School Community Economic Development Clinic (CEDC). The Why Cooperatives Unionize? Why Unions Cooperativize? plenary session included: Carmen Huertas Noble – Tenured Professor, CUNY School of Law, founding executive director of the CUNY Law School’s Community Economic Development Clinic (CEDC), and co-founder, 1worker1vote;…
Author Archive for Michael Peck
A New Ownership Culture of Work
America’s polarizing cultural and socioeconomic conflicts framed by severe geographical inequalities and abiding racism desperately needs a Gettysburg Address reboot. If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, his prescriptions would surely be helpful as to how, once again, this “nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” can survive the constant stress test of…
Thoughts on “The Birth of the New American Aristocracy”
The Birth of the New American Aristocracy, The Atlantic, June 2018 issue – by Mathew Stewart: “The gilded future of the top 10 percent—and the end of opportunity for everyone else.” The above seminal article serves two useful worker ownership movement purposes for every non-aristocratic American. First, it shows, not tells (the classic English 101 solution to better writing and communications),…
Reimagining Humans Back into the Workplace Equation Center through Equity: 2017 Report Card
The previous “one worker, one vote” blog posted on Labor Day. During this three-month interval, the nationwide 1worker1vote.org movement, self-funded since its 2015 founding, co-incubated an automotive & aerospace manufacturing conversion to union co-op ownership working group by teaming with a global top ten consultancy and with staunch support from our Advisory Board. We ramped-up our multi-year commitment to the Bronx…
In Search of Better Pogo Angels
Pogo’s prophetic and pathetic observation holds: “we have met the enemy and he is us.” Today’s polarized and polarizing United States, under siege from itself, is proving too internally cowed, under-imagined and social media pigeonholed to buck predictable spheres of influence. More than just another rare bipartisan opportunity, getting worker ownership equations right could heal the breach between mutually-assured destructing left and…
Independence from Ourselves
In what will become one of the most “back to the future” political realignments in America’s history, the current Democratic Party is on course to embrace the tenets of Jeffersonian Democracy while the Republican Party in power increasingly opts for Hamiltonian and Madison redux centralized authority. Exacerbated by the hardening of blue versus red, socio-political culture, geographic and economic class…
What’s More Unequal: Sharing or Scam Economies?
The 18th century British literary critic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, talked about the “reconciliation of opposites,” a phenomenon which Professor Chaumont at the Political Science Institute (“Science Po”) in Paris more than 200 years later tried to teach me meant the Gallic version of “placing contradictions between parentheses.” Today’s unequalizing economies, whether Brexit, French or closer to home, appear to specialize…
No Longer Separate & Unequal Healthcare
1worker1vote.org Healthcare for All Leadership by example is a prized military trait with the idea being that leading from behind will not inspire front line sacrifices required to win. “Do as I say but not as I do” usually becomes a non-sequitur in a functioning democracy or successful battlefield. A plutocracy offers one level of healthcare to the benefit of…
Commoditized Passengers
In support of a global boycott of United Airlines and in solidarity with the passenger who was disrespected, mauled and manhandled by United Airlines – “United Airlines is facing a public-relations nightmare, after a man on an overbooked flight was dragged off the plane.” Way too many times, commercial airline passengers come to the conclusion they are nothing but disposable chattel,…
Healing America’s Regressive Gene
Mortality is universal and bipartisan: black lives do matter and lower economic class, middle-aged white lives with a high school diploma or less are driving actuarial chart curves downward by dying off more quickly than they should. Causes are also bipartisan: disintegrating family cohesion, worsening job prospects in a rapidly decaying, inequality-driven culture that commoditizes the people who work, and inferior…
