Cooperative Ways to Weather the Silver Tsunami

Worker cooperatives like the bookstore/cafe Red Emma's partnered with other organizations to create Seed Commons, a national financing network that provides loans without requiring individual collateral. Seed Commons has distributed over $100 million in loans supporting 15,000 workers nationwide. In the Baltimore region specifically, the network has invested $25 million, created 250 ownership-track jobs, and supported 23 cooperatives.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) formed the first worker-driven social responsibility program in 1993, and since then they’ve advocated across industries for corporate social responsibility and preventing worker exploitation. The CIW also created the Fair Food Program which has helped add more than $45 million to farm workers’ paychecks.

Siragugal Bricks is a community-owned brick kiln operated by rescued bonded laborers, aiming to rehabilitate and empower them to explore business endeavors and find more sustainable, safer sources of income. Since April 2022, 100 families have worked for Siragugal and local government organizations have helped obtain funding and supplies to facilitate Siragugal’s operations, such as power supplies, a work shed and a borehole for water.

Beeyo Maal is a collective of women running their own businesses in Somaliland’s male-dominated frankincense industry. The group, which has about 280 members, allows women to make roughly five times what they were paid when previously working for exploitative companies.

Conexsus provides financial, technical, and mentorship support to cooperatives and small producers in the Amazon rainforest with the goal of shifting investment and resources to sustainable “bioeconomies” often managed by Indigenous communities. One such cooperative, Coopatrans, has been able to improve its relationships with farmers thanks to credit from Conexsus assuring payments can be made on time.

With help from national labor union Workers United, employees at Starbucks stores across the country are launching union campaigns in an effort to secure safer conditions and better pay. In all, 171 stores in 30 states have won union elections so far, and Workers United has filed to unionize at 302 stores in all.

Attitudes towards the legalization of sex work are changing around the world, and now some cities have even started considering public spaces for sex work while developing urban infrastructure plans. From Cologne, Germany (where there are "sex drive-throughs" that are equipped with safety features, facilities for rest, and toilets for the workers) to Amsterdam (where they are developing new rules for window-based sex work), governments are now increasingly inviting sex workers and their representatives to the negotiating table.

In the Dominican Republic, employees at the Alta Gracia factory are paid 2.5 times the national minimum wage, a salary that is widely unheard of in the garment factories that make t-shirts and sports merchandise for American consumers. While the business has sometimes struggled to maintain investors and turn a profit, the guarantee of a living wage has introduced much deserved financial stability in the lives of workers who are often relegated to substandard conditions and minimal wages.

For contingent workers in what is often called the "gig economy," securing access to benefits, retirement, and other markers of job security can be a struggle. However, the success of the Screen Actors Guild and other labor unions for those in the entertainment industry in the 20th century might provide a useful framework for organizing for a 21st century labor market.

Equip is a business in Lebanon that is trying to prevent further abuse of domestic workers, by helping them communicate better with their employers. “Their business model relies on employers paying for the company’s services, which range from $10 to $550, and include English lessons, first-aid training, legal translation, and conflict mediation.”