Worker co-ops featured in The Age

29 August 2014

The Age has looked at several successful worker co-operatives in Australia at present, including Earthworker Co-operative and Co-operative Home Care, in an article titled Worker’s co-operatives: A stake in the businesss, 27 August.

Earthworker

Their cause is the Earthworker Co-operative. The Dandenong factory, and a new facility at Morwell in the Latrobe Valley, will be part of a network of co-operatives aiming to provide local jobs and stimulate a “just transition” from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Caygill did not expect it to turn out this way, but he is adamant that his workers should own his business. Indeed, he believes it’s the only option. Imported tanks are sold in Australia for what it costs Everlast merely to make them. Unless something changes, the business won’t last much longer.

In a worker co-operative, all employees have a stake in the business and an equal vote in the way it runs. Typically, pay is much more even. Caygill anticipates that, as a manager at Eureka’s Future, he’ll earn no more than double the lowest-paid worker. The co-operative’s other advantage is an innovative sales plan: it is using workplace agreements to offer solar hot water systems to workers in lieu of wage rises.

“To my mind, the country needs to be underpinned by a strong manufacturing base. I think it’s critical,” he says. “At the moment it’s underpinned by resources, but the resource boom isn’t going to last forever. And it isn’t only manufacturing we need to address, but also climate change, because our country is going to be one of the most vulnerable.”

Co-operative Home Care

“Aged-care workers are a forgotten bunch,” Kaczmarek says. “Nobody is looking after them.”

Rather than put up with it, she founded a worker-owned business. Co-operative Home Care is based on successful models in the USA and UK. After two years’ planning, it began operating last October. The workers are based in Sydney’s inner-west and south-west. It employs 20 people and is growing quickly, with plans to expand into a network of linked home-care and day-care centres.

Read the full article in The Age, Worker Co-ops: A stake in the business, 27 August