From Street Sense Media:

The minimum wage in Washington D.C. is $13.25, and for people coming out of prison, even many of those jobs are out of reach. Guidance, too, is, hard to come by.   Juan Reid wanted to change that.  “Forming as a cooperative shows a new model to the world,” said Reid, co-founder of the Tightshift Laboring Cooperative.

Tightshift, founded in 2016, is D.C.’s first worker-owned cooperative business founded by returning citizens, according to their website. Workers get texts about jobs as they come, which include hauling, cleaning, moving and similar work. Workers get paid above minimum wage, between $15 and $17 per hour.“If we’re working for someone else and they aren’t sharing the profits or leaving space for you to influence decisions, it’s just exploitation. Cooperatives show that people don’t have to exploit other people in order to have a business,” Reid said.

Get the full story here:

https://www.streetsensemedia.org/article/dc-cooperative-homeless-returning-citizens/#.XTnFhOhKhPY