From Yes Magazine:
In the decades after World War II, the union movement was one of the main forces boosting the incomes and security of working people. But the number of union members peaked in 1979, and in many places unions have struggled since then.
In 2009, United Steelworkers sought to change that. They met with representatives from Spain-based Mondragon, the world’s largest worker cooperative, to develop a plan for industrial steel workers to transition into worker-ownership. Cooperatives, they believed, would put more power in the hands of workers.
The partnership sparked an idea with labor organizers in Cincinnati. And in 2012, labor representatives founded the Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative (CUCI), a union co-op incubator that nurtures startups, aiming to create an integrated network of union co-ops that sustain and support each other.
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