Worker Ownership for the 99% Press Conference

we're looking for a different Model A different model for uh um worker ownership for worker equity for fairness too often in this country the corporate model is broken down it's not it's just not fair it's just not working um and there are too many examples of companies that are are workers don't have a real place and don't have equity and don't have a sense of the value that they bring to an organization or an Enterprise and we believe that the mandre history and its and its model and uh and the history of the steel workers on behalf of workers was a promising effort for us to move forward and build a model and try something different and not be afraid to try something different so today is really the launching of that model we've worked on it a lot over the last couple of years we're developing specific projects we'll talk more about them as they come out in the coming weeks and months and we think we can turn this into something real and concrete and a different way for workers to have Enterprises that do good that go to the market with good products that people want but that are fair and treat people right employee ownership starts with employees taking ownership of their own jobs as they are given as much autonomy and responsibility as possible open communication and mutual respect leads to everyone production workers office staff management and functional area experts yes even the PHD research chemist guy thinking like an owner and concentrating on satisfying the customer studies consistently show that employee owned companies with an ownership culture and that's the important part with an ownership culture outperform employee owned companies that do not have an ownership culture they also outperform non-employee owned companies the what of cooperatives is the ability for people to have a sustainable future within a sustainable economy through local ownership the whole thing is about local ownership and why we do it is because ultimately that creates a sense of self-reliance and purpose for anyone who joins The Cooperative we all are really in the business of enabling self-reliance and self-reliance is absolutely critical today if we're going to see our way to a bright future I'm going to end by giving you the Cooperative values which are not talked about much but I think in the future it's really the banner we ought to fly under and the work that you're doing here with United Steel Workers mandon and the idea of worker cooperatives uh fits very well with this The Cooperative values which are used by by every Cooperative in the world as developed by the international Cooperative Alliance are self-help self- responsibility democracy Equity equality and solidarity the goals of this collaboration in 2009 were and are to create manufacturing Union co-ops uh to prove the quality of life of workers and to create sustainable jobs and sustainable economies uh and that that support stronger environmental practices uh our template when you read it and I hope you all do um deals exactly with this approach so the key points from mre's perspective are this is first of all a made in America eclectic model eclectic means we pick the best of everywhere and we put it into our model so that we can reach the highest point of practice that we can the principles came from mandron for the laundry they went to Cleveland and from Cleveland uh they're coming back to Pittsburgh and then now they're in Cincinnati where we have a number of other Union co-op projects starting and this is all about um migration hybrid development uh sort of the immigration of ideas just the way our country was build one successful immigration practice after another we are creating a more democratic and productive workplace for all and so these are practiced in America uh employee owned models esops and cooperatives together with the Union co-op model uh are what we want our country to do in the future but the difference between a Union co-op model is that we add a collective bargaining agreement to the equal right to equal Equity so the Union co-op model is a collective bargaining agreement to equal rights to equal equity and this is where we feel the rubber hits the road all of us are looking forward to the upcoming announcements in Pittsburgh in Cincinnati and other cities of our successful Union co-op launches that will be based on the template that we' put before you today again my thanks to ooc and to the steel workers for this tremendous partnership and for everybody here who is working with us to take a giant step forward for everybody in this country thank you [Applause]