February 14th, 2010
The Evergreen Cooperative project in Cleveland, which C2BE has been following with great enthusiasm as a potential model for Detroit, has just gotten a swath of national publicity. First, The Nation has published The Cleveland Model in their March 1 issue. The article profiles the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, an innovative new employee owned company which uses green technologies, but also discusses the solar and greenhouse operations that are in development. The article also namechecks our friends at the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. Most excitingly, they present the employee-owned model as a broad strategy for kickstarting the American economy. Second, Business Week has just posted Buying Local on a Large Scale, which features Cleveland in the context of local sourcing of expenditures by large businesses.
Congratulations to both the Evergreen Cooperative for breaking into the national news, and to The Nation and Business Week for reporting on such an important project.
Posted in CBE, Evergreen Cooperative, Mondragon | No Comments »
January 17th, 2010
In the aftermath of our CBE Week series, the United Steelworkers reached an agreement with Mondragon in October to begin collaborating on the creation of industrial cooperatives in the US. This is a huge milestone in union involvement with worker ownership in the US, as well as an unprecedented step by Mondragon in attempting to expand their cooperative practices outside of Spain.
Posted in CBE, Mondragon, Unions | No Comments »
January 17th, 2010
Last week The New York Times published an article profiling a few businesses which had started recently in the Cass Corridor, and the beginning virtuous cycle they may represent. While there’s always activity around Wayne State, the clustering of businesses in this particular area could definitely help rev things up.
Posted in CBE, Motor City, Startups | No Comments »
January 17th, 2010
Back in September, C2BE hosted a series of speaking events around Detroit featuring Mikel Lezamiz of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation of Spain, the largest cooperative corporation in the world. He presented the MCC as a model which could be followed in Detroit, describing how they went from having nothing in the aftermath of WWII to generating billions of Euros in sales per year, all owned by the workers in the company. We received some very good press coverage for the series of events, including:
Posted in C2BE, CBE, Mondragon, Motor City | No Comments »