We realized that we had bitten off more than we can chew by both trying to start a business and trying to form a worker cooperative at the same time so we have concluded to create cooperative culture and incubate the business as we go.

We hope to incubate  a grocery store / food hub at some point, however we have more groundwork to do. People in general in Denver don’t seem to understand cooperation, so we have to start from the ground up. Therefore we are starting a Non-profit called Denver Co-Action Network to complement the work of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center who are working on succession planning and turning existing business into worker coops.

We are participating in some business presentations in Denver educating people about the sustainability of this model and we are also going to do everything we can to organize in NE Park Hill. We have adopted Formal Consensus as the method of making decisions. We have adopted Cooperative Principles. We are also going to have a non-profit arm of our organization to raise start-up capital and to initiate community programs.

The Denver Worker Cooperative  is an informal association of people who are starting a worker cooperative. We began in September of 2011 in Denver, through a series of Craigslist Ads in the gigs section.

At some point we may have a Meetup group, however they cost $19 per month. We are trying to do this all for free, right now.

The organizing period takes about 3-12 months. We are organizing.

A worker cooperative is a business that is democratically managed by its worker-owners. Although there may be some workers in the business who are not owners, all workers are in training to become owners, or else are subcontracted as temporary workers.

The bylaws of each cooperative will state what it’s introductory period is for new worker-owners. Usually it is about 6 months of work, training and classes in the job itself as well as training in cooperation and understanding cooperative principles.

After the introductory period, for which the person is paid an entry-level salary, the person will be voted in as a worker-owner or let go.

In traditional forms of worker cooperatives, all shares are held by the workforce with no outside or consumer owners, and each member has one voting share. In practice, control by worker-owners may be exercised through individual, collective or majority ownership by the workforce, or the retention of individual, collective or majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member one-vote basis). A worker cooperative, therefore, has the characteristic that the majority of its workforce own shares, and the majority of shares are owned by the workforce.

The Denver Worker Cooperative’s membership is open.  If you are interested in talking with us, please go to the contact section. Thanks!