The State of Sector: Worker Cooperatives

Owners at Work

Guests:

Olga Prushinskaya and Jamie Pockrandt, Democracy at Work Institute

Summary:

The second most common form of employee ownership in the United States is the worker cooperative where workers participate in both the financial success and governance of the firms. Today there are over 750 worker cooperatives in the United States, which is triple the amount that existed in 2012. How do we know these numbers? Unlike the number of ESOPs which can be tracked using publicly available data generated by the government, there is no public entity that tracks worker cooperatives. Instead, it has been nonprofit groups that have filled in this gap in knowledge. On this episode I speak with Olga Prushinskaya and Jamie Pockrandt of the Democracy at Work Institute, a national organization committed to worker cooperative development – which includes gather data on worker cooperatives. We talk about their soon to be released State of the Sector report and what it found regarding worker cooperatives as well as other projects they have been working on which aim to better understand the impact that employee ownership is having on workers, companies, and communities.

Further Material

• Learn about DAWI’s work here: https://institute.coop/

• Existing datasets mentioned in the show: https://institute.coop/core-research

Guest Info:

• Jamie Pockrandt, Data Architect, Democracy at Work Institute:

Email: [e-mail] | Phone: [phone] Ext. 19

• Olga Prushinskaya, Metrics and Impact Analyst

Email: [e-mail] | Phone: [phone] Ext. 17

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