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A worker-owned cooperative is an innovative business model where the workers are also the owners, which means everyone has a democratic vote in the way the business is run. We chose this model to give our members greater control over their working environment and to give our business the strong, stable guidance of a collective decision-making process. Cooperative workplaces foster a creative and innovative environment where the members enjoy working and are inspired to pursue advancement in their field of expertise. In fact, cooperative workers tend to be happier, more productive and achieve higher quality work fostered by their satisfaction with the work environment.
We believe cooperative development to be a powerful and timely force for social change. In a cooperative workplace, the workers are also the owners, which means they are personally invested in the success of the enterprise. For the customer, this means that everyone is personally committed to producing a high quality product while providing impeccable service.
The Cooperative Movement
Woodshanti is part of a larger cooperative movement. The San Francisco Bay Area has the largest concentration of worker-owned co-ops in the country and locally, there is Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives (NoBAWC). NoBAWC works to build a strong alliance between the co-ops to share discounts and skills for starting and running a co-op. For the past ten years, there has been a West Coast worker cooperative conference in Breitenbush, Oregon. More recently, the East Coast and the Midwest regions started having conferences as well. In 2004, there was a national conference in Minneapolis where The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives was founded to promote and connect co-ops on a national level and to connect to the larger international cooperative movement. In Europe, the Mondragon region of Spain and the Emilia Romagna region of Italy are examples of entire areas run on a cooperative economy. There is also an emerging movement in Argentina and Venezuela where cooperatives are becoming a popular alternative means of socio-economic development.