I’ve blogged about worker owned cooperatives a few times over the past year and this week I was able to get a closer look. I hosted a panel with three great speakers: Amy Johnson of US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Hilary Abell of Project Equity, and Taran Ramage of Tech Collective.

We talked for a couple hours about the advantages and disadvantages of worker coops and how they are evolving in the US. One key take away was that there are two main trends that are often conflated: worker ownership and democracy in the workplace. The two trends are entwined but I’m excited to unpack both and explore how they growing independently.

Overall the coop movement is growing and many experiments are being tried in leadership structures and decision making. Coops are expanding into almost every industry. I’m excited to see how the movement grows and if it can influence mainstream business and how most people work.

We’re going to write a much longer summary of the talk and I’ll post it here when we finish.