ABSTRACT
This chapter describes co-operativism that is changing a growing percentage of US businesses especially the biggest ones into worker-owned and community-owned co-ops. Mondragon has shown that democratically organized businesses where workers are governing their own work and the entire firm can be highly productive and efficient, in fact, world class competitors. But it can only happen successfully if the people and the government get behind co-op nation and if the co-ops unite with militant labor parties to create a new political agenda for worker self-governance and economic democracy. One of America's biggest unions, the United Steelworkers entered into a 2009 formal agreement with Mondragon to create worker-owned co-ops in the US Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers expresses his views on the agreement as a historic first step toward making union co-ops a viable business model that creates good jobs, empower workers and support communities. People need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.
