Re: Mondragon: Fwd: New ILO Recommendation on the Promotion of Cooperatives

[Hsq95@aol.com]

Mark Levin
ILO

Dear Mark:

Congratulations to you and your colleagues for getting this important motion on cooperatives passed at the ILO.  I know your name from my colleague David Ellerman at the World Bank.

You may have heard of a recent unionized cooperative model that may be of interest to your ILO colleagues.  Team X, Inc. is a UNITE! organized worker cooperative that produces Sweat X brand apparel out of a new factory in Los Angeles.  Team X was launched in early 2002 and is successfully operating in the marketplace.

The Team X effort - described on the web at www.sweatx.coop - has been funded by a new social venture capital fund run by Ben Cohen and Pierre Ferrari.  Ben Cohen is the former owner of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream here in the United States.  The social venture capital fund Ben, Pierre and others have started aims to pay a "living wage" at all its target investment firms and is partial to Mondragon-inspired industrial cooperatives.  I am glad to report that unions are also a welcome part of the Hot Fudge/Team X / Sweat X model and that UNITE! has been an enthusiastic partner in this effort to build a model firm that can prove that the apparel industry need not operate under sweatshop conditions.  

My firm (Ownership Associates, Inc. www.ownershipassociates.com) with early help from David Ellerman, Jeff Gates and the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney has played the lead role in helping to structure and organize Team X.  We play a continuing role helping with internal organizational and educational challenges, with external public relations efforts and in helping to place Sweat X brand apparel in universities, with unions, faith based organizations and with the entertainment industry.  

The labor connection is crucial here.  In addition to my work at Ownership Associates, I serve as a member of the core faculty of the Harvard Trade Union Program teaching on the general topic of Capital Strategies for Labor.  Richard Freeman is the faculty co-chair of the Harvard Trade Union Program.  He and colleagues at UCLA are producing case study material on Team X Sweat X that should prove useful to the broader labor community.

Finally, on an international note, one of the mid term plans for the Hot Fudge Team X Sweat X group is to replicate our effort in Mexico or Central America.  Please let me know if you would like any further information on this project.  You can write me here or preferably at cm@ownershipassociates.com

Regards,

Chris

Christopher Mackin
Ownership Associates, Inc. (a worker cooperative)
6 University Road
Cambridge, MA 02138
T. 617-868-4600
F. 617-868-7969
www.ownershipassociates.com