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Josh
I will forward your email to Hazel Corcoran at the
Canadian Worker Co-op Federation. I do not have the names but I understand
that there are some saw mills or pulp mills in BC that were converted to
Co-ops.
Back in the late 80's the Kimberley Clark company
closed the plant at Kapuskasing Ontario after thirty years. In that thirty
years Kimberley Clark had not replanted any trees and the land was clear cut and
the rivers very badly polluted. David Suzuki did a documentary for the CBC
TV, in I believe it was 92 or 93, called "Trading Places." The
closure affected 95% of the town's population. The mayor and the employees
got together and asked the union to help them raise the money to finance the
reopening. They did and the mill became very profitable, in one year,
according to Suzuki's documentary, the co-op planted 150,000 trees and started
to clean up the river. Shortly after the documentary was made, however,
the union was becoming redundant and decided to force a sale to a private
company so they could get their money back and regain their hold on the
workers.
There was also another at Rainy River Ontario that
virtually the same thing happened but I don't remember the details.
Chick
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 7:00 AM
Subject: Mondragon: Research for ILO on
Worker Cooperative Formation
My name is Josh Olson. I am currently serving as an
intern with Mark Levin at the Cooperative Branch of the International Labor
Organization. I have been given the assignment to do research and write
a short paper on the use of cooperative buyouts as a mechanism for job
retention for workers in investor-owned or privately held
companies.
I am looking for case studies of worker cooperatives that have been
created as the result of worker purchases of failing non-cooperative
enterprises. For the purposes of my paper, I am interested
both in both sucessful and unsucessful attempts at such conversions. ( I
realize that there will be more information regarding successful cooperatives
of this nature, but information on both successes and failures will be
beneficial to my research.)
Any information, regarding studies that have been published on this
subject, details regarding particular cases of such conversions, or even the
existence of such cases (hopefully accompanied by some contact information)
would be most useful.
Many thanks, in advance.
Sincerely,
-Josh Olson
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