By making the workers owners, incentives for shareholder profits are removed, and the driving force for the business becomes meeting the needs of the workers and their community.

The International Cooperative Alliance defines a co-operative as “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise.”

Co-ops can take many forms; a legal entity (corporation), a legal structure (LLC), or a set of practices and values (collective), but whatever its incorporation status, a worker cooperative must create, in policy and practice, mechanisms for workers to make the decisions that affect the functioning and governance of the business.

Worker Co-ops differ from a regular business in 3 main ways: Joint Ownership, Democratic Control, and Member Benefit

Nuts & Bolts Nursery is organized as an LLC, and the ways in which we implement joint ownership, democratic control, and member benefit are outlined in our Operating Agreement.

We will be adding more information about co-ops in general and about the specific ways that Nuts & Bolt implements cooperative structures soon, but in the mean time you can read more about Co-Ops, worker or otherwise, at the International Cooperative Alliance’s website.