United States: The Knights of Labor (1869) and onward

History.com Editors, Knights of Labor. History.com, Oct 7, 2021.

African American Registry, The Knights of Labor (Union) is Founded. African American Registry, date unknown.

Greg Macleod, From Mondragon to America: Experiments in Community Economic Development. University College of Cape Breton Press | Amazon page, Nov 1998.  (pdf book)  Examines Mondragon and other examples, as well as the Catholic Social Tradition’s principles, and critiques of private capitalist and state enterprises.

Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. The Pennsylvania State University Press | Amazon page, 2014.  (pdf copy)

Cameron Keng, If Apple Were A Worker Cooperative, Each Employee Would Earn At Least $403K. Forbes, Dec 18, 2014.  Mentions Mondragon and the principles of worker coops

Alana Semuels, Getting Rid of Bosses. The Atlantic, Jul 8, 2015.  about worker cooperatives

Kristin Toussaint, A Boston Pizza Place Is Trying Something Unusual. Here's How It Can Change Employees' Lives. Boston Globe, Oct 22, 2015.

Michael D. Greaney, There's a Better Way, Mr. Trump, Part 1: What Is. The Just Third Way, Dec 6, 2016.  S-Corp worker owned corporations

Jordan Heller, One Of America’s Poorest Cities Has A Radical Plan To Remake Itself. Huffington Post, Nov 27, 2018.  features employee-owned corporations, green jobs, in Cleveland OH

Rachel M. Cohen, Could Expanding Employee Ownership Be the Next Big Economic Policy? The Intercept, Dec 26, 2018.  Discusses actual legislation by Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)

Robert D. Wolff, Economic Update: 3 Kinds of Socialism. Democracy At Work, Jun 10, 2019.  the third type if the democratic socialization of the workplace

Yanis Varoufakis, Sharing New Vision for Capitalism and Business. Irish Examiner, Dec 31, 2019.  “Imagine that shares resemble electoral votes, which can be neither bought nor sold. Like students who receive a library card upon registration, new staff receive a single share granting a single vote to be cast in all-shareholder ballots deciding every matter of the corporation — from management and planning issues to the distribution of net revenues and bonuses. Suddenly, the profit-wage distinction makes no sense and corporations are cut down to size, so boosting market competition. When a baby is born, the central bank automatically grants them a trust fund. or personal capital account) that is periodically topped up with a universal basic dividend. When the child becomes a teenager, the central bank throws in a free checking account. Workers move freely from company to company, carrying with them their trust-fund capital, which they may lend to the company they work in or to others. Because there are no equities to turbocharge with massive fictitious capital, finance becomes delightfully boring — and stable. States drop all personal and sales taxes, instead taxing only corporate revenues, land, and activities detrimental to the commons.”

Alex Gourevitch, Bernie Sanders Was Right to Talk About Wage Slavery. We Should Talk About It, Too. Jacobin Magazine, Jan 24, 2020. A brilliant retelling of the history from the end of the U.S. Civil War.

Dana Tims, Founder of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods Transfers Business to Employees. The Oregonian, Feb 25, 2020.  Bob Moore, “whose mutual loves of healthy eating and old-world technologies spawned an internationally distributed line of products, responded with a gift of his own -- the whole company. The Employee Stock Ownership Plan Moore unveiled means that his 209 employees now own the place and its 400 offerings of stone-ground flours, cereals and bread mixes.”

Second Thought, Worker Cooperatives: Expanding Democracy In The Workplace. Second Thought, Oct 2, 2020.  a 10 minute video, with examples of Ocean Spray and United Cooperative Services in the U.S. In Italy, the seventh most profitable company is a worker cooperative. In Spain, the Mondragon community is fascinating.

Democratizing Work, The Working Manifesto - Meet the Authors. Democratizing Work, Oct 12, 2020.  See also organization website. “This initiative is the result of a collective endeavor launched in May 2020 by three scholars: Isabelle Ferreras, Dominique Méda, and Julie Battilana. The three share an abiding interest in democratic and sustainable ways of working and organizing that diverge from the model of shareholder value maximization. The initiative came from a hope to help in the unfolding crisis – in health, climate, the economy, and political life – that we are facing in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cooperating distantly, as is the new norm, the three scholars sat down to draft an op-ed together about what we are learning from this pandemic around the specific issue of work. Their goal was to name – clearly and urgently – the core lesson they saw emerging: it is time to democratize firms, decommodify work, and remediate the environment.” Dr. Julie Battilana teaches at Harvard.

Alissa Quart, Be Your Own Boss: More Co-op Businesses Are Returning Workers’ Power. Mother Jones, Sep-Oct 2021.  

Richard Wolff, Ten Years Ago: The Growth of Cooperativism [10th Anniversary of Economic Update with Richard Wolff]. Democracy at Work, Oct 22, 2021.  a fascinating historical overview and possibilities for today

Hobbie Stuart, Worker Democracy. Unlearn Economics, Dec 4, 2021.  An excellent overview from an economist’s perspective and knowledge. Features the legal and economic effects, with detail from Italy, France, and Uruguay. Notes that worker coops, consumer coops, supply coops can all coexist and complement one another.

Spain: The Mondragon Cooperative

Henk Thomas and Chris Logan, Mondragón: An Economic Analysis. pdf book, 1982.  

Keith Bradley and Alan Gelb, Cooperation at Work: The Mondragón Experience. Heinemann Educational | Amazon page, 1983.  and pdf book.

Davydd J. Greenwood, Jose Luis Gonzalez Santos, Industrial Democracy as Process: Participatory Action Research in the Fagor Cooperative Group of Mondragon. pdf book, 1992.

William Foote Whyte and Katherine King Whyte, Making Mondragón: The Growth and Dynamics of the Worker Cooperative Complex. ILR Press | Amazon page, Oct 1988, 1991.  (pdf book)  A history of Mondragon and its development, including how organizations are structured, and how the community has weathered economic hardships.

Sharryn Kasmir, The Myth of Mondragon: Cooperatives, Politics, and Working Class Life in a Basque Town. SUNY Press | Amazon page, 1996.  (pdf book) Kasmir argues that worker cooperatives like Mondragon have been used to unfairly discredit labor unions and working-class organizations.

Nick Romeo, How Mondragon Became the World’s Largest Co-Op.  The New Yorker, Aug 27, 2022.  “In Spain, an industrial-sized conglomerate owned by its workers suggests an alternative future for capitalism.”

Greg Macleod, From Mondragon to America: Experiments in Community Economic Development. University College of Cape Breton Press | Amazon page, Nov 1998.  (pdf book)  Examines Mondragon and other examples, as well as the Catholic Social Tradition’s principles, and critiques of private capitalist and state enterprises.

George Cheney, Values at Work: Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at Mondragón. Cornell University Press | Amazon page, 1999.  (pdf book)