Gem City Market Announces Capital Campaign Kick-Off and Site Location

On Wednesday, May 16, the Gem City Market announced its new location plans and capital campaign kickoff. A brief press conference was held with former Congressman, Ambassador Tony Hall, to announce big news for the future of Dayton's first worker and community-owned cooperative grocery store. 

Those present included member-owners, hunger organization representatives, financial donors, and community leaders, along with future neighborhood customers who will benefit most from the availability of affordable and nutritious food in the area. 

The Gem City Market will be a vibrant, community-centered, full-service grocery store located in one of Ohio’s largest food deserts along the Salem Avenue corridor, near downtown Dayton. The store will feature affordable, quality kitchen staples, including well-stocked fresh produce, meat, and bakery departments currently lacking in the target area. Specialty, local, and organic products will also make the market a unique draw. The Gem City Market will be different from a typical grocery store as it will be owned by its workers, customers, and supporters from the community.

Reflections on the Union Co-op Symposium

Photo by Paul Davis.
Banner photo by Marakah Mancini.

At this time when wealth inequality and divisive politics threaten the fabric of the US, over 200 people from across the US (and as far away as the UK, Argentina, and Australia,) gathered together for the third biennial Union Co-op Symposium in Cincinnati in December, an event characterized by hope, solidarity, and practical ways of responding to this challenge. The theme was Stand up to Inequality and Build Worker-Owned Co-ops .

Our keynote speaker, Isabel Uribe, who worked in Mondragon’s premier co-op incubator Saiolan, challenged us to tackle the challenge of combating wealth inequality by stepping up our efforts and strategies to broaden the cooperative movement as we combine forces with other movements. She discussed how hard it is, how immense the challenge, how important commitment and solidarity are. She offered Fr. Arizmendiarrieta’s powerful words of wisdom to reflect on:

Photo by Paul Davis.

• Ideas divide us, needs unite us
• In order to advance, one needs to transform oneself
• To get  off the narrow path, open your heart
• To have abundance build community

She reminded us of Leonard Cohen’s words, “There is a crack in everything. . . that’s how the light gets in.” She encouraged us to be that light. This deeply unequal society can’t continue this way forever. How can we create more cracks? Let more light in?  

The Mondragon Cooperative network, which today employs more than 70,000 people in over 100 co-ops, came to life in a particular moment when the Basque country of Spain was cut off from the outside world by Spain’s fascist dictator Franco. The transformative Mondragon experience, begun at a time of overwhelming devastation and poverty, has led to thriving communities that enjoy levels of equality higher than the majority of the world as measured by the GINI coefficient (a measure of inequality).  We are living in our own moment. Isabel underscored the importance of adapting and evolving the lessons of the Mondragon experience to our cultural context.

The 2-day conference explored some ways the resilient Mondragon model is being adapted within the US context. Four key features of the Mondragon experience that have helped them thrive: 1) Mondragon Co-op businesses are not isolated entities, they are part of a network, a family of co-ops that share resources. 2) As individual Mondragon co-ops grow in size, they add a social council to their co-ops, a defined space where disputes are resolved,workers offer input,  information flows freely. 3) Education is at the foundation. Mondragon has its own university which developed from a polytechnic school founded by Fr. Arizmendiarietta. 4) The ten Mondragon principles form an important anchor and guide.

In the U.S. we are experimenting with these key features, developing networks of co-ops as well as bringing the Social Committee into being in co-ops through the mechanism of the Union Committee. Currently, a community college Co-op Development Curriculum is being piloted and the Worker Owner Workbook developed by Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative is used weekly at team meetings and will soon be widely available.  

The largest union worker-owned co-op in the United States, Cooperative Homecare Associates in the Bronx, preceded the historic agreement in 2009 by Mondragon International and the United Steelworkers to launch union co-ops in the United States. At the symposium, the former CEO for 16 years Michael Elsas and Keith Joseph from SEIU 1199 described the slightly challenging process of originally organizing the co-op with a union, the power of the labor-co-op combo, and how their labor management committee works and strengthens their effectiveness as a co-op (very similar to Social Council or Union Committee).   

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Photo by Paul Davis.

Cincinnati Union Co-op Initiative was the first to bring to life a Mondragon-style Union Co-op, but excitingly the LA Union Co-op Initiative, the Greater Dayton Union Co-op Initiative, and Vital Brooklyn all are bringing this model into being in their areas. Individual union co-ops have come into being in many regions. From the Maine lobsterman to the Denver taxi drivers, people and unions are experimenting. Following the symposium, new areas of the country are asking for support in forming union co-op networks. The symposium kicked off a year-long process to create a more formalized membership structure for the national organization 1worker1vote.org  (which, that), together with Mondragon International North America, is building a national network of unionized worker-owned cooperative businesses to overcome inequality of opportunity, mobility, and income.

Photo by Marakah Mancini.

The symposium was an embodiment of hope with a diverse group of people from over 60 cities and towns, and representation from over 20 labor unions. Solidarity was the name of the game as people connected with one another, sharing their resources, wisdom, support, and advice in practical sessions geared to helping projects move forward. (Phil Amadon, a co-founder of CUCI, commented on the spirit of solidarity throughout the event, noting in particular the respect he was shown as he dealt with Parkinson’s attacks.)

The event showcased innovations that union co-op groups are experimenting with including:  

• an adaptation of a Search Fund model to tap new talent pools, capital pools, and to increase worker ownership through a Worker Owned Leveraged Buy Out model  tailored to manufacturing and industrial service companies with around 5 million in revenues
• an innovative approach to rental housing created by Renting Partnerships which promotes community  and builds wealth ; residents participate in managing their housing, and build financial credits as well as relationships as they meet operating goals.  The housing is kept permanently affordable through a social investment vehicle that enables investment in communities without leading to gentrification.
• The Financial Cooperative anchored by the CDFI, the Working World, that leverages their financial infrastructure to allow local groups to develop local loan funds and wrap-around technical support to co-ops.

Photo by Marakah Mancini.

It was a special two days filled with energy, hope, and new possibilities. During the closing, small groups made concrete commitments to advance the union co-op movement. According to an article in the Nonprofit Quarterly, “This conference marked a watershed of sorts, as the union co-op idea is increasingly seen by both union and co-op activists as a vehicle for community transformation."  

Our Harvest Awarded 2017 LFPP Grant from USDA, Adds new UC Weekly Harvest Box Site

Our Harvest found out that they are recipients of a 2017 Local Food Promotion Program grant from the USDA (application submitted by Green Umbrella; Our Harvest and Ohio Valley Food Connection are subawardees):

"The Green Umbrella Regional Greenspace Alliance will bring together two food hubs in the region to increase producer sales, increase the number of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certified or “Produce Rule” compliant farms and food hubs, and increase the consumption and access to locally-produced agricultural products by institutions and households. Specifically, it is intended to increase farm sales that market through local food hubs to $1.4 million; to provide farm safety planning to over 30 producers and 2 food hubs; and to increase consumption of local agricultural products to over 1,200 household and wholesale clients by the end of the project. To fulfill these outcomes, project staff will develop new institutional market opportunities by developing relationships with new large institutional clients, creating a customized crop plan for each institutional client, managing ongoing ordering and distribution for institutional clients, and measuring the scale and impact of sales. Additionally, effort will be made to improve the market opportunities for partner farms and food hubs by helping producers and the food hubs meet new federal food safety guidelines as well as building warehousing and transportation capacity to manage increased volumes" (source: https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/2017LFPPDescriptionOfFundedProjects.pdf)

Additionally, Our Harvest opened up a new Weekly Harvest Box pick-up on the University of Cincinnati Medical Campus, reached out to their communities and customers about becoming Community-Owners, and spread the work about their programs at several events:

• PEDCO High Performance Building Seminar about local farm-to-work opportunities
• Interact for Health’s Thriving Communities about Harvest Day
• Cincinnati State’s Horticulture Occupations class about careers in urban and sustainable farming
• First Ladies’ Family Health Day event at Allen Temple
• Fall quarterly meeting of the Ohio and West Virginia Statewide Food Hub Network 

... What's up next?

Co-op U

CUCI’s mission is to create a collaborative network of worker-owned businesses that sustain families and build communities. In order to achieve this mission, CUCI has been doing new co-op development and education from its inception, however, never in a scalable format. Over the years, we have spent countless hours mentoring individual co-op entrepreneurs and developing our educational resources. Since 2011, we have had over 500 individuals reach out to us, inquiring how to launch worker cooperatives. Currently, we have 20 groups that are on a waiting list for our assistance in co-op development. We regularly receive visitors from around the country wanting to replicate the model.  We do not have the capacity to work with each of the groups individually yet we know the collective financial impact these co-ops could offer their communities.

In 2015, CUCI completed a strategic planning process that included the creation of an education arm, called the Co-op U, in order to increase CUCI’s impact by more efficiently meeting the demand for union co-op education. By creating an education arm, groups will be able to attend a 12-week course 2-3 times per year.  We will help more potential co-ops go through the feasibility, business planning, and accessing capital phases, getting more worker-owned businesses off the ground in Cincinnati. Additionally, Co-op U will help us better meet the demand from around the country by providing programming such as multi-day boot-camps, seminars, retreats etc. to teach groups from other cities the best practices regarding cooperative business development.

Excitingly, the Greater Cincinnati Foundation has provided significant support to bring Isabel Uribe, a renowned Mondragon cooperative development specialist, to Cincinnati to help us launch CUCI’s Co-op U training institute that will address this backlog in Q1 of 2018.

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Conversions

We are also looking to scale up our ability to save family sustaining jobs by converting existing businesses to co-ops. Did you know that in the manufacturing sector alone there are more than 700 companies in Cincinnati with owners ready to retire? Historically 80% of these companies will close their doors. Think of these jobs, these families. Our co-op model can save these jobs, and sustain these families by helping the owners sell the companies to the employees. We’re working with 2 of these companies right now.

Read more about this work at: https://www.cincinnatiunioncoop.org/succession-planning/

What we've done...

Here are some of the highlights CUCI has accomplished in the past 6 years: