A Technology Freelancer's Guide to Starting a Worker Cooperative [pdf]

I think that there is real value in thinking more broadly about the cooperative model when building any new business! As a way to align incentives it makes a lot of sense.<p>I am part of a growing tech worker cooperative called Tribe Works (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tribeworks.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tribeworks.io</a>). We are a platform cooperative that helps tech workers connect with businesses looking for contractors or direct hires. We were set up as an alternative to &quot;gig platforms&quot; (upwork, etc) and staffing firms, and quickly realized that the real value in our model was in longer engagements. We usually target roles that last at least 3 months so that our members can access healthcare through the cooperative if they are working full time and allow workers to buy in. The platform ties together the functionality of an applicant tracking software (ie jobvite.com) and professional employer organization (ie justwork.com) and we add recruitment process outsourcing as a service on top. We have only just launched our beta platform right now but hoping to fully launch when we reach 301 members (we are about 1&#x2F;4 of the way there). We have community calls every other week as well for people interested in learning about the co-op.<p>We are also part of a larger cooperative called the Staffing Cooperative (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.staffing.coop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.staffing.coop</a>) which is a holding company owned by every worker. Here is a webinar we were recently on describing the holding company structure: (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;transformfinance.org&#x2F;investor-resources" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;transformfinance.org&#x2F;investor-resources</a>)

There is another relatively recent tech movement -- Platform Cooperatives. In the worker cooperative case, employees are the members of the cooperative. For platform cooperatives, it&#x27;s the users that are the members. Examples of platform cooperatives include <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stocksy.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stocksy.com&#x2F;</a>, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.savvy.coop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.savvy.coop&#x2F;</a>, among others. For more details about Platform Cooperatives, see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;platform.coop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;platform.coop&#x2F;</a>, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ioo.coop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ioo.coop&#x2F;</a> and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;start.coop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;start.coop&#x2F;</a>

Hey. I haven&#x27;t been able to read past the headline yet (very busy day today) but I just wanted to say I work for tech workers co-op in the UK. We focus on Open Data work.<p>Happy to chat later (will read later to), but I would also point people towards <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coops.tech&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coops.tech&#x2F;</a> which lists many such co-ops. You can find their chat board at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.coops.tech&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.coops.tech&#x2F;</a> Also, in the U.K. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uk.coop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uk.coop&#x2F;</a> is a great resource.<p>Can I suggest anyone asking legal questions states where they are? While the principals are the same, legal options will differ massively between countries.

I think the upside is mostly to do with doing projects for clients who aren&#x27;t themselves in the tech industry and who don&#x27;t really care how their projects are implemented and who implements them.<p>When doing tech work for tech businesses you will often find that they already operate their own network of tech contractors and membership in such a network basically implies being a lone-wolf freelancer character for a number of reasons (a) They work with people not headcounts. They will do extensive individual vetting to decide who they work with, and after deciding they want to work with you won&#x27;t allow you to switch yourself out for another personnel resource. (b) They will want to keep each individual contractor&#x27;s bargaining power in check, so even when they need more than one headcount, they might think twice about picking up a headcount greater than one from something that&#x27;s already self-organizing as a business entity of some kind.<p>Also, I feel quite strongly that if, in practice, there is a client relationship that you have 100% ownership of, then you want to make sure that this is also the case on paper, rather than having an indirection where you are 1% of some coop and 1% of that coop&#x27;s revenue happens to be your client. -- And much of the upside described here can also be realized through a consortium of sole traderships (or otherwise 1-person businesses), rather than through a coop.

I think cooperatives are very important. Open source development is a kind of cooperative effort ... without the formality.<p>Having said that, human organization issues are often the downfall of cooperatives for highly compensated and highly skilled labor.<p>One of the reasons programmer cooperatives don&#x27;t last more than 2-4 years is because the best ones bring in the best clients, and the other programmers start to free ride. Apart from this, the best programmers also often get poached by other organizations ... either through employment or through direct contracts.<p>In practice, I think the biggest value cooperatives bring in a country like the US is that they can provide healthcare and retirement plans through scale, which would not be available to an independent freelancer.<p>The explosion of online communities and meetups in the last decade has made the other benefits of cooperatives (like camaraderie, reputation management, client sourcing, and knowledge sharing) less valuable.

What if we replaced reliance on giant corporations with an actually efficient free market in software, content and services?<p>GitHub&#x2F;npm (centralized) has been the closest so far for software, and the Web (decentralized) has been the closest for content. But what if we could go further and implement XANADU 2020?<p>We would at minimum need a globally distributed utility token to allow value transfers without needing to mess around with merchant accounts and international payments.<p>Here is a progressively more detailed architecture of what something like that would look on a large scale:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com&#x2F;whitepaper&#x2F;whitepaper.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com&#x2F;whitepaper&#x2F;whitepaper.html</a><p>If you read it, please share your thoughts and feedback - whether you like some things or would want improvements in other things. Especially interested in whether there is something we missed and the system absolutely won’t work (eg why would companies pay for open source software if they can just clone it and even distribute their fork and have their fork compete with it.)<p>I am a big fan of putting my money where my mouth is, so we are actually building this ecosystem.

To anyone who has been part of a worker cooperative:<p>Does the amount of money different people make in your cooperative seem fair? How do you handle situations where one person seems to contribute a lot more to the cooperative than others (say they bring in bigger clients, or they&#x27;re more skilled)?

Holy shit this is awesome, thanks so much. I&#x27;m starting a creator collective&#x2F;technology studio and this is a great resource.

I didn’t find anything about health insurance in this doc - is it possible to get a group plan for such a cooperative? Individual insurance plans are usually 20-30% more expensive...

The document is 10 years old. Many things have changed. I&#x27;m not a US citizen (apparently the target group), but somehow I doubt that such an old text would adequately reflect this.

If anybody has already done the ground work and is looking for people to join an existing worker cooperative, please post here as well!<p>Or if you know of any resources that help you find others with whom you might start a co-op, that would be great. (If that doesn&#x27;t exist, I might be able to help. It shouldn&#x27;t be too difficult to spin up an interest form that might help people connect.)

I was involved, briefly, in the worker cooperative scene in the late 90s in the UK. One was an ISP but the rest I interacted with were non-tech.<p>I loved the idea but the practice always seemed so far from the ideal. What I saw were one or two people in a cooperative make things happen (whether through initial founding, finding business, doing the boring stuff that make a business actually happen, or simply doing customer work) and then others would put in a similar amount of effort to a normal job but get an equal share in the rewards as the one or two people driving the whole thing.<p>I&#x27;m not saying that typical businesses today are ideal or fare. However, worker cooperatives seemed no less fair than other forms of business; it&#x27;s just that they were unfair in different ways.<p>I&#x27;m still a fan of the co-op model but it brings with it its own set of challenges.

Great to see this posted here! I read this and several books about cooperatives last year with the intention of growing my small software consulting business into a cooperative. If anyone is interested in this topic and wants further reading, let me know!

What is the long term growth strategy for worker cooperatives? How do you scale them?

Excellent. I&#x27;ve been longing to start a small&#x2F;lean cooperative for years. Looks like a solid resource. Now if I could just find some partners...

cooperatives seem great.<p>relatedly:<p>not sure why we don&#x27;t create &#x27;partner firms&#x27; a-la attorneys - the model seems a good fit.

Finally, there is talk of economic models in software development!<p>Valve software is an example of a software developer’s “cooperative” though you’d probably call it anarcho-syndicalist, instead of socialist. They wrote a great blog about it:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.valvesoftware.com&#x2F;economics&#x2F;why-valve-or-what-do-we-need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-todays-corporate-world&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.valvesoftware.com&#x2F;economics&#x2F;why-valve-or-what-d...</a><p>The Internet has disrupted many economic models and affected society and even democracy (journalism, social networks). Automation reduces the demand for human labor. We have to have conversations about better solutions.<p>At my own startup, we constantly explore the intersection of technology, sociology and economics. Years ago, we explored proper compensation models using the socialist (not communist) principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their <i>contribution</i>”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;11&#x2F;17&#x2F;properly-valuing-contributions&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;11&#x2F;17&#x2F;properly-valuing-contributi...</a><p>And now, we are working on a utility token to power a decentralized “free market” of web software that emphasizes collaboration and re-use over competition and duplication. Would be happy to get feedback on the actual implementation and economics, as we will be going live with it soon. Here is the link:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com&#x2F;whitepaper&#x2F;whitepaper.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qbix.com&#x2F;whitepaper&#x2F;whitepaper.html</a><p><i>PS: to the downvoters: The above is open to feedback and revision. Instead of simply downvoting, why not click the link and read it, and offer a scathing critique? Again, we are trying to make sure this leads to an efficient and fair market in software development, and if we missed something, we would appreciate any feedback that involves words :)</i>

Important things that are actually accomplishable.

This is an interesting idea. I wonder how this will coexist with UBI. Someone tweet this to Andrew Yang!

Sounds like a recipe for disaster.