Supporters of workers cooperatives flesh out plans for Reading | Reading Eagle

By Don Spatz

Reading,PA —  Reading could get its first workers cooperative next year in its push to foster an alternative business model that competes with Wall Street.
The co-op would be an employee-owned firm composed mostly of apprentices being trained in building demolition, deconstruction (razing all or some of a building, but reusing its parts) and weatherization, said Lawrence P. Murin, special assistant to Mayor Vaughn D. Spencer.

The city would not create any cooperatives on its own, but would foster them as part of its economic development plan, Murin told an audience of 30 people last week at Alvernia University.

He said the city gives several million dollars a year to private firms and nonprofits.

“We believe we have the ability to direct some of that to co-ops,” he said.

The meeting was called to update the community on what co-op progress has been made; rescreen the video “Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work,” shown at the panel’s February meeting; and tout the virtues of building local cooperatives.

“Why Reading? The answer is that we have a mayor and an administration that recognizes the old ways don’t work,” Murin said.
He said the city’s industrial and tax base has dwindled for 40 years because the city has used tens of millions of dollars to lure businesses here, but they’re gone as soon as the incentives are gone.

That’s because under the Wall Street model, capital is sovereign and labor is a commodity, totally opposite the co-op model where job creation comes first and profits second, said Michael A. Peck, the moderator and the North American delegate for the Mondragon Cooperative based in Spain.
“Nobody here is saying capitalism is wrong,” Peck said. “We’re saying that predatory capitalism is wrong, and virtuous capitalism is good.”

Read the full article via The Reading Eagle.