Pathways to Worker Empowerment in the Digital Age: A Comparative Analysis of Unions and Co-operatives
This chapter brings together two models of worker organizing that are often studied or enacted separately. It compares and contrasts unions and worker co-ops to identify features, tensions, and possibilities of each of these organizational forms. Drawing on research on labour in digital media, cultural industries, and the tech sector, the chapter examines why workers engage in collective activity and what motivates their organizational choices, how unions and co-ops enable democracy at work and address racial and gender inequity, and the visions of economic and social transformation that union and co-op members pursue through collective organizing. It emphasizes that workers themselves select union or co-op models based on what form of class-based connection is available to them and best serves their goals—goals co-constituted by the lexicon and tools of each tradition.
Image credit: Isobel Woodiwiss
