#kooperative

Gegenmodelle zu Uber
►http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/platform-cooperativism-2

Union-Backed Labor Platforms

There are several examples from Denver to Newark where cabbies and unions started to work together, build apps, and organize the taxi sector. And if companies are smart, they’d welcome the unions because studies show that unionized workers have a better retention rate and at least the same productivity. 67 § In Newark, New Jersey, Trans Union Car service started as a non-for-profit taxi service with driv- ers being part of the United Transportation Alli- ance of New Jersey and affiliates of the CWA lo- cal 1039. Drivers benefit from the union’s many protections such as credit union, immigration support healthcare, as well as pension benefits. The company is planning to expand to Atlantic City, Elizabeth (New Jersey), and Hoboken. $

Already in 2007, taxi drivers joined the Communications Workers of America local 7777 and two years later, they managed to kick off Union taxi, the first driver-owned cooperative in Den- ver. They are also getting support from the organization 1worker1vote.org that supports unionized cooperatives by helping them figure out how to negotiate wages, benefit plans, and training programs. The upfront capital costs, often a big challenge for cooperatives, are less of an issue here because drivers already own the equipment.

The California App-Based Drivers Association 68 as a not-for-profit membership organization that unifies drivers from Uber, Lyft, and Side- car and other apps-based companies. CADA’s drivers are not employees and therefore they cannot become full members of the union. However, the Teamsters Local 986 in Califor- nia, can lobby for drive-friendly regulation. They make sure that drivers are working for companies like Lyft and Uber are speaking with a unified voice.

Co-operatives from Within

Another alluring if imaginary proposal is the idea of worker cooperatives forming inside the belly of the sharing economy. Uber drivers could use the technical infrastructure of the company to run their own enterprises. Such hostile takeover by workers could be imaginable as a result of an anti-trust lawsuit compa- rable to the one brought forward against Microsoft after its launch of Internet Explorer.

The Platform as Protocol

Perhaps then, the future work will not be dictated by centralized platforms, even if they are operated by co-ops. Perhaps, it will be peer- to-peer interactions facilitated by protocols that enable peer-to-peer interactions.

In Israel, for example, La’Zooz 69 is a distributed peer-to-peer ride rental network. Where Members Media wanted you to think of them as Netflix for filmmakers and fans, owned by those produsers, La’Zooz could be likened to the Bittorrent of ride sharing. Anyone driving around a city can earn crypto tokens by taking in fellow travelers. In difference to the system previously described, this one is entirely peer-to-peer, there is no central point, no HQ.

#Anti-Uber #Genossenschaft #Kooperative #Gewerkschaft

The Next American Revolution Has Already Begun: An Interview With Gar Alperovitz | 2013-06-08

▻http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16847-the-next-american-revolution-has-already-begun-gar-smith-interviews

What Then Must We Do? (the title is borrowed from Tolstoy) explores a challenging premise: “The coming painful decades may be the prehistory of the next American revolution – and an evolutionary process that transforms the American system, making it both morally meaningful and ecologically sustainable.”

In fact, this is already well underway. Beneath the surface level of politics-as-usual, continuing political stalemate and the exhaustion of existing approaches have begun to open up some very interesting strategic possibilities. These are best understood as neither “reforms” (policies to modify and control, but not transcend, current corporate-dominated institutions) nor “revolution” (the overthrowing of current institutions), but rather a longer-term process of “evolutionary reconstruction”—that is, institutional transformation that unfolds over time.

Like reform, evolutionary reconstruction involves step-by-step nonviolent change. But like revolution, evolutionary reconstruction changes the basic institutions of ownership of the economy, so that the broad public (rather than “the one percent”) increasingly comes to own more and more of the nation’s productive assets. As the old system decays, an evolutionary reconstruction would see the foundations of a new system gradually rising and replacing failing elements of the old.

Though the press doesn’t much cover this, such processes are already observable in many parts of the current American system. Some numbers: There are now ten thousand worker-owned companies of one kind or another in the country. And they are expanding over time, and they’re becoming more democratic rather than less. There are 130 million people who are members of one or another form of cooperative. A quarter of American electricity is produced by either municipal ownership or cooperatives. Twenty-five percent of American electricity is, in other words, “socialized.” There are neighborhood corporations, land trusts, and other municipal and state strategies. One can observe such a dynamic developing in the central neighborhoods of some of the nation’s larger cities, places that have consistently suffered high levels of unemployment and poverty. In such neighborhoods, democratizing development has gone forward, paradoxically, precisely because traditional policies have been politically impossible.

All this has been building in scale and sophistication to the point that growing numbers of people now talk about a “New Economy.” It doesn’t yet compare to the giants of Wall Street and the corporate economy, of course. But it is growing to the point where challenges are also becoming possible. Move Your Money campaigns have seen billions transferred out of Wall Street banks into credit unions and local and community banks. If you add up the credit unions they are the equivalent of one of the largest US banks, knocking Goldman Sachs out of the top five.

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"What Then Must We Do?"

Une conférence par Gar Alperovitz donné le 27 Avril 2013

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX-MocuuOfc

#economie #Wirtschaft #coops #cooperative #Kooperative

#autogestion #co_working

#États_Unis #USA
#democracy #démocratie #Demokratie

#livre #book #Buch