Worker cooperatives – enterprises owned and operated by their employees – offer the potential for workplace socioeconomic empowerment. Historically they have struggled to capture a significant share of employment in the US and to be fully inclusive of communities confronting the greatest social and economic marginalization. Since the Great Recession, however, worker cooperatives have shown strong growth, with increasing representation from BIPOC, working-class, and immigrant communities. This chapter compares two home care worker cooperatives to discuss the benefits that worker cooperatives bring and some of the challenges they face. One, Golden Steps, operates at the small scale typical of most of the newer worker cooperatives, while the other, Cooperative Home Care Associates, is currently the largest worker cooperative in the US. Focusing on the financial, social, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and labor dimensions of worker cooperatives, we consider the important role of worker ownership and control within broader discussions of individual and community empowerment.

In academic writing from Green perspectives, work on the economy is perhaps the most well developed. This is understandable given that the economy constitutes the metabolism between human society and the wider ecosystem of which it is a part in terms of materials, resources, energy and waste. This chapter explores the critiques that Greens provide of the contemporary economy before considering alternative visions of a Green economy, as well as thinking about how to get from one to the other. Hence, I first outline Green critiques of today’s global economy, in particular its ecological unsustainability and commitment to infinite growth on a finite planet. We then look at what a Green economy might look like and how this departs markedly from ideas which invoke the same label propagated by institutions like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and World Bank. Finally, we explore the range of strategies Greens employ and propose to build a green economy.