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.

This chapter first scans the historical context of the “labor question” in the United States and the radically diverse interpretations and experimentation with “industrial democracy,” widely seen as the answer.Second, it outlines how industrial democracy ultimately came to have meaning through collective bargaining, with the enactment of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, and how optimism about the law’s promise and achievements turned into disenchantment. Third, the essay sketches the glimmerings of industrial democracy’s revival, with the labor question’s reemergence.Creative experimentation is underway, older notions are being reimagined, collective action is on the rise, and the threat posed by worker’s diminished bargaining power is a matter of public debate.