When Workers Own Companies, the Economy Is More Resilient @TED #ted #shorts

Where are we going to get the wealth

to build the types of business that we want.

And the answer is going to have to be cooperative economics.

There's a lot of different versions of cooperativism.

What I'm talking about today is worker ownership.

Right now, today,

in South Bronx,

is the country's largest worker-owned company.

And it was founded by black and Latinx home care workers

who are now able to pay themselves living wages,

they have full-time hours, they have benefits and a pension,

through their membership as a unit of SEIU.

And these women owners now receive a dividend back

on their ownership every year that the company has been profitable,

which has been most years.

They don't have any big investors.

They don't have fat-cat CEOs or absentee owners

taking the profit out of the company.

They each pay in about 1,000 dollars over time

in order to gain ownership,

and now they own their job.

I'm so inspired by what they're doing,

because it really represents an alternative

to the type of economy we have now,

which exploits all of us.