workers.coop is a UK-based federation of worker co-ops, founded in 2022. As the network and voice for worker cooperation, we bring co-ops and supporters together as a movement, to advance our shared interests and become stronger.

We collaborate to reach our training, political and commercial goals, and to spread the word about cooperation among new generations and groups of workers.

By taking part in this growing network of cooperators from different places and industries, you will be able to:

  • Act together with workers across the UK, Europe and the global movement
  • Identify new trading, sourcing and development opportunities
  • Co-create learning, development and support programmes
  • Engage new audiences and sectors through youth and worker awareness activities.

If you are a worker-led cooperative, please join as an enterprise member.

If you’d like to contribute as an individual to the federation’s work, you could become eligible for worker membership and help decide how we move forward.

What do we want to achieve?

We lay out what workers.coop is all about in this Manifesto.

We want to organise worker cooperators and supporters, and defend and advance the shared interest of worker co-ops by:

  • being the voice and network for worker cooperation
  • providing access to specialist advice, support and shared services for worker co-ops
  • strengthening worker cooperative culture by mobilising cooperators and supporters through industry and peer networks, co-learning, events and collaborations
  • making the system of worker control and collective ownership accessible and relevant to new groups and generations of workers
  • working through international workers’ and worker co-op organisations, and strengthening international worker solidarity.

How are we structured?

workers.coop is a democratic, member-driven organisation with two types of member: worker co-op enterprises, and individuals who contribute their labour through one of our working groups.

  • The members elect a board, who look after our mission
  • The board delegates areas to working groups who decide their own composition, manage their own budgets and determine their own work.

workers.coop combines the organising model of both a federation and a campaign. We are a membership organisation, but our ambition is bigger than that and we therefore draw on a larger, organised circle of worker cooperators and individual volunteer supporters and organisers.

What is the world we want to see?

One where everyone has access to rewarding, meaningful and sustainable work, and where:

  • workers aren’t exploited
  • wealth is spread fairly
  • we work on a basis of equality and solidarity
  • people have personal and collective control over their working lives
  • the production of goods and services is integrated with democratic community development
  • capital serves workers, not the other way round.

Join us

If you are a worker-led cooperative, please join as an enterprise member.

If you’d like to contribute as an individual to the federation’s work, and become a worker member by joining a working group, contact solidarity@ to find out more about eligibility.

“We set up workers.coop to bring the existing worker co-ops together more powerfully and creatively, but also to spread the word among new generations and sectors of workers who had maybe not come across the ideas and practice of worker cooperation before…”

Siôn Whellens
Calverts