Research Brief: Rural Economic Development: Worker Cooperatives and Employment of People with Disabilities

Attracting large employers to communities with tax relief, infrastructure accommodations, and other short-term sacrifices has a mixed track record for providing jobs for rural residents. That's not the kind of news that rural communities need when so many of these communities have such high unemployment in comparison to more urban areas. Unemployment is even greater for the rural residents who have a severe disability or one that interferes with the ability to work.

According to researchers Chuck Sperry, Joyce Brusin and Tom Seekins, in a report for The Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Rural Rehabilitation Services, to reduce unemployment, there has been a push for community self-help as a way to use the potential of unemployed workers with disabilities. A worker cooperative is one form of employment self-help. In a worker cooperative, workers own and manage their own for-profit business. Its function is to be a stable source of employment for its member-owners. The cooperative requires membership, labor payment, and distribution of surplus funds. More skilled and ambitious employees get a larger annual share of profits for rewards.

This form of association is not new, particularly in the agricultural community. Historically, worker cooperatives do best when those involved have social, political, or economic distress. History also shows that this form of organization can be stable and socially responsible. Worker-members have a vested interest in running a solid company, community welfare, and individual economic gain. Two other types of worker ownership companies are employee stock ownership in which more than 50% of employees own the company or when employees have equal ownership in a company. Ownership in these two examples gives employees a financial stake in the company but not an equal say in daily operations.

Sperry, Brusin, and Seekins cite samples of these worker cooperatives to include bakeries, offset printing companies, electrical contracting, child care, clothing manufacturing, bookstores, and others. People with disabilities who have started their own businesses, not necessarily worker cooperatives, in rural communities have operated companies doing home inspections, desktop publishing, lawn care, glass installation, automotive body repair, welding, commercial fishing, and sales.

For more information contact authors at the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Rural Rehabilitation Services, The University of Montana, 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, MT 59812-7056, (888) 268-2743. This research was supported by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research in the U.S. Department of Education.

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