Whatever Happened to...?
Cath M in Bentley (A Commune in the North/Radical Routes/Platform6)
Public
Seen by 118
A place for nostalgia, clarification and stories of co-ops that once were... or perhaps still are.
Alex Bird Mon 21 Dec 2020 10:55AM
I thought they always were an 'employee ownership' rather than true co-op, but Co-ops UK's approach is to allow the employee ownership model to be seen as a co-op, just as it does with John Lewis, as a strategic tactic to get the public and media to take our sector more seriously.
Alex Bird Mon 21 Dec 2020 10:58AM
Guy Turnbull will have the full story https://uk.linkedin.com/in/guy-turnbull-022b21b
Alex Bird Mon 21 Dec 2020 10:58AM
John Atherton Tue 22 Dec 2020 9:48AM
Yeah this was more of a rebrand than anything else, they were always more of any employed owned business with a trust model, but with roots in the worker co-ops movement. Their precursor business was one of the first to borrow money from ICOF and their old MD (Guy) was heavily involved. But I think in the last 10 years their Management have been much more closely aligned to EOA than Co-operatives UK, they are still members and we still do stuff with them from time to time, but they are not really engaged in the wider co-op movement, from my understanding.
Cath M in Bentley (A Commune in the North/Radical Routes/Platform6) · Sun 20 Dec 2020 4:12PM
Does anyone know why Care and Share Associates, which were the biggest workers co-op in the UK, became BeCaring, an employee-owned social enterprise, in 2019? They have 850ish workers. Co-op News doesn't seem to have covered the story, or at least a search on their site doesn't come up with anything. Are they still members of Co-ops UK? Are Sunderland Home Care Associates affected by the same forces, might they be heading in the same direction?