Co-ops
There are various sorts of co-ops: worker co-ops and customer co-ops. Basically it is about who owns a company. All these companies are still subject to market forces but does make for a certain amount of difference.
If you want to convert a company to a employee ownership or set up a workers' co-op then in Scotland the Co-operative Development Agency (previously the Employee Ownership Scotland) may help.
The supermarket co-op in Edinburgh is Scot Mid.
This is not to carpet bag them like building societies, which I am told is not as easy, as with them, but to support and direct community owned enterprises. I got some vouchers to use in the stores, when I joined.
A separate Coop to Scotmid is the The Co-operative Group. It now has food stores in Edinburgh (those which used to be Sommerfield and some KwikSave before that) as well as many other towns throughout Great Britain. You could see them as rivals to each other but they do co-operate and even stock some of same coop group products.
The Phone Coop is now part of them.
as is Cooperative Energy, which is now powered by same platform as Octopus Energy.
The Co-operative Bank is now a co-op in name only. This came about because they merged with the Britannia Building Society which turned out to be carrying some bad commercial debt which almost bankrupted them, so to raise capital some of their bond holders became shareholders i.e. owners so no longer be a customer owned coop. You can find more about this from Save Our Bank. Another ethical bank is the Triodos Bank, that is used by some worker's coops and projects I was involved with, and I might give them a go as there have individual offers of current and savings accounts as well as ISAs. They funded Ecotricity's first Wind Turbine. And, similairly Trust Unity supports Trade Unions, Worker Coops, Community Enterprises and community groups.
For co-ops on the net world wide see the International Cooperative Alliance
Radical Routes is a network of small housing & workers co-ops.
The Virtual Machine that is serving up this web page is hosted by Web Architechs who are a Coop
