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Martha’s Vineyard’s integrated design/build company

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The Company We Keep

Dear Reader,
This blog is now an archive. John Abrams (Founder of South Mountain, author of this blog, and a book of the same name) retired on December 31, 2022. All posts published up until this date are preserved below.

For updates on John's next chapter, visit abramsangell.com.

For updates on South Mountain's second act, subscribe to our newsletter using the form below.

Worker Cooperatives

Crafting A Business Owned By Its Workers

May 27, 2011 by John Abrams 3 Comments

During the past year I have been in correspondence and conversation with a number of people who are transitioning their companies to employee ownership, starting worker co-ops, or thinking in new ways about worker ownership and cooperative business.

Among them:

  • Rick Dubrow and Cindy Landreth at A-1 Builders in Bellingham, WA, who are working on an employee buyout of the business they bought in 1976 from the original owner who started it in 1955
  • Jamie Odegaard who, with four friends, is starting a worker owned building company in Western Massachusetts
  • James Kosacz, the president of Autoworks in Kittery, ME, who is considering selling to his employees
  • Mark Skimson, in Terrace, BC, who is leading an effort to make a co-op purchase of a small ski area called Shames Mountain (following the path blazed by Mad River Glen in Vermont)
  •  Jeffrey Hollender and Gregor Barnum, formerly of Seventh Generation in Vermont (Jeffrey was the founder of 7th Gen) who are developing a major new—and very exciting—co-operative enterprise.

And the list goes on.

Read More about Crafting A Business Owned By Its Workers

Filed Under: Employee Ownership, Small Business, South Mountain Company Tagged With: Employee ownership, Greensaw Design/Build, Gregor Barnum, Jeffrey Hollender, Seventh Generation, Worker Cooperatives

Co-ops in the Rise

December 7, 2009 by John Abrams Leave a Comment

I’m still excited about the budding alliance between the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Mondragon Cooperatives – and the general awakening consciousness about worker co-operatives and co-operative business in general that I wrote about last month.

And there’s more.

Read More about Co-ops in the Rise

Filed Under: Climate Change, Collaboration, Economic Crisis, Employee Ownership, Environment, South Mountain Company, Workplace Democracy Tagged With: Bernie Sanders, Climate change, Copenhagen, Equal Exchange, Gamesa, Green Jobs Coalition, Mondragon, South Mountain Company, United Steelworkers, Vermont Employee Ownership Center, Worker Cooperatives, Workplace Democracy

An Historic Alliance

November 10, 2009 by John Abrams 7 Comments

My friend David Smathers of the TeamWorks Cooperative Network in California writes:

“The Mondragon cooperatives and the United Steelworkers have announced an historic partnership through which they will buy or start manufacturing businesses in the U.S. and Canada that will combine Mondragon’s democratic structure of ownership and governance with collective bargaining.

It will take many years to implement.  But particularly in the face of the economic crisis that has exposed Wall Street’s failure to provide responsible stewardship of the economy, this is a very heartening development.  Together, these two institutions have the resources, technical expertise, and vision to demonstrate to the public that it is possible to structure and run large corporations in entirely different ways than what we have become accustomed to.”

Read More about An Historic Alliance

Filed Under: Economic Crisis, Employee Ownership, Workplace Democracy Tagged With: Alvarado Street Bakery, Capitalism: A Love Story, Employee ownership, Isthmus Engineering, Mondragon, South Mountain Company, TeamWorks, U.S. Steelworkers, Worker Cooperatives, Workplace Democracy

Are We Different Enough??

August 12, 2009 by John Abrams 4 Comments

At the recent conference of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center (VEOC) in Burlington, VEOC board president Paul Millman asked an important question to the attendees, who represented some of the many remarkably progressive companies in the Green Mountain State. “Are we different enough?” he wondered.

Good question.  I wonder about that often when I think about South Mountain.  Are we promoting a system that would, if widespread, create fundamental change in our broken economic system?  Or are we just avoiding one avalanche chute by traversing to another with a slightly more gradual incline?

Hard to say.

I

Read More about Are We Different Enough??

Filed Under: South Mountain Company Tagged With: Climate change, Deep Energy, Economic Crisis, Employee ownership, Martha's Vineyard, peak oil, South Mountain Company, Worker Cooperatives, Workplace Democracy

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