Project Manager Freelance Cooperative Initiative, Full Time

Posted by U. S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives on December 17, 2019

The USFWC is the national grassroots membership organization for worker cooperatives and other democratic workplaces. Our mission is to build a thriving cooperative movement of stable, empowering jobs through worker-ownership. Representing more than 250 member workplaces and 7,000 workers across the country, we advance worker-owned, -managed, and -governed workplaces through cooperative education, advocacy and development.

As a membership and advocacy organization, we connect worker cooperative members to business benefits, to each other, and to larger cooperative, racial equity, and economic justice movements. We organize through local cooperative networks while building power with national and international partners to advance this agenda for economic justice rooted in community-based, shared ownership.

Position Overview:

The USFWC has secured resources to hire a Project Manager to champion a new initiative–– the creation of a bold national worker-owned freelancer cooperative modeled on SmartEU. SmartEU is a co-op for Freelancers based in Belgium where they have 80,000 members. Their platform co-op takes the hassle out of freelancing by handling the administrative burden for Freelancers, while turning Freelancers into employees and worker-owners of their platform. Their structure provides debt collection, insurance, and a guaranteed contract payment fund.

The goal of our initiative is similarly to support and organize artists and gig workers for better worker protections (insurance, healthcare, fair and timely payment etc), legal protections, and increased collective bargaining power, in part through the power of a cooperatively owned platform providing similar services to SmartEU.

As a project leader, this position will take over research coordination and oversee the development and management of the initiative overall. The position will be responsible for coordinating research, platform development, legal findings and field testing a pilot project in partnership with various stakeholders. It involves a balance of face-to-face organizing with freelancers and creatives and remote, national organizing with cooperatives and legal and nonprofit stakeholders.

While the work responsibilities and focus of this position will shift as the initiative developers, this is not a temporary position. The Project Manager joins the USFWC team as a permanent full time hire, dedicated to the launch and coordination of this Freelance Co-op.

Learn more and apply: https://usworker.coop/job/project-manager-freelance-cooperative-initiative/