Working Toward a Community-Based Economy. In 1977, as businesses fled Boston in search of lower wages, a visionary group saw an alternative: worker cooperatives. Novel to the US, cooperatives needed more awareness and funding. LEAF was founded to bridge this gap, providing financial support for cooperatives and small businesses in underserved communities.
This alternative economic model, co-ops, demanded a fresh approach to finance, structure, and risk evaluation. Worker cooperatives offered employee (rather than investor) control and profit redistribution, addressing job insecurity and wealth inequality head-on.
Inspired by the Mondragon experiment in the Basque Country of Spain, where worker-owned businesses kept jobs local and ownership rested in the hands of the workers, early LEAF leaders, including Steve Dawson, Jim Megson, and Chris Clamp helped to establish and grow the ICA Group, LEAF’s birthplace. They wanted to develop a fund to support the alternative economic model while keeping jobs in Boston amidst a changing economy.
The goal was ambitious: train workers to develop cooperatives, give labor a voice in decisions, and prevent job flight as wages rose. LEAF aimed to stabilize both workers and communities through long-term employment, particularly in Boston’s underserved neighborhoods.
LEAF’s mission resonated with labor leaders nationwide. Jim Megson, an early LEAF director, was invited by the legendary Cesar Chavez to speak at a United Farm Workers organizing workshop in California. There, Chavez acknowledged that worker cooperatives are another way for workers to gain power along with union organizing.
LEAF has continued to support collaborative management and worker ownership. Today LEAF cultivates employee ownership across the US to ensure quality jobs in communities that need them most.
LEAF’s journey started as a novel idea. Would employees as owners work out in the US? Would the companies be well run and last? Could they grow? Today, LEAF is supporting coops and providing technical assistance to underserved businesses, honoring the work of those early leaders who provided the evidence for us to answer enthusiastically “yes!” LEAF is keeping the labor movement alive, funding the workers to have a stake in their workplace, so that whole communities can thrive.