The Industrial Commons: Work for the Common Good
By Jonathon Freeman, Ambitio US Program Officer, with contributions from The Industrial Commons
The Industrial Commons is a 501(c)(3) founded in 2015 with a mission to rebuild a diverse working class based on locally rooted wealth. They accomplish their mission by founding and scaling employee-owned social enterprises, creating industry networks, and delivering a suite of workforce development and youth engagement programs.
The Industrial Commons has developed a Rural Wealth Blueprint resulting in the creation of 77 direct quality jobs, 271 businesses supported, and $44 million in total revenue and assets generated for their community in, Western North Carolina. As a cooperative ecosystem development organization, The Industrial Commons takes a holistic and systemic approach to their community’s economic development. They create quality jobs that give workers voice, agency, and dignity, teach job skills for worker success, and organize industrial sectors to bring companies together, thus transforming their rural community through equity, environmental stewardship, and economic opportunity.
TIC’s work has led to a worker-led economic revival that is both local and national. They are now redeveloping a 28-acre site in Morganton to create an Innovation Campus, a hub for textile and furniture manufacturing. The campus will offer shared services and spaces for small and midsize firms. Collectively, they are building upon the region-wide cooperative models in Mondragon, Spain, and Emilia-Romagna, Italy.
They have also created opportunities for people to learn about Morganton’s diverse and complicated history, such as the 1929 Loray Mill Strike, the 1990s poultry workers’ organizing, and the 2000s influx of Latino migrants.
We at Ambitio US are proud to support and learn from The Industrial Commons in their efforts to create a fair and diverse working class that builds local wealth. They have a visionary goal of promoting social enterprises and industrial cooperatives that their employees own, demonstrating that cooperative models can be effective, practical, and scalable ways for communities to strengthen their local economies. If you are interested in more information about The Industrial Commons, be sure to take a look at their wonderful website or better yet, sign up for one of their open house ecosystem tours taking place every other month, with the next one just around the corner on April 10.
This article was originally published on Medium. Read it on Medium →
