For Retiring Business Owners of Color, an Exit Strategy That Saves Jobs and Builds Wealth | Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations rutgers.edu - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from rutgers.edu Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On a recent fall morning, despite the chill in the air, workers at Taharka Brothers Ice Cream were packing a freezer truck and a van with pints of honey graham, peanut butter cup and pistachio. In the office, business metrics on retail performance, catering and home delivery moved across a screen on the wall.
If you work there for at least 15 months and earn top marks on your most recent performance review, you can become a part-owner of Taharka Brothers, and have not just a say but also a final vote on major business decisions and policies like those performance reviews. It’s one of the most important parts about being a worker-owned cooperative.
Out of 25 current employees at Taharka Brothers, six recently became the first worker-owners of the co-op, and another five are close to joining them.
“How it works is very important to me,” says Detric McCoy, one of those first six. “I love bringing ideas to the team. Some guys don’t always like every idea but having that debate and coming together to make decisions, compared to a typical business where everyone’s in a position and there’s no voting or anything there’s still structure to it, you have your board members, but everyone has the chance to at least spread their voice compared to traditional work spaces.”
Baltimore s Taharka Brothers latest business to convert to worker-owned cooperative baltimoresun.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from baltimoresun.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.