Helen Rosenthal, New York City Councilmember

VERNON OAKES: Good morning, everybody. This is Vernon Oakes. Welcome. We have some rain this morning. But it’s great. It’s a great, great, great day. And we have Miss Helen Rosenthal, who is a city councilperson from New York. Good morning, Miss Rosenthal.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Hi, how are you?

VERNON OAKES: Great. How are you doing?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Very good. Thank you. I’m excited to be on the show.

VERNON OAKES: Thank you. I’m so pleased that you took time out of your busy schedule to come and talk to us. And I see that you were born in October, and so was I. You’re getting ready to have a birthday.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Really. I am.

VERNON OAKES: I just had mine.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Happy birthday.

VERNON OAKES: Thank you. How did you get to be a city council person?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Oh, wow, we’re going to go way back.

VERNON OAKES: What was that, what’s that route like? How did that happen?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Well, one thing I would say, and I say this because good people who enjoy public policy and think it’s important, especially at a time like now, should realize that there are many different paths to becoming an elected official. Everyone has their own path. And the important thing is that they embrace their own path and make it work for them. So, for me, I have never been a part of the political system. You know, my first job coming out of graduate school in New York City was with the city overseeing the city’s health care budget.

So very much an administrative, a financial and public policy job, and then became very active in my community, joined my local community board, raised my children for the next sort of 20 years after seven years with the city, and then decided that I could use the platform of an elected position to advance the policies that I think are very important, one of which is raising the boat for everyone, and making sure everyone’s income goes up, and families are in a better situation to thrive.

VERNON OAKES: Wonderful, wonderful. I had heard a definition of politicians are a group of people to come together to solve community problems.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That is very generous, I would like to take that definition.

VERNON OAKES: I would too. I would too. I would too. Too often, politicians, too many politicians come into politics and see how they can benefit themselves, or their family members, and not solve community problems, necessarily. But I get it. So, you sound like you’re one of those people that got into politics to solve problems, and put forth the policies that you think might solve those problems. Is that right?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: It’s been, like, incredibly exciting to be able to use this platform. I think I went in thinking, okay, I have a mastery of the budget. So I’ll be able to make sure that we’re funding the programs that we care about, and we’re not wasting money in other areas, or there’s no fraud and abuse. And certainly, I’ve been able to achieve that. But as a legislator, being able to identify problems and legislate solutions is incredibly exciting, and takes us so much farther than simply talking about, you know, having it be an academic experience, talking about public policy.

Or, you know, being in an economics class, and sort of thinking, oh, what if we implement these things, that should be good. Now I’m actually doing those things, or legislating them. And that’s very exciting.

VERNON OAKES: Fantastic. I mean, so it sounds like you rather walk the talk instead of just talking the talk.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: I like to think so.

VERNON OAKES: Okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: I was at a block association meeting last night with about 30 people in someone’s living room. And at the end, they say, we’d like to give you a raise. I said, okay, that’s very good. Never going to happen. But thank you for that sentiment.

VERNON OAKES: They wanted to give you a raise as money, they raise your salary?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: To raise my salary, just on the spot. Of course, that will never happen. But I like to connect with people so that they feel that way, so they feel good about their politicians and know that their local politicians are fighting for them, especially at a time when, I mean, I don’t know who your listeners are. But I feel the federal government is selling the American people short.

VERNON OAKES: Oh, you said that very softly, the federal government is selling people short. You can shout that out. I agree with that, particularly right now.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah.

VERNON OAKES: But I’ve gotten that politicians, all politicians are for the people. Here’s the difference, though, that too often, politicians, particularly looks like Republicans, I’m not sure about this totally. They are for the people that have got them elected, and those are rich people. And Democrats, not all, are for the everyday people.

Those that are looking for the wealthy, like this tax reform is, seems like that’s all geared, what Trump put through was for the wealthy and the rich. And that seems to be what’s going on here, not for the masses of people, those below 50% of the income line, or 75%. Those in poverty, that don’t seem to be happening. So I like, you’re saying that when a tide rises, the boat rises, but everybody in the boat rises, not just the captain of the ship, or the crew.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s right. That’s right. And there’s no question that you’re right, you know, that Trump leading the way, you know, that the Republicans have jumped on his bandwagon. And public policy has gone in the wrong direction where, you know, he’s eliminating regulations that have protected the Earth.

He’s eroding protections for women now with this appointment, very likely that Roe v. Wade will be overturned. His economic policies certainly help himself and his clique of friends. But, you know, certainly are not helping the people who really need it, who government is supposed to serve.

VERNON OAKES: We got it. We got the message. And I’m so glad that you chose to get into politics and run, and create policies that get these things done.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Thank you.

VERNON OAKES: Now, how, you grew up in Detroit?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah.

VERNON OAKES: Motor City.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Mm-hmm. Yeah, best rock’n’roll. Grew up with the best rock and roll stations, and yeah. Great concerts.

VERNON OAKES: Okay. So, I like Motown. I went there in ’69. No, ’66, and I worked at Ford Dearborn.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Oh, wow.

VERNON OAKES: For one, for nine months, I worked on an assembly line. And I realized that I would not do that for the rest of my life. And I went back to college. But I liked it.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: But what a great time to have that job, though, actually.

VERNON OAKES: It was awesome.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah, where did you live?

VERNON OAKES: A couple of places. I lived with some family members. And then I got a place, and I got another place. And I can’t tell you anymore.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: No, but I mean, did you live in Detroit, or Dearborn?

VERNON OAKES: Oh, I lived in Detroit. No, I lived right in Detroit.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Lived in Detroit. Great, wow.

VERNON OAKES: And my brother came up from Kentucky State, too, when I was there and got a job. And he raised his family there. Sort of close to Motown is where he raised his family.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Wow.

VERNON OAKES: And so to go back there now and look at the blighted housing that you would have, you know, given an arm for in the ’60s and ’70s. It’s sad. It’s really, really sad. But you left Detroit.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: I did. But yeah, but when I was there, my mother as an adult got her PhD at Wayne State. And she studied the riots, the ’67 riots. She was a sociologist. And her topic was rumor control during the riots, so if you can imagine back then, ’66, ’67, ’68, that there were no, you know, cell phones. No way to communicate with each other except by phone or by watching the news.

The city set up a rumor control hotline. So if someone, you know, was living on street, one to go classic grocery shopping a couple of blocks away, they could call the rumor control hotline and say, I want to go grocery shopping three blocks away. Is it safe for me to walk there now?

VERNON OAKES: Wow.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: And yeah, and we just, she learned so much from that, and it’s definitely shaped the way I think about things.

VERNON OAKES: So your mom went back, and got her PhD. My mom went back and graduated when I was 13 from Bluefield State College. I grew up in Bluefield, West Virginia.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Oh.

VERNON OAKES: She had six kids and she graduated magna cum laude. But unfortunately as a black woman, she could teach — I didn’t find out until she passed away and I was going through her stuff that her degree was in, she had a business administration degree. I never knew that.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Wow. And she did teach?

VERNON OAKES: She taught, yes, she taught.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah, so did my mom.

VERNON OAKES: Okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Same thing.

VERNON OAKES: Both born in October, moms are teachers, go back to school and become…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Exactly.

VERNON OAKES: Our heroines, our heroes. Yeah.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s right, our sheroes.

VERNON OAKES: So how did you get to know anything about this co-op world? How did you get that knowledge?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Well, interestingly, you know, when I was a little girl, my mom put me in a co-op nursery school. And so, really integrated into my bones is understanding what a worker cooperative does, and how it can be so beneficial to the families or the earners, you know, the family owners who participate and can have a more humane, respectful, and well-paying job experience compared to another setting.

So I grew up with that as a guiding philosophy. And when several organizations in New York City who are developing worker cooperatives came to the New York City Council to talk about what they’ve been doing and what they’ve been able to achieve, it immediately caught my attention. And, you know, I was sold at hello, so to speak.

VERNON OAKES: Hello. Okay, where do I sign?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah, exactly. That was exactly right. yes.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, so you’ve introduced the word worker cooperative. So for people out there that don’t know, I want to give four quick definitions on co-ops, four different types of co-ops. So co-ops can be any business you can think of, can be a cooperative. If it’s owned and controlled by the people that work there, the employees, it’s called a worker cooperative. If the employees own the business, control the business, then it’s a worker cooperative. If the people that uses the products or services own and control the business, it is called a consumer cooperative. The consumers own and control the business.

Credit unions, housing co-ops, but any business, sometimes childcare could be a consumer business where the parents own the co-op. And sometimes it’s a worker cooperative where the employees own it. Same thing for food co-ops, most of the time they are consumer co-ops, but sometimes the employees will own it, or you get a hybrid where it’s owned by the consumers and the employees. The other two, very quickly, Helen, is the producer co-ops, or those co-ops are purchasing co-ops. The purchasing co-ops is what I’m thinking about.

Purchasing co-ops are, a lot of farmers will come together, and they will buy their seed, or fertilizer, or gas, or even equipment together, and they can get normally, buy in volume and get a lower price and better quality because they have people working in that co-op to understand the vendors and the products that they’re buying. Also, artists are beginning to use this purchasing co-op. And they may buy a house where they can live in, or they might buy a studio, or if they’re making things, they may buy a warehouse where they can make it and then a storefront where they can sell.

So those are the three, and then the fourth one is a marketing cooperative. And that’s farmers are the bigger ones. 900 farmers, I think own Cabot cheese — and it’s much more than that now, but Cabot cheese, or Organic Valley, Ocean Spray are examples of farmers come together, and create a business, and they take their product there. And those businesses will add value to them, make butter, cheese, milk, whatever. And then they’ll have more markets they can sell to. So, those are the four types. And you get the same thing that you were talking about, benefits to the members.

And more often it’s not, oh, let me give you this quote, and then I will let you talk about your experience. But a lady by the name of, named Pauline Greene was on air here, and she said that co-ops help people to come out of poverty with dignity. And I liked that quote a lot. And that’s what we can find when you say people raised in a boat, but those are the four types. And you were talking about worker co-ops, but New York is also known for their housing co-ops. Do you work at all with the housing cooperative?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: I have a number of housing cooperatives in my district. But that is not something that this administration is currently promoting. But housing cooperatives were used as a mechanism back in, I think in the ’80s, when there was city-owned property, or perhaps city-owned because a building had gone into default, where the city had, and squatters moved in to a building. And what the city did was sign leases with those squatters, where they gave them ownership of the building, and very generous tax reduction on the property with the understanding that those owners would manage the building together and bring it into a state of good repair, and abide by affordability rules, whereby an apartment could not be sold for more than a certain amount of money. And people below a certain income level were eligible to purchase an apartment.

VERNON OAKES: You know, that sounds kind of like some of the work that’s done here in the district. And there’s a gentleman there, it’s an organization called UHab, U-H-A-B.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

VERNON OAKES: In New York.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: So, UHab had a contract with the city to help these newly-formed housing cooperatives to learn how to keep their buildings in the black, and, you know, be able to live within their budget. And that was part of the model. So yeah.

VERNON OAKES: Yeah, well, they’re still very much in existence.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah.

VERNON OAKES: And there’s a group down here, that city council person, I always give a shout out to Anita Bonds. She just formed an LEC Task Force, that’s a limited equity cooperative task force to look at the problems of limited equity co-ops and then make solutions, or recommendation for solutions. And we’re going to have Mr. Riker come down and speak to us in a week or two on his experiences in New York.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Oh, great.

VERNON OAKES: So we can share this information. So just finding out ways how to get folks out of homelessness, or those people, too often they’re working poor.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Oh, yes, for sure. For sure. There’s a good percentage of people in our homeless shelters in New York, many families that are the working poor. They have, you know, full-time minimum wage jobs and can’t afford to find an apartment here. But back to the council member who’s looking at limited equity ownership for people. You know, I think it’s great that you’re having UHab come and talk about the experience that New York City has had, because I think in retrospect, New York City, the government did these buildings a disservice by not investing in the buildings themselves, not helping those new owners to put those buildings into good repair. And so, the burden of repairing the buildings, you know, just basic infrastructure, boilers, plumbing, you know?

VERNON OAKES: Electricity, roofs. Windows

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Electricity, yeah, exactly. That stuff, there wasn’t enough money given to those new owners, who were, you know, low-income working families who had the new ownership, they didn’t necessarily have the means to do those repairs. So, over time, interestingly, the housing cooperatives in poorer neighborhoods have not really been able to get off the ground.

But the housing cooperatives in neighborhoods that are wealthier, have been able to, I believe, skirt the rules and sell some of their apartments for now a tremendous amount of money. And with that income, they’ve been able to do the repairs to leave their buildings in better shape. So then you’re faced with this conundrum of oh, it’s not 100% affordable, this building anymore. They had to flip some of the apartments which were not part of the original deal.

VERNON OAKES: Right. Well, that’s part of the problem. There’s a couple groups here, Mana and Mi Casa, two nonprofits that help to come in and renovate housing. I’m a property manager. That’s where I learned about co-ops. I was not fortunate enough to live in a co-op as a kid. I didn’t find out about it going through school. There was no education. It was 25 years ago when I started managing housing.

I found this co-op, this motto, and I fell, fallen in love with it. And that’s why we do this show. I also find that a lot of people don’t know about them. So when somebody like you, I found out that knows about them, and it’s in their soul, you know, it’s wonderful. But Andy Riker is his name, I think I misspelled it, from NewHab, who’s coming down. But 15 years, like I’ve got a senior citizen, a 16 unit, senior citizen, we’re in downtown DC right now, a one bedroom is 350 to 450, and a two bedroom is like from 450 to 550.

And they were doing extremely well, except now after 16 years, we’ve got HVACs that are starting to break down, and there’s some roofing issues that are starting to happen, and they haven’t been able to save, because they made it that you could only make $1,000 a month and be over 62 to come in. Well, somebody’s making $1,000, if you got 350 coming out or 450, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for savings to take care of these things.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s right.

VERNON OAKES: So even if the renovation had been done, now, I can even imagine those buildings that there was no renovation done. But even when a renovation is done after, wow, if you don’t have the way of creating this reserve, their savings, they find themselves, as they’re finding out, beginning to run out of money.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: So one of the things that, as you say, there are a number of models of worker cooperatives. One thing that I think is really important is the training component, so that the people who are owners are aware of the importance of reserves. You know, this is why this is so important, and why you have to start managing it, managing for it right from the get-go. And that initial training is so vital.

VERNON OAKES: Can you say that a little bit louder?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Sure. Right, right, right.

VERNON OAKES: So…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: I mean, go ahead.

VERNON OAKES: No, there are seven cooperative principles. And number five, the fifth principle is training information, to get information out, and that becomes critical. Now, have you heard the name Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Mm-mmm. No.

VERNON OAKES: She teaches in New York. I just lost the University where she teaches.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Okay.

VERNON OAKES: And she wrote a book called “Collective Courage,” and I’d encourage you to get that book. It talks about the history of cooperatives in the African-American experience.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yes, yes. That I’m familiar with.

VERNON OAKES: And it’s a huge history.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah, wonderful history.

VERNON OAKES: It’s a huge history.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Wonderful history, and that’s definitely where the worker cooperative movement came from in the United States.

VERNON OAKES: She teaches at John Jay. Okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Oh, great.

VERNON OAKES: And she’s extremely busy, cause she’s always on a circuit, but she just has a great, great, and the reason I brought her up is because she said a lot of co-ops in the African-American experience, it started with training, with education, and she called them, like, education bees or something where people come together and get education. And whenever they got into trouble, when something started happening wrong, they would go back to these education bees, these huddles where they continued to learn, that becomes extremely critical.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s great. That’s great. And then another part of the history is then southern farmers, and the owners of electricity. Then, cooperatives, the worker co-op. That’s not really the right word, but sort of became worker cooperatives also. So, you had those two different models and two different purposes, different tracks, and, you know, for a long time, I think, especially with electricity, it’s what kept a small number of people very wealthy in owning the electricity, but they were established as worker cooperatives.

VERNON OAKES: So you had the rural electric cooperatives who had the electric grid for 75% of the land. And they’re in 80 counties, 80% of the counties in the US.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Wow.

VERNON OAKES: So it’s huge, and it was people coming together. Now, they did get help in the ’30s and ’40s, with some money from the federal government to help start these, but the people that had money in the urban area for electricity, they thought it was not profitable to go out into the rural areas. So, and these electrical co-ops are consumer co-ops, they’re the people that use it, the electricity, those households, those farms, those are the ones that own these rural electric co-ops, and that’s amazing history, just tremendous history and story. In a minute or so, we’re going to have to take our first break, and I would like to come back and talk about the work you’ve done, the laws you’ve passed to create worker co-ops in New York.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Sure.

VERNON OAKES: So, well, he just told me we got two more minutes. Okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Okay.

VERNON OAKES: There’s another group when you talk about farmers, is called the Federation of Southern Co-Ops, and those are in the 13 southern states in the black belt, which are mostly black people, very poor country, Mississippi, Alabama. And they created a co-op in the ’60s coming out of the Civil Rights movement. They’ve been on the air, and they told me stories like the white farmers would not sell them gas because they wanted to vote. If they went out to vote, then they…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Oh my goodness.

VERNON OAKES: So, they created their own worker co-ops, and they bought a truck, and they went across the state line and bought gas and they came back. So there was a problem…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Mm-hmm, and voted.

VERNON OAKES: And the cooperators, by cooperating and working together, sharing resources, and talents, and skills, and knowledge, they could they could overcome this stuff. Yeah.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. Yeah, you’re right, it has a great history.

VERNON OAKES: Well, it’s fantastic talking to you. We’re going to take our first break, and we’ll be right back. Welcome back, everybody. This is Vernon Oakes. The National Cooperative Bank sponsors this program. They’ve been a sponsor for the last five years. Not only have they helped with the money, but they really helped to motivate us when we came to them with an idea. And we were only going to do it for one month, the month of October, which is Cooperative Month. And NCBs mission is to support and be an advocate for America’s cooperatives and their members, especially in low-income communities, by providing innovative financial and related services. And Miss Helen Rosenthal is our guest today. She’s a city councilperson for the city of New York. She was elected in 2013. She represents the Upper West Side, which includes, is that Central Park?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah.

VERNON OAKES: You’re leading voice on issues like gender equality, civic engagement, affordable housing, education, equity, and adequate funding for social service programs. Thank you again for being on.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: My pleasure. It’s, you know, just delightful chatting with someone who is so incredibly knowledgeable about worker cooperatives. I’m learning a lot. So, thank you for having me on.

VERNON OAKES: Oh, great. Great. Great. How many, you said you raised your children? How many children do you have?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Two.

VERNON OAKES: Two? How old?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: 25 and 22.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, any grandchildren yet?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: No, no, no.

VERNON OAKES: Okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: But don’t tell them, but I’m counting the days.

VERNON OAKES: I know that’s right.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: I’m ready when they’re ready.

VERNON OAKES: I know that’s right. Okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: But please, to your audience, don’t tweet that out.

VERNON OAKES: The reason I asked the question is, everything you’re doing today, I assume from talking to you, is geared toward how we leave the world for them. Does that sum up, sum to your work and why you do your work?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: You know, sure. And I love my kids. And I definitely worry for my grandchildren, especially when it comes to climate change. And I think that how the government takes care of those who are struggling the most will have a tremendous impact on how quickly we succumb to climate change. So, it’s true for our country, and it’s true for the world. And to the extent that we are continuing to pollute our Earth, continuing to use fossil fuels, it is to the detriment of our children and our children’s children. So, yes.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, I couldn’t have said it any better. And I really appreciated what you said and how you said it. And I already understand how you got 87% of the vote, 87.3% of the vote in 2017. It’s wonderful. They say that you have gotten more votes than anybody else in New York’s political world. Is that…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Well, yes.

VERNON OAKES: Okay. Be humble. Okay. Yes.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: No, I’m very proud of that. And our office works really hard for our constituents.

VERNON OAKES: Great, and it’s a pleasure having, to talk to you, and I see why you get the votes that you get. So, tell me about how you created laws to help worker cooperatives. I got it’s in your blood since you were a kid. But what kind of laws did you create? And how did what was that process like?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Well, that’s a great question. Because as a legislator, that’s very separate from being on the administrative side where a mayor or an executive really decides how to spend a municipality’s money and where to focus that spending. In New York City, we have a little bit of latitude on the budget side. And we have obviously quite a bit of say, when it comes to legislating. When I first brought up this issue in 2014 with all of the advocates for worker cooperatives, it was not something that was well-known. And it faced many hurdles.

And the lowest-hanging fruit for us were two things, One, to, for me to ask my colleagues if they would support a city-wide effort of funding about a dozen nonprofit organizations that work to set up, to educate, to provide financial support, access to credit, for worker cooperatives. And I have 50 colleagues, we each represent about 170,000 people. So for a city of 8.5 million, there are 51 of us. And I was able to convince them that, for the little bit of money that the city council has to allocate city-wide, we should dedicate some of that funding to this model of lifting people in a way where they could be really in control of their own lives, versus working for companies that don’t look out for them in any way, shape, or form, and instead treat them as expendable.

And my colleagues, I really appreciate them very much, because they were all on board. They voted to choose this initiative as one that would be funded that year. That was for the fiscal year 2015 budget, and we put in $1.2 million to fund, I forget, it was eight or ten nonprofit organizations that had already begun to think about how to help worker cooperatives. And those organizations pledged to start within the first year 20 new worker cooperatives, and try to employ, or have as worker owners, at least 100 people. And they laid out a strategic plan for how they would get there. And we funded them, and proceeded to track their work.

And at the end of that first year, I think they had given information to over 1,000 people, had gotten around 20, it might have been a little less, worker cooperatives off the ground. And those worker cooperatives were able to employ just under 100 people. So they proved they could do what they said they were going to do. At the same time, I wanted to get the administration’s attention on this.

VERNON OAKES: Can I stop you a second? I’m sorry.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Sure.

VERNON OAKES: I think you need a clap, because to get 20 worker co-ops started in a year, or 19, or 18, however many, 15, five is phenomenal.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah.

VERNON OAKES: So that tells me that there was some people already in the pipeline, because they had to get that training, they had to get set up. They had to legal, da, da, da, da, da, da, the marketing and all of that stuff to put together. So, to have a little less than 20 and employing over 100. I think you just need a shout out and say hallelujah. That’s great.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Well, thank you.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, just…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: We put in $1.2 million for these organizations to do that work. And over that time, they also, yes, you’re right, they already had some worker cooperatives in the pipeline. That’s what gave them confidence that they could meet that target of 20. And during that year, they set up new worker cooperatives to be in the pipeline for the following year. And indeed, the next year, my colleagues were convinced, and they agreed to put in, that year, $2.1 million.

VERNON OAKES: Almost doubled, fantastic.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: So, it doubled the investment. And that year, the groups were able to start up 17 new worker cooperatives and have 164 new hires.

VERNON OAKES: 164 workers.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: New hires, yeah.

VERNON OAKES: Okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, by the end of the second year, we had employed 300 people who would have otherwise worked at what would have been dead-end jobs. But now we’re worker owners, we’re part of a team and had a network around them to support them so they could have dignity in their work. And we found over time that the average pay per hour is $25 an hour, and these are people who otherwise would’ve had…

VERNON OAKES: Wait a minute, you need a shout. $25 per hour.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah, otherwise would have had minimum wage jobs, dead-end jobs where there would be, you know, well, let me say it in a positive way, with the worker cooperative as worker owners, there’s more understanding for someone’s family life, if there’s a sick one, and you have to stay home for that. There’s somebody to cover you much more generously than in another workplace.

VERNON OAKES: I wish you could see me. I’m dancing out here in the studio. Because…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah, you know, that’s funny you say that, because when we were able to achieve these things, I too, did the happy dance. So I’m with you. Again, it’s October thing.

VERNON OAKES: $25 an hour, see, I wanted to get that to Bernie Sanders, I really tried to get him on and said you’re talking about $15 minimum wage. And that is trying to get these other employees to raise this, I mean, the McDonalds and Walmarts and all of these to try to get them to raise the minimum wage, and it throws their model way off for their profit.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s right.

VERNON OAKES: And in in a book. Have you seen a book? “Communities Creating Wealth?”

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Oh, no, sounds good.

VERNON OAKES: By Democratic Collective, Collaborative — Democracy Collaborative? You can go on their web page, and you can get it free.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Okay, and that’s, I think they’re based in New York now. I think…

VERNON OAKES: I think University of Maryland is where they were. I’m not sure, there’s a lot of this going on.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Well, and also many of the groups have the word democracy in their title.

VERNON OAKES: Right, yes. I get them confused.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: So, we fund one, a group with that in their title.

VERNON OAKES: So, they talked about a lady named Christina out of New York, who was doing maid service, and she was making seven bucks an hour. And she got into a cooperative, and her salary went to 20 bucks.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Exactly. And she was treated with respect by her co-owners.

VERNON OAKES: What she ended up doing was working less hours, so she could raise her two kids.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s right.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, so she had choice in the matter. She made more money, and now she can choose how she spends her time. And the whole society, the whole world is better off, cause mom is spending more time with her children and raising her children. And she’s making the money she needs, and she feels good about herself, da, da, it goes on and on and on. Why don’t more people know about this word, co-op, thank you for being on, okay?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Well, but that’s the exact point is that the trickle it has into the community is culture-changing, it gives the community an opportunity to thrive. And, you know, we all know that women are the glue to the family. And women are the glue to a community. And to the extent that you can support a woman in that way, she’s still a housekeeper. You know, that’s her job. That’s a great job, she should take pride in that job.

VERNON OAKES: Right.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: But instead of being treated poorly and paid low wages, she can hold her head high, and can spend more time, as you say, with her family, and therefore be a positive contribution to her community.

VERNON OAKES: Absolutely. And the money stays in the community, and the little bit I got out my economics class, it’s more times the money turns in the community, the better the communities are. So, in a co-op, it turns five to eight times. In a regular one, if she was working for somebody else, in likelihood she spent it on her way back home, and it never even got, at best, it turned one time in the community. And it’s gone.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah, that’s a great point.

VERNON OAKES: So everything you can think about, it works for the community, for enhancing the community. Thank you for getting it in your bones. So, how did you get them people to say yes, though? You said there was a lot of…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Well, it’s a funny story. I actually, so I passed, what I passed, what I was able to get the administration to sort of agree to, the sort of middle-management administration to agree to, was a reporting bill. So we could ask the Department of Small Business Services to report on not only the work that these nonprofits were doing, but the work they were doing to support worker cooperatives, and they agreed to that. But the best day was when we had the bill signing.

And you know, the mayor of New York is a busy guy, and I understand he has a lot on his plate. And there are a lot of things to think about. And we pass a lot of bills, and I get it, he didn’t necessarily pay that much attention to this bill coming along. But on the day of the bill signing, we were at the fancy hearing, and, you know, a lot of press around, and, you know, really exciting, but he’s clearly reading his notes sort of for the first time. And I had been, really had to fight hard to get this bill passed, and then for the mayor to sign it. He’s about to sign the law, but he’s reading out loud what the bill does.

And you can see the expression on his face change from one of, you know, his regular face to, oh my God, this is so exciting. We’re doing worker cooperatives. And he looked over at me, and he said, oh, leave it to Rosenthal to do what my heart really believes in, these worker cooperatives.

VERNON OAKES: Oh my goodness.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: This is so great. And, you know, I could not help but shoot a look at some of his staff, like I told you so. This is a good thing. And since then, the mayor has really been on board. What’s interesting now, and it was something I’d like to make sure we cover before the end of the show is that over the last four years, on the city council side, we’ve continued to be supportive and fund these nonprofits, more and more money every year in order to build more, and we’ve had great success in New York.

But this approach is very much a bottom-up approach. It’s individuals who, you know, maybe want to start a catering company, but don’t know how to do it as a worker cooperative model, take classes, learn how to do it, and then start their own worker cooperative. Or, we’ve started and then attracting more worker owners to the cleaning business, the house-cleaning business, and also the caretaker business. So, that’s been very exciting. But in the last year, the mayor has brought in a new deputy mayor, his name is Dr. Phil Thompson.

I don’t know if you know him. But he’s been a wonderful academic, he taught at MIT, but also has been very active in starting worker cooperatives, but from a different perspective. From the perspective of, okay, we have New York City government. And we do things like have many public schools that we need furniture for.

VERNON OAKES: Right.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: And so his notion is, oh, let’s start a worker cooperative factory, where people come in, they come in as worker owners, but they’re already guaranteed business with the city, so that we know they can be successful. So he’s thinking about it from the perspective of furniture for schools, he’s working with the hospital, the local hospital association, and of course, with our, you know, city-funded hospitals to see if we couldn’t build furniture for hospitals, as well.

So he’s bringing this different perspective to the worker cooperative model that’s really very exciting. And a different approach, but similarly, will lift the people who get those jobs and who become worker owners in those, what will be factories, really, again, rather than a minimum-wage or a low-wage, you know, paying job now, they’ll be owners of this business. And then third model — go ahead.

VERNON OAKES: Well, I just wanted, I don’t know if you heard of Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yes. Yes.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, it’s similar.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yes, and he comes from that model.

VERNON OAKES: Oh, good. Okay, go. All right.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yes, yes, I think he worked there. And then the other thing that we’re trying to get off the ground now is someone from one of the nonprofit groups called the ICA Group, working closely with another group, I just want to get their name, called Democracy at Work Institute. They both are, those two organizations are working together to convert businesses that already exist into a worker cooperative model.

VERNON OAKES: Conversions.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: So that current owner, yeah, converts and sells it to the workers. And we’re doing that Hopefully with a school bus company, which would be really exciting.

VERNON OAKES: Wow. Because it says, my birthday, I was 71, so I’m one of the baby boomers.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Okay.

VERNON OAKES: But they said at 50% I think it’s 50, it’s a huge number of businesses, small businesses in the US that are owned by baby boomers, or senior, there’s another term, silver lining or some word that they used for us. And it’s like, too often, these businesses will, if the family members don’t want them, and less and less family members are wanting them. And then if they can’t find a seller, then they close, and then these people lose their jobs, and the business goes away.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s right.

VERNON OAKES: And we’re trying to figure out how to get to these business owners so that they know here’s another option, sell it to your employees.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and we will help your employees run the company successfully.

VERNON OAKES: Absolutely. With the ecosystem, that networking that you’re talking about, the training and everything that needs to go into it. Phenomenal, really great. So three different ways of doing this.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: So, that’s really exciting. Yeah.

VERNON OAKES: So you talked about the one where the ladies now are getting $25 an hour. In other..

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Men and women, yeah.

VERNON OAKES: Men and women, okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Right, I mean, we have, so right now there are, hang on, one, two, three, four, five, six, as I say, over a dozen non-profits that are helping these worker cooperatives get off the ground. And the worker cooperatives themselves are in, you name the business, and they’ve got a worker cooperative that exists in that area.

For example, there’s an OSHA training worker cooperative, that is, so you would train laborers to make sure they have their safety training to go work on a job. That’s a worker cooperative. Another one is a dog-walking worker cooperative. Another one is called Black Women Artists, a couple of daycare businesses, a whole bunch of cleaning services, different types of cleaning services, many of which are environmentally driven. One called Green Fiend Organics.

A printing shop, a production studio, a technology and web building company. So, all sorts of businesses that can get off the ground, and using the worker cooperative model. And I know, although I don’t think we necessarily helped with this, but there is a national company that makes ladies’ lingerie. It’s called Hanky Panky.

VERNON OAKES: Okay.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: And they pride themselves on all manufacturing being done in the United States. And a couple of years ago, they sold to their workers. And it was the exact story that you’re talking about where they were getting older, they were getting ready to retire. It was two women who were partners. And they began working with one of these nonprofit organizations to help their workers take it over. And it’s been incredibly successful.

VERNON OAKES: So are they housed in New York? Or how did you find out about…

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yes. Yes.

VERNON OAKES: Oh.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: They have a manufacturing base in New York City, in Brooklyn, actually.

VERNON OAKES: So what you’ve just done is you’ve just helped the definition I got for worker cooperative, it can be any business you can think of. You just gave examples of business all over the map. Large, small, it doesn’t, national, local, five people, two people walking dogs or cleaning houses.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yeah.

VERNON OAKES: Or making webpages or manufacturing, it just doesn’t make any difference. I’d like to see more government printing shops or businesses become worker owned. Whether it’s Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: What do you mean? Oh.

VERNON OAKES: Freddie, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, it doesn’t — whatever the business is that you’re, that New York City is doing to helping people provide services, what would it look like if those businesses were owned by those people doing the work? And they hold each other accountable. That’s what causes it to be so much better anyway.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Wow. Wow.

VERNON OAKES: And they know what they can do to improve productivity.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Wow.

VERNON OAKES: That’s why you can go from seven bucks to 20 bucks, or seven bucks to 25, is because you share in the profit, and they become better-run.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Yes, yes, absolutely. 100%. I mean, that’s why it’s a win-win-win-win all around the place. Because if the worker owns the business themselves, or a printing, or a government, you know, regulator, whatever the institution is, everyone, I mean, I, you know, do it myself, you care more if your name is on the line.

You know, you care more if you’re, you know, your future income is on the line and could be higher if you worked more strategically, not necessarily harder, but more strategically. And if, by working more strategically, you brought that income home to your family, it’s going to be better-run just by definition.

VERNON OAKES: Yeah, the profits. We only have another minute left, I do want to quickly say that in the tradition of cooperative founders, cooperative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for one another. And that also fits in with everything that you’ve just talked about. But what would you like to leave people with?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: There are a lot of agencies, organizations that want to help worker cooperatives get off the ground. They are a tried and true model. If there are elected officials out there who are willing to invest in them, they will have great success. And if you’re a worker who’s thinking about joining with others to become a worker cooperative, take the leap, it’s worth it.

VERNON OAKES: Take the leap. Well, I look forward to meeting you Miss Rosenthal, we can do a happy dance together.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: That’s right. That’s right. Well, it was such a pleasure chatting with you. It’s so nice to be talking with a kindred spirit.

VERNON OAKES: Do you like what you do?

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Love, love my job. It’s a really great fit. There are term limits in New York City. So, this is my last term. And it makes me motivated to do even more and to, frankly, make sure that the worker cooperative funding becomes institutionalized over the next three years.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, so what I get is your term limit is up for being a city councilperson, but there’s some other role for you. I mean, could be mayor, okay? It could be something else. But it’s term-limited, though. But go for it. I look for, all right, great things. Keep going.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you.

VERNON OAKES: Thank you so very much and everybody out there, please have a wonderful, wonderful week and live cooperatively.

HELEN ROSENTHAL: Nice.

VERNON OAKES: Thank you.