It’s National Co-op Week, an annual celebration aiming to raise public awareness of Canadian co-operatives. And for a group of worker co-operatives in Winnipeg’s downtown, it could be the week to learn if they’ll succeed in their bid to buy the building they occupy. 

The 91 Albert St. Autonomous Zone (A-Zone) has been around since 1995. It formed to unite organizations working for diverse aspects of social justice, including worker co-ops, feminist, indigenous, human rights and anarchist organizations.

Being housed under one roof allows the organizations to support each other in a variety of ways, including offering subsidized rents to fledgling groups. 

Recently, four A-Zone worker co-ops have been negotiating with the building’s current owner, Paul Burrows, and with Assiniboine Credit Union (ACU) and an undisclosed third party, to come up with a sustainable plan to take on ownership of their building.

The group stepped up its fundraising efforts in recent months to collect enough cash to have a realistic hope of making a deal. 

Tyler Pearce is a community member of A-Zone, and former volunteer at Junto, a collectively run, volunteer-based lending library at 91 Albert. They offer free access to “academic and radical” books that may be hard to find in public libraries, Pearce said.

Topics include feminism, anarchism, food politics, DIY, queer writings, fiction, indigenous struggles and more.

“There are all these small projects going on in the building, as well as worker co-ops, and they all kind of work together, in part because they’re just in the same space, and it’s unique,” Pearce said.

She said in other cities, these kinds of organizations are more isolated and don’t own their own space.

“So they’re at the whim of their landlord, at the whim of the changing urban landscape,” she said. “Owning the building is a way of thinking long-term how we can stay in the Exchange District.”

Mark Jenkins is with ParIT, an employee-managed co-op providing financial accounting information technology. All of their software is free and open-source, so it can be shared and modified without restriction.

ParIT is one of four worker co-ops currently committed to the 91 Albert tenant co-op, along with Mondragon, Natural Cycle Courier, and the Rudolph Rocker Cultural Centre. Five of the building’s other tenants will consider joining once they see the final deal, Jenkins said.

A-Zone met their fundraising goal, collecting a total of $57,000, and bringing their net worth to $68,000, Jenkins said.

In addition to community fundraising, A-Zone tenants have already been paying the higher rents that will be needed to cover the mortgage, he said.

The money raised will cover closing costs for the purchase, and demonstrate to the ACU that they are ready to take on operating and maintenance costs for the building.

Jenkins expected to find out this week if a deal can be reached.

Pearce is optimistic that the deal will go ahead, because the seller, Burrows, was a founding member of both Mondragon and A-Zone, and thinks he wants to see the project succeed.

Monica Adeler teaches co-operative management in the University of Winnipeg’s business administration program. Her course shows how co-op management differs from traditional management, and brings in local co-op managers as guest speakers.

She says local interest in co-ops has increased in recent years, in part because of the efforts of the Manitoba Cooperative Association (MCA) and SEED Winnipeg.

Vera Goussaert, executive director of the MCA, said the theme for this year’s co-op week is “Co-op Enterprises Build a Better World,” which will also be the theme for the United Nations International Year of Co-operatives in 2012.

Published in Volume 66, Number 8 of The Uniter (October 19, 2011)