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The ILO Global Commission on the Future of Work has published a report on how to achieve a decent and sustainable future of work for all. The Commission outlines in the report a vision for a human-centered agenda based on three pillars: people’s capabilities, institutions of work, and decent and sustainable work.

With this issue of Work Together, we want to present you with positive and sometimes heart-warming examples of cooperatives engaged in a noble and innovative battle to preserve pluralism, freedom of the press and independence, whilst assuring a democratic governance of their editorial boards.

As in many other countries, Canada’s print media are in the midst of challenging times. One of the few alternative publishers still operating is Saskatchewan’s Hullabaloo Publishing Workers Co-operative, which prints Regina’s prairie dog and Saskatoon’s Planet S Magazine, two papers that come out every other week.

Médor is a quarterly Belgian and cooperative investigative and news report magazine. It was first published in 2015 and has already received a large number of awards in recognition of the quality of its content and economic and social model. We interviewed one of the founders of Médor, Tiffany Lasserre, to get a better understanding of the advantages of the cooperative model in this highly particular and difficult sector, namely that of the journalistic press.

The first international standard on the statistics of cooperatives was adopted by the 20th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) on 18 October. CICOPA has been strongly involved in the process together with the ICA.

CICOPA was in Teheran in November 2018 for the ICA Asia Pacific Regional Assembly as well as the 10th Co-operative Forum. On that occasion, CICOPA co-organised a development meeting and workshop on industrial and service cooperatives in Asia Pacific region.

In the framework of the project with the Singapore government, CICOPA organized a field research and a seminar during the week of 19-23 November, in Singapore. Hyungsik Eum, CICOPA data analyst, together with two experts from our network, carried out interviews with various local stakeholders from the cooperative movement, social enterprises and governmental bodies.

In Argentina, freedom of expression is more than ever under threat. Abuse on free and plural press are no longer determined by typical authoritarian measures, such as the closure of newspapers and magazines, the presence of soldiers and assault cars in the printing presses, the withdrawal of certain paper issues from the market, and other forms of censorship experienced in the past. In fact, the government of President Mauricio Macri distinguishes the media between friends and enemies; functional and dysfunctional, “liberal” and “militant journalism.”

At a time when communication is being totally revolutionised, Uruguayan media is experiencing a crisis which seems to be getting worse the longer it lasts. This is the context in which two media cooperatives are battling to survive. Although they have a similar background, they have different readerships and discourse. The “La Diaria” and “Brecha” publications co-exist in an increasingly hostile environment.

The landscape of media-based worker cooperatives in Asia Pacific is both varied and unique. But there is still scope and potential for this movement to kick-off, as many of the known examples are from the pre-globalization era. With the abundance of talent more such cooperatives need to be established in various media streams, motivated from successful cases of individuals rallying together to converge their talents, interests, ideas and goals, for mutual enterprise and cooperation.

In 2017, three students at the KU Leuven in Belgium carried out research on the way in which cooperatives are portrayed in the media.  This is an original subject and whilst it was addressed at a local level, the outcome of the research is positive for the entire cooperative movement.  

Under the slogan “Cooperativism at the hour of global challenges”, the 1,500 participants of the “V Cooperative Summit of the Americas”have been building agreements for three days, gathered in a final document called the “Declaration of Buenos Aires”.

If we look at the whole sectoral evolution inside our movement in recent  last years, the two CICOPA Global Reports, reported a 27% increase in the number of enterprises active in this field in recent years.

CICOPA joins its member USFWC – the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives – in celebrating the first employee ownership-focused law in more than twenty years and applauding this “bipartisan effort to improve small business loans and outreach for employee ownership”. 

Diana Dovgan, CICOPA Secretary General, and Hyungsik Eum, CICOPA’s Data Analyst, took part in the conference “Future of Work and Worker Cooperatives” in South Korea, on July 12 and 13, organized by our member, Korean Federation of Worker Cooperatives (KFWC).