Bay Area Women Growing Green Businesses, Creating Healthy Jobs

Serving a four-county region of the Bay Area, WAGES (Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security) offers real employment alternatives for low-income immigrant women, while protecting the environment. Over the past decade, WAGES has built three successful green housecleaning cooperatives that have given hundreds of women the opportunity to become financially secure, gain business skills, and lead healthier, fuller lives. WAGES is currently launching an ambitious effort to significantly expand its co-op network throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to involve 200 or more worker‑owners by 2010 (a report on this effort may be viewedhere). 

By using a cooperative business model, WAGES helps women pool their skills and work together to succeed. The workers make decisions democratically, and they distribute business profits equitably to all workers. As co-owners of successful businesses, women increase their incomes substantially and help their families move out of poverty.

In California, approximately 30% of employed Latinos live in poverty. By developing worker-owned enterprises, WAGES not only creates high-quality jobs, but it is also helping women develop an effective asset-building strategy. In addition to their earnings and benefits each member has an “internal capital account” — composed of their share of the business’ retained earnings — that increases in profitable years. Accumulating assets in this way frees co-op members from living from paycheck to paycheck, allowing them to strengthen their financial self-sufficiency and improve their families’ quality of life. 

By joining a WAGES-affiliated co-op, low-income Latinas who previously had little or no exposure to environmental health education are now also using least-toxic products and techniques at home, and they are sharing information about these alternatives with their neighbors. Every day, professional cleaners risk their health and safety by working in confined spaces, using harsh and toxic chemicals, and performing repetitive motions, yet they are rarely protected by health insurance. 

Because of the high levels of environmental pollution in poor communities and communities of color, Latinas in substandard cleaning jobs face the double threat of unhealthy conditions at work and at home. By working in a WAGES-affiliated co-op, members reduce their own and others’ exposure to toxic substances: in 2007, the three WAGES co-ops served more than a thousand households throughout the Bay Area.  WAGES’ eco-friendly cleaning practices also prevent significant amounts of toxic cleaning chemicals from being released into the air and water. 

For more information or to get involved contact: 

WAGES
1904 Franklin St. Suite 801
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 451-3100
[email protected]
www.wagescooperatives.org