Study Overview
As a growing number of employers hire contractors and staffing agencies to build and run their business, some worker rights advocates view staffing cooperatives as a strategy to advance job quality, firm performance, and social outcomes. However, with only a few staffing co-ops and limited past research, a successful strategy requires close study of cooperative labor contracting. What kinds of staffing co-op models can create quality jobs, provide quality services, and scale? This article presents original research on goals, models, and growth among staffing co-ops and “umbrella groups,” a variety of nonprofits, secondary co-ops, and other organizations that provide multiple co-ops with shared services and pooled resources. We present in-depth profiles describing goals, models, and growth for three staffing co-ops and three umbrella groups, all based in the U.S., launched within the past six years, each with fewer than 500 members.
Study Results
We found that staffing co-ops develop a competitive advantage that enables them to create or sustain quality jobs with higher wages, but struggle to secure clients and to scale. By contrast, we found that all umbrella groups create and sustain quality jobs among the co-ops they support, and demonstrate an ability to scale their business. Overall, our findings suggest that a competitive advantage is not sufficient for staffing co-ops, to scale. Umbrella groups can boost co-op scale and financial sustainability by providing shared services and enabling administrators to focus on core competencies around quality jobs and quality services. One structural limit to scale, however, remains the low value employers place on domestic work such as cleaning, home care, and related fields, where many women, people of color, immigrants, and other historically underrepresented communities find work.
Intervention: Employee ownership models
Research Partner: Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing
Populations: Low-wage workers
Working Paper: Spitzberg, Daniel and Morshed Mannan. 2025. Article 7: Analysis of Expert Interviews on Staffing Co-ops and Umbrella Groups
IBSI Funding Acknowledgement: Ownership Initiative
News & media
The Promote Ownership by Workers for Economic Recovery Act (AB 2849) Panel
June 13, 2023
The Promote Ownership by Workers for Economic Recovery Act (AB 2849), codified in Labor Code sections 10000-10010) establishes a panel to study the creation of an Association of Cooperative Labor Contractors, among other potential activities, to facilitate the growth of democratically-run high-road cooperative labor contractors.