America’s Worker-Owned Plywood Firms
A 1974 article on the successes of worker-owned and -managed firms within the plywood-manufacturing industry of Oregon and Washington state.
Worker-owned and -managed firms have succeeded impressively in the US , within the plywood-manufacturing industry of Oregon and Washington state. The following article (downloadable as a .PDF file) presents their history, and examines their inner life in detail.
Some of the 18 companies existing at the time this article was written (1974), have since been absorbed by larger, conventional firms. And several others eventually closed up when their worker-owners reached retirement age. Therefore, because of both their success from the 1930s into the 1970s and their diminution since that time, these companies’ experience offers concrete, valuable lessons today for persons interested in creating new worker-managed enterprises in the USA.
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