In the 1990s, the Norman Foundation grew increasingly interested in innovative strategies that opened new pathways to economic opportunity. Worker ownership was one promising frontier — an approach that went beyond fighting for better wages and conditions within existing structures to ask a more fundamental question: what if workers owned, controlled, and made collective decisions about their own enterprises?

The Workplace Project (Norman grantee 1994–2003) put that question into practice, developing cooperative businesses on Hempstead, NY to generate income for its immigrant members — including a housecleaning service and the first worker-owned landscaping cooperative on Long Island.

Southwest Creations Collaborative (Norman grantee 1994) was founded in 1994 to offer low-income Spanish-speaking and immigrant women in Albuquerque, NM dignified living wage employment in sewing and manufacturing, alongside on-site childcare, English and GED classes, and other supports designed to strengthen whole families. Since its founding, Southwest Creations Collaborative has employed more than 250 people and has created 45 living-wage manufacturing jobs. 

The City Life Bakery Project (Norman grantee 1994) grew out of the 1992 shutdown of the Taystee Bakery in Flushing, NY, once the largest bakery in the nation — which left 500 workers, many of them immigrants and people of color, suddenly jobless. Led by former Taystee workers, the project raised over $250,000 in pursuit of an ambitious goal: to create New York City’s first worker-owned commercial industrial bakery. Despite the determination and resourcefulness of its leaders, the bakery project ultimately failed.  However, it serves as a reminder that worker ownership, while a powerful idea, faces obstacles, and that even unsuccessful experiments can offer lessons to the field.