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What's the difference between a platform coop and a worker coop?

Very little lol. I actually submitted a talk to conference.coop titled "Platform Cooperativism AKA A Worker Co-op with a Website."

But like any cooperative you can expand your membership to include any stakeholder. Users, workers, customers, investors, etc. It is mainly about aligning ownership incentives and control/voice according to whatever the design goals are of the company.

Do the workers then have to be considered as an employee of the coop as per the co-op law? We are running into that issue. Our freelancers are all over the world and we cannot figure out if they have to be reclassified as employees of the coop.

Hey Sorry just seeing this. Well this depends on your co-ops operating agreement. For us patronage (and membership) is defined by any person (like a beating heart human not "person" like entity) doing work for the cooperative on a per hour basis. So ownership in the form of dividends are allocated pro rata by time worked. We think that this is the most straightforward way of doing it, instead of tying equity to $ made, etc.

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