Maru Bautista as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at The New School 2019
Summary
Maru Bautista at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019. Bautista is a speaker for Town Hall 2 – Labor Power for the Platform Economy Now! Digital Labor Is Not Free panel discussion.
About This Town Hall: The world of work is not working for too many people. Labor Law in many countries including the United States is broken. That’s why we ask: What are innovative forms of associational power for workers in the gig economy? Can we re-imagine and rebuild the gig economy in a fundamentally fairer way? How important a role does ownership – and Employee Stock Ownership Plans in particular- play in creating leverage for platform workers? How aware are workers of the ownership option? Do cooperatives emerge when unions fail, or do unions have an essential role to play in co-op development? How much hope do we place in the enforcement of AB5, a law passed by the California State Senate requiring platforms such as Uber and Lyft to treat their drivers as employees? How can technology help to link up, organize, and empower geographically dispersed workers?
Maru Bautista is the Director of the Cooperative Development Program at the Center for Family Life in Brooklyn New York. For the past 6 years, she has worked with her team and the Sunset Park community to strengthen and scale immigrant-led worker cooperatives in New York City. Most notably, Maru has supported the development of the Brightly franchise and Up &Go. Maru has served on the Board of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives for the past 4 years, and has also served on the Board of the Democracy at Work Institute since 2016. Maru is originally from Puebla, Mexico. She moved to Brooklyn 8 years ago to pursue an M.A. in International Development from the New School. Loving all things cooperative, Maru’s family is in a babysitting cooperative, she sends her 3-year old daughter to a worker-owned daycare, she is a member of a food cooperative, and has a car-sharing agreement with a friend. Maru is a firm believer in collaboration as the only path forward!