When you scan the Australian co-operative landscape, there is a humble and persistent leader who has been quietly making a huge impact – Colin Long. His background features a variety of roles with a commitment to solidarity being the common thread. Builder’s labourer, social worker, academic, union secretary, policy and advocacy for Victoria’s union movement, founder or co-founder of half a dozen co-ops and mutuals, Colin has spent three decades weaving solidarity into every corner of his working life.

At the Bunya Fund’s May 2025 Community of Practice session, he sat down with Antony McMullen to unpack four big questions:

1. What drives you?
2. How did your working life evolve into a co-operative vocation?
3. What is the origin story of Earthworker?
4. How has The Bunya Fund helped Earthworker’s next chapter?

Below is a synthesis of that conversation – followed by five hard-won lessons from Colin’s journey, captured in his own words.

1. What drives Colin Long?

Colin smiles wryly when asked about personal motivation. “I don’t like talking about myself as an individual,” he apologises, before tracing the thread back to his dad, who came out to Australia from Belfast. The youngest of ten, his father “had a strong sense of justice and the need to fight for the little person.” That family ethic, combined with Victorian construction sites in the 1980s and early membership of the union movement, cemented a life-long conviction: solidarity is both principle and practice.

But solidarity, for Colin, must cross lines of difference – economic, cultural, political. “How can we build communities that have a sense of solidarity across really serious difference?” That question explains his simultaneous involvement in climate campaigns, trade-union organising and co-operative start-ups: three arenas where collective effort can trump individual interest.

Read the rest of the interview here.

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Elle Griffin in The Elysian – Even as a journalist, information on the company has not been readily available. The books I read on the subject are only available at company headquarters, the biography of its founder is only in Spanish. Knowledge about the model is limited to academic journals, a sparse Wikipedia page, and a spattering of mainstream articles that extol the benefits of cooperatives without diving deep enough to explain why they’re interesting. After emailing the corporation for a year, I was only granted an interview if I could attend one of the company’s in-person media days which are hosted once a month. I had to buy a plane ticket, rent a car, drive six hours from the Barcelona airport, and rent a hotel nearby to get a meeting—a large expense for an independent journalist.

It makes sense—cooperatives are businesses first and cooperatives second. They have to compete with other companies on the market, and win, to make a profit. Only then can they use that profit more equitably. “We bought the chairs in this room from a company that’s a cooperative,” Lorenzo illustrated, “but we got them because they were the best price and quality, not because they were from a cooperative.”

Mondragon can’t afford to spend all their time proselytizing. What founders do come to study the model might put it into practice, but if they only create one cooperative that benefits 100 workers, Lorenzo says they miss the point. They need to create a network of them to fund new startups, create new jobs, provide social services, and transfer workers between companies. It is the combination of cooperatives that makes the whole thing self-sustaining, not the individual ones. 

Read the rest of the article here. There’s also an option to listen the article.

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Zane Alcorn from Earthworker Construction Cooperative (ECC) “Internally, from the perspective of worker owners, ECC is about providing a “third path” for construction workers who would usually either sell their labour to a for profit company, or in some cases they might seek to start a small for profit company. Doing sole trader ABN work and being at the mercy of the company you are ‘subbying’ to is also common. ECC worker owners don’t want to be cogs in someone else’s machine and nor do we want to run a for profit company where a small group of managers extract profit from the workers beneath them.

Outwardly, ECC are keen to go from our current status doing small carpentry and plumbing jobs and OHS training, and work our way up to building eco-friendly homes and renovations. We eventually want to try and make eco-friendly building methods like earth building affordable for working class people.

And as part of the broader Earthworker project, we aim to use demand for products and services in Australian cities to generate alternative employment in regions historically reliant on coal mining and coal fired power such as the Hunter Valley and Latrobe Valley. So in our case that would mean sourcing prefabricated building components and other building inputs from sister coops and mutuals in these regions. That’s a longer term goal, and we still have a fair way to go to get to that point.“

Read the full article here.

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A cooperative approach to energy in the Latrobe Valley by David Morison – Assemble Papers

“For nearly a century, the Latrobe Valley has provided most of Victoria’s power. While there are distant views of chimney stacks and cooling towers from the Princes Freeway, the enormous size and scale of energy production is revealed along the Power Drive Scenic Route. Between the towns of Morwell and Moe, the route heads north through Haunted Hills where a brown tourist sign (‘OPEN CUT LOOK OUT’) directs drivers to a viewing area above the Yallourn open cut coal mine. Expanding out and downwards, the mine is vast.

In total, the open cut mines at Yallourn, Hazelwood and Loy Yang cover more than 50 square kilometres. Under the State Electricity Commission (SEC), power first flowed from Yallourn to Melbourne in 1924. As demand for electricity from a growing population increased, the SEC employed thousands of workers to expand production. By the 1970s, around 20% of the working population in the Latrobe Valley was employed by the SEC. Privatisation in the 1990s by the Kennett Government resulted in massive job losses and a downturn in house prices, which left people trapped.

The future of the Latrobe Valley is often described as ‘uncertain’. This is not surprising. Engie, the owners of the Hazelwood Power Station, gave workers just five months’ notice when they announced the closure of the entire plant in 2017. Loy Yang B Power Station is scheduled to close around 2048, although owner Alinta Energy is considering an earlier timeframe. And while there are calls for a ‘just transition’ through retraining, re-employment and investment in industries that support a sustainable future, there is also support for new coal-fired power stations. Within this environment of uncertainty, Earthworker Cooperative set out to address the challenges of economic decline and climate change. As Cooperative Secretary Dan Musil explains, “We aim to grow a network of worker cooperatives that do socially and environmentally useful work while providing dignified livelihoods to people.”

See all the photos and read the rest of the article in Assemble Papers

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Here’s a thoughtful article by long-time Earthworker comrade Antony McMullen, about how co-ops (the ‘original social enterprises’) fit in discussions about social enterprise and economic transformation.

Social enterprises hold great potential to make our world better. To realise this transformative potential, we must ensure the fullness and diversity of this sector is recognised and embraced – including co-operatives, writes Antony McMullen.

David LePage (co-founder of Buy Social Canada) said at the Social Enterprise World Forum that until we move towards “success being measured in human, social and environmental capital, nothing in this world is going to change”. He added that “in the face of the social, climate and economic crises the world is currently facing, the need for a different system that values people and the planet over profit will only get stronger” and he said the best way to achieve this is to “bring in those communities that have been excluded or used for extraction”. 

To make this change, those of us engaged in the social enterprise movement need to play our part with clarity of vision and unity of purpose. 

A little over two weeks ago, the revered late chair of the New Economy Network Australia (and co-operative and Australian representative on the Intercontinental network for the promotion of social solidarity economy), David Thompson, issued an urgent call to action: “We must help civil society find a unified voice and thus unleash its power”. Alternatively, a house divided will not stand.

A strong and united social enterprise movement is an important part of a thriving civil society. So we need to ensure that all genuine social enterprises are present at the social economy table – and this must include co-operatives.

Social Enterprise UK identifies the famous 1840s Rochdale co-operatives as the pioneers of social enterprise. But strangely, I have heard people argue that co-operatives aren’t real social enterprises, or, on the other hand, that any entity with a social purpose can call itself a social enterprise (or at the very least simply self-identify as a socially responsible business). 

Click here to read the full article at Pro Bono Australia.

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Check out this brilliant little video story by Sam Wallman & Earthworker Co-founder Dave Kerin with the Victorian Trades Hall Council, about Australia’s world-famous union Green Bans – grassroots action for democracy, justice and sustainability that continues to guide and inspire us today!

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“In a world where the wealthy elite control the media, elections and lives of working people, we’re faced with two choices – accept it or fight for something better.”

That’s the premise of Tonight We Riot, a new video game for touted as a leftist response to the “neocon fantasies” like Call of Duty.

Too many games “enforce this idea that the very best way to make the world a better place is by massive military force, that you don’t need organisation and societal change”, developer Stephen Meyer has explained. “In our tiny little way, we were trying to be an answer to that.”

But it’s a seductively simplistic answer for anyone serious about worker liberation in 2020.

Tonight We Riot is “an explosive crowd brawler with retro vibes”. It’s a revolutionary fantasy in which worker liberation is achieved through violent street battles.

Sure, it’s fun. But some might think this fantasy epitomises the modern movement for worker liberation.

It doesn’t.

Rather than dreaming of some wild uprising, many are implementing a quiet grassroots revolution. They are getting on with addressing the key problem told by Tonight We Riot: “Those who do not own the means of production will never know real freedom.”

A solution to not owning the means of production is to own it, through democratic and worker-owned enterprises.”

You can read the rest of the article on The Conversation website.

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Listen Here.

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There are lifetimes, generations, of work ahead of us to repair what has been broken. When we are out of the immediate medical emergency, we must resist being plunged straight back to pressing the pedal to the metal of an accelerating climate crisis (which has not gone away).

We must start to plan now for the future, for distribution of ownership, for public health as a shared commons, for a focus on care at the heart of the economy.

The EarthWorker Cooperative project has from its inception sought to step back and see that crises (to name a few more recent ones) in recycling, ecosystem collapse (bushfires, dying rivers), aged care, privatisations of public goods, are interconnected and require of us new ways of living, working and relating to the world and each other.

If you would like to donate to Earthworker Cooperative you can do so here. Any donations are really appreciated!

If you are not already a member of Earthworker Cooperative you can sign up here and be actively involved in the just-transition to a cleaner and fairer economy. Any questions about membership do please get in touch by replying to this email.

So what’s happening in each of the Co-ops?
Here’s an update, as well as information on how you can support or get involved in each one:
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Earthworker Energy Manufacturing Cooperative (EEMC) – The Earthworker Energy factory is still operating, producing ‘Made in Morwell’ solar hot water products, with worker-members taking extra hygiene and social distancing precautions. We’ve always believed in the importance of being able to manufacture things we need here, and the COVID-19 crisis is highlighting the importance of this.

Though we are still in production, the pandemic has understandably led to a reduction in sales inquiries, meaning we now more than ever need your support. The powerful potential for Government procurement of locally-made efficient hot water systems into public and low-income housing – particularly heading into winter – has never been more obvious.

Request a Quote for an Earthworker Energy solar or heat pump hot water system

Like and Share about Earthworker Energy on Facebook
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Redgum Cleaning Cooperative – Redgum Cleaning Cooperative has had to put a pause on cleaning at this time. It was a very hard decision, but given the circumstances and the available resources we felt we couldn’t continue in a way that was responsible for both public and member health. Members are assessing options and working together to help each other. We are very determined to find creative ways of getting through this crisis and coming out the other side stronger. Redgum workers ARE the cooperative and any support for small businesses or wage subsidies from the government will be used to the benefit of the workers.

If you are interested in engaging Redgum’s services when they recommence work, please get in touch!

Like and Share about Redgum Cleaning Cooperative on facebook
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Hope Cooperative – HOPE Co-op is focussing its energy on responding to the extreme risk that the COVID19 crisis brings for its members. The divisive and punitive policies of the current government have been demonstrated in action again, excluding people seeking asylum and refugees on temporary visas from all COVID19 income supports. The sense of abandonment and discrimination that many are feeling risks undoing the years of hard work that we and many people- including people seeking asylum themselves – have done to build cross-cultural connections, collaboration and social cohesion.

We need your help to support our members and prevent them from being completely destitute. There are families among them, and they literally have no income, and few if any family networks in Australia.

If you have work, please consider giving one hour’s pay a week or a month to the Living Support Fund. It has been a collaborative effort of the Youthplus Foundation and HOPE Co-Op, to help people through university. Now, this fund is under huge pressure to help people survive.

Thanks for your solidarity.

Donate to Living Support Fund through PayPal here

Or Donate via Bank Transfer:
BSB – 064786
Acc – 523030100
Reference – LSF

Like and Share about HOPE Co-op on Facebook
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Co-operative Power – Earthworker and Friends of the Earth Melbourne are proud co-founders of this new cooperative electricity retailer, which aims to help take the power back of our electricity system for people and planet. CoPower is now offering electricity to Earthworker and Friends of the Earth Melbourne members around Australia!

“As a small co-operative, the biggest difference we can make it to give everything we have. So given the unprecedented times we’re all currently experiencing, we have decided to forego all of our revenue for 12 months from 1 April 2020. Instead, we will pass this revenue directly back to those who need it most both domestically and internationally. Anyone who signs onto Energy Locals through CoPower and stays with us will be eligible to participate in our solidarity program. It’s a way of offering solidarity at a physical distance to help get everyone through this.”

Become a CoPower customer

Like and share about CoPower on Facebook
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Powering Melbourne Cooperative Steering Committee – The current Covid-19 crisis provides the opportunity for the Committee to propose this centralised cooperatively owned utilities concept to the Victorian government. An intervention that is proposed by the Committee could fund valuable socially and environmentally conscious long term jobs for Victorians. The Committee is working on the business case for the broader cooperative in preparation for approaching the Government.

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