Vale Katherine Cunningham – June 26th 1970 – May 4th 2026

Katherine was a wonderful human who made a deep and lasting contribution to the Earthworker project, and to the people she cooperated with for a better world.

Katherine first connected with Earthworker by coming to a public working bee at the Earthworker Energy Manufacturing Co-op factory in 2017. Katherine arrived out of the blue, with bright warmth and zest, to volunteer in helping prepare a dilapidated old factory building for a new worker cooperative to start operating in.

With a passion for cooperatives, Katherine volunteered further support, and eventually took on a formal role as ‘Start-up Coordinator’ for the burgeoning manufacturing cooperative. In this role, Katherine was critical in setting up much of the early systems and business infrastructure that the co-op still uses today, and managed much of the co-op’s essential admin and finance tasks. 

Whatever work Katherine took on in the co-op (for a small start-up, there’s no shortage in diversity or volume of tasks!), she always maintained a passionate focus and celebration on the ‘human’ centre of cooperation. And she was not afraid to stand up for these values when she felt it necessary.

Katherine’s belief in building co-ops saw her take on a board role in the Earthworker Cooperative – the central cooperative Katherine aptly named the ‘mothership’, a name that has since stuck.

She identified a need and an opportunity for further education on the ‘what, why and how’ of worker cooperatives, and developed a detailed and extensive worker-cooperative curriculum with Redgum co-founder El. A number of iterations of this curriculum were delivered in a number of different settings – in partnership with Jesuit Social Services, Borderlands, and neighbourhood houses. Multiple alumni of these courses since became members of various Earthworker worker-cooperatives, and Katherine kindly made all course materials available to Earthworker for collective use and benefit. 

Katherine also played an important role as an Earthworker representative in Friends of the Earth, where she was also enlisted further on the committee of management and as treasurer.

Beyond Earthworker, Katherine passionately carried her values and wisdom cooperative into ventures far and wide, across her diverse interests and activities – as an author, activist, artist, mother, comrade and friend to many. 

Katherine’s attention to the importance of people, culture, communication and love in our striving to build better worlds, is a gift to keep honouring. 

Thank you Katherine, Comrade Witch

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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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Article in Jacobin by Dave Kerin and Dan Musil

Australia’s “superannuation wars” are still raging. The current debate is about whether increasing employer superannuation payments will or won’t affect wage growth. But this misses the most important point.

Although they are misleadingly referred to as “employer contributions,” superannuation payments are neither a gift nor a tax on wages. For workers in formal employment, superannuation payments are part of our wage, paid into collective funds, to be managed in our collective interest.

Scott Morrison’s Liberal government accepts this principle when it finds it convenient. As soon as the pandemic hit, it allowed workers to withdraw up to $20,000 from their superannuation accounts. Given that the alternative would have been to fund a social safety net, you can see why the Liberals chose the first option, which shifted the financial burden onto workers.

But there’s a more worrying side to this. Morrison’s move was also part of a long-term push to wrest away what little control workers and unions exercise over super funds that are worth almost $3 trillion AUD.

Read the rest in Jacobin.

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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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