The Reconstruction of Community Meaning
by Gar Alperovitz
Copyright 1996 Institute for Labor and Mental Health
Tikkun (May/June 1996) Vol. 11, No. 3: 13-16, 19.

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The evolutionary trajectory from small-scale beginnings to larger operations is illuminating. Many of the developing economic institutions are beginning to achieve real scale. For instance, Quad/Graphics, Inc., headquartered in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, is a 9,000-person worker-owned printing operation that produces several major magazines; revenues have been increasing at an annual rate of 15 percent over the past two decades and reached $ 1 billion in 1995. The Community Development Corporation of Kansas City, Missouri, a non-profit CDC, recently opened a 56,000-square-foot addition to its existing 80,000-square-foot Linwood Shopping Center. The CDC also operates a concrete company producing 60 percent of the cement blocks used in the Kansas City area.

Republic Engineered Steels, based in Massilon, Ohio - a worker-owned firm with more than 5,000 employees - last fall began operating a new state-of-the-art, $ 165-million computerized continuous caster. The installation is expected to help the firm maintain its position as the leading domestic producer of carbon and alloy high-quality engineered bar, stainless, tool steels, and remelted specialty steels. Publix Supermarket, based in Lakeland, Florida - another largely worker-owned firm of 97,000 - in 1993 was designated the top supermarket chain in the country by Consumer Reports. The Delta Foundation CDC in Greenville, Mississippi, owns and operates five manufacturing companies producing blue jeans, electro-mechanical switches, folding attic stairs, railroad spikes, and rubber products.

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