What does being a collective mean to us?
We are formed in quite an unusual way - unusual for the 21st century anyway. We are a worker co-op, legally incorporated as an Industrial and Provident Society, not a company, not a charity. And we are formed this way because it allows us to be owned, entirely, by our workers. No fat cats, no external shareholders.
This means that every member of the co-op gets a vote, a say, in how we run things. One person, one vote, regardless of how many hours people work or how experienced they are. This is crucial to the empowerment we are aiming for - we all feel more empowered when we can direct our own futures.
More than this, our members are entitled to a share in our profits, when we make them. We are explicitly bound by law to return profits first to the business for the furtherance of our aims, then to share with members, and then, should we be rolling in cash, we can democratically agree how to share out the rest. We like the idea of support micro credit for women overseas.
Overall, we are a collective because we believe that the people who do the work ought to be in control of how they do that work. After all, who knows better than them, if they are the ones doing it?