Integrating Healing Justice Into Worker Cooperative Counseling

Publication Title

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

Unaddressed trauma among workers negatively impacts their experience in the workplace, including the cooperative workplace. While lawyers who counsel worker cooperatives may develop conflict resolution tools, they far less commonly provide resources for responding to worker trauma that can, and often does, lead to conflict in the first place. Trauma has become an increasingly pervasive topic in the post-COVID-19 workplace. However, the legal literature and practice inadequately address how attorneys advising worker cooperatives rooted in a solidarity economy can help clients productively respond to trauma. The healing justice framework offers one meaningful source for intervention, and its ties to anti-capitalist economic justice movements rooted in solidarity make worker cooperatives a reasonable space for experimentation. However, lawyers advising and developers incubating solidaristic worker cooperatives have underexplored the utility of healing justice in the formation process. As a result, countless worker cooperatives may have folded due to unnoticed member-owner trauma and the resulting conflict that arises from it. *882 This Article argues that lawyers advising worker cooperatives, specifically those rooted in the solidarity economy, can better support client sustainability by introducing clients and developers to resources and strategies inspired by the healing justice framework (1) pre-formation, (2) during entity formation, and (3) post-formation. Specifically, this Article describes the utility of lawyers exposing their clients and developers to (a) healing justice training; (b) membership trauma assessments; (c) governance and operational tools rooted in healing justice; and (d) healing justice practitioner databases as crucial interventions. These offerings do not require lawyers to take on a new skillset as healing justice practitioners but instead require lawyers to build networks and familiarity with healing justice theory, tools, and resources. The hope is that, with these tools in hand, worker cooperatives can better navigate the inevitable conflicts that will arise in building a new economy.

Recommended Citation

Julian M. Hill, Integrating Healing Justice Into Worker Cooperative Counseling, 52 Fordham Urb. L.J. 881 (2025).

Volume

52

First Page

881

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