Collective Impacts through Job Crafting in a Unionized Worker Cooperative

This case study examines the impact of union worker cooperatives, with the case of Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), on the proactive efforts of precarious workers to change their work experience and environment. Our investigation centers on workers’ job crafting, defined as workers’ self-initiated actions to redesign roles in alignment with identity, values, and needs to find meaning in their work. The findings highlight that CHCA’s organizational structure and strategies, as a union cooperative, positively influence workers’ job crafting, leading to improved individual work experiences, a reshaped work environment, and fostering worker prerogatives. The paper finds a yet unidentified form of job crafting-organizational job crafting showcasing a bottom-up organizational change process within CHCA’s non-hierarchical structure. This research advances our understanding of how union worker cooperatives facilitate worker empowerment through innovative individual and organizational-level initiatives.