Happy to vote in support of this. However it is important to state that previous applications for organisations where worker control is split 50/50 with other member constituencies have been denied on the (in my view) spurious grounds that workers don't have control in those circumstances and therefore they aren't eligible. If we agree this application we should clarify the eligibility criteria and review past applications that were deemed ineligible.

@Graham that's a good point. But I assumed that since workers.coop have accepted them as a worker coop, that we would. Have we not handed over those issues to them?

@graham2 which organisations have been refused on these grounds?

I'd also be interested to know what the wording is of the criteria that workers.coop uses to decide if an organisation is a workers co-operative or not, does anyone know where this is documented, the rules contain this wording:

Cooperative Enterprise Members

1. The Cooperative may admit to membership any corporate body or nominee of an unincorporated body that has made an application for membership: (a) in the manner prescribed for in these Rules; (b) that meets the criteria for Cooperative Enterprise Membership as specified in such policies as may be determined by the Members from time to time; (c) that wishes to use the services of the Cooperative; and (d) that has paid or agreed to pay any subscription or other sum due in respect of Cooperative Enterprise Membership

I've created a thread about this on forum.workers.coop.

@Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative)  @Natasha Natarajan The case in question was before CoTech got into bed with workers.coop. I'll find the detail and link to it here.

@Chris Croome (Webarchitects Co-operative) @Natasha Natarajan Here it is. https://www.loomio.com/d/jboASJKM/approve-newssocial-s-application-to-join-cotech- from 2023.

@graham2 Thanks, on that basis Webarchitects should be expelled... we are also a multi-stakeholder co-op and our rules have 50% of votes assigned to workers, but we have a lot of worker co-ops as client members... including Autonomic...

I think we should let workers.coop to decide if a co-op counts as a workers co-operative and just do the decision, "do we agree they should join CoTech", would this be best discussed at our next gathering, or here, or on the Discourse forum or any or all of these places?

Yes, I'd be in favour of changing/clarifying CoTech's eligibility to say "you can join CoTech if you're a member of workers.coop". I think this is in line with the MOA we signed with workers.coop and means we don't have to discuss it here.

I think we could make a change to our constitution (https://www.wiki.coops.tech/wiki/CoTech_Constitution) to reflect that (that would probably require a vote here to make a change if we're trying to stick to these rules).