CoTech to become an industry circle of workers.coop - towards a proposal

There is a new, independent worker co-op federation and at the summer gathering the idea of joining forces and making CoTech the first industrial circle of workers.coop received a generally positive response. I now want to work towards a proposal to act on and formalise this.

There are both political and practical reasons why this should be a no brainer, although as always the devil's in the detail and it would also need the coordinating circle of workers.coop to agree and to work on it. Essentially CoTech would operate exactly as it does now, but I think the subs-paying members of CoTech would also need to join workers.coop as enterprise members (many of them have already joined, have agreed to join, or are considering joining). The CoTech circle could involve non-workers.coop members and non-CoTech subs paying co-ops as it does now and have autonomous decision-making and administration remit, sending a member to the worker.coop coordinating circle.

The advantages - apart from the main one - together we are stronger - are that we would be able to merge some admin and infrastructure functions; for instance workers.coop would be the contractor with CoTech's coordinator and could have its own financial ecscosystem, raise money if it wants as it does now for special projects, events, circle expenses (but potentially cross-subsidised from workers.coop general funds); we could merge our NextCloud instances but CoTech could keep its own wiki and other organising tools; and so on.

I know perhaps some CoTechers are not familiar with workers.coop, which is itself in startup mode, and I'm happy to respond to all clarifying questions and then reactions/critical concerns, with a view to writing a proposal for CoTech decision. Meanwhile I'm sharing this summary business plan doc. Here's how a primary worker co-op can join the federation. For transparency: I'm a mission circle (board), coordination circle and communications circle member of workers.coop :)

Would like to be in a position to formulate a proposal in the next couple of weeks, i.e. by Friday 10th Feb 2023.