Clarify constitution to make clear that membership of CoTech requires membership of workers.coop

I propose changing the following section of the CoTech constitution

Who is eligible to join?

There is no fee to join CoTech, but, in order to be eligible, your co-operative must:

• agree with and practise the 7 Co-operative Principles,

• be owned and democratically run by its workers,

• provide tech/digital services.

• be based in or have significant ties to the UK

Your membership is approved by the existing members of CoTech via a proposal on Loomio.

To read:

Who is eligible to join?

There is no fee to join CoTech, but, in order to be eligible, your co-operative must:

• agree with and practise the 7 Co-operative Principles,

• be a member of workers.coop,

• provide tech/digital services.

• be based in or have significant ties to the UK

Your membership is approved by the existing members of CoTech via a proposal on Loomio.

(significant change highlighted).

I believe this is in line with our decision to "become an industry circle of workers.coop" that was passed in March 2023.

The advantage of doing this is that it means that we don't have to discuss/decide what "owned and democratically run by its workers" means, as we are doing in the ongoing decision to accept Kin into CoTech. We can instead delegate that decision to workers.coop.

In practice membership of CoTech entitles the co-op to participate in votes like this one, and have their name listed on the CoTech website. Other benefits of CoTech membership, primarily networking opportunities at the gathering and online at community.coops.tech and available to any organisation or individual we decide to invite along. We frequently involve like-minded folks at our gatherings, for example.

I'll leave this thread open for any questions. I intend to put it to a proposal in a few days time if that goes ok.