Book launch. Democracy at Work, Commoning Labour: Scaling it Up in Toronto

Toronto Community Book Launch of the book, Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over (Routledge, 2026)

10 March 2026, Peace Lounge, 7th Floor, OISE/University of Toronto, 3:00 - 5:00 pm

For free tickets, go here.

Across the world, workers and communities have responded to neoliberal restructuring, austerity, and economic crisis by taking over workplaces and converting them into worker-managed cooperatives and community-anchored enterprises. From Argentina’s worker-recuperated enterprises to experiments in worker cooperatives and democratic workplaces across Latin America, Europe, and North America, these initiatives have prefigured new ways of organizing work – grounded in solidarity, and collective ownership. They are turning workplaces into spaces of democracy and commons – a labour commons.

Join book authors, Dario Azzellini and Marcelo Vieta, and Special Guests: Andrés Ruggeri, professor at the University of Buenos Aires and director of the Documentation Center for Worker-Recuperated  Enterprises and invited labour organisations, cooperatives, and scholars from Toronto and southern Ontario, for this community–university gathering that uses the book Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over as a starting point for a collective conversation about the possibilities and limits of building labour commons in Toronto today. The authors hope to begin a dialogue and movement-oriented discussion among labour, cooperative, and community actors in Toronto, that asks:

• How can we democratize and cooperativize more and more workplaces in Toronto?

• What can be learned and adapted from democratic workplaces and worker-recuperated enterprises elsewhere?

• What institutions, alliances, and infrastructures are needed to sustain democracy at work in a highly financialized, precarious urban economy?