Here's an article titled Union co-ops the future of labour? that deals with the historic agreement between North America's largest union and the world's larges cooperative network.

The announcement came on the heels of a push for worker-owned co-operatives by filmmaker Michael Moore. In his film Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore briefly highlights several successful worker-owned co-operatives, looking to their higher wages and democratic decision making as an exemplary alternative to what he terms the "totalitarian" corporate model.

Union-co-operative collaboration is also not a new phenomenon. According to Peter Kardas, Director of the Labor Education and Research Centre at the Evergreen State College, the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical labour union which hit its peak in the early 1920s and is known for its stance on abolishing a wage system and creating on a "worker class," holds worker-owned co-operatives at the core of its ideals. "[Union-co-operative collaboration] has been around for a long time," Kardas explains. "It was originally a socialist and communist and anarchist idea." As backlash against radical union ideas increased, support for the co-op model lost steam, but has been re-invigorated as unions are faced with a weakening membership base and a weakening labour movement. The economic recession, resulting bail-out of big companies but not workers, and lost jobs across Canada and the U.S. has further spurred unions to re-think their approach.

Here's a an interview with USW President Leo W. Gerard on Youtube about this Historic Agreement