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Daisy Salvador and Oscar Leiva never imagined they would own their own business. Yet now the Central Falls residents, natives of Honduras and Guatemala, respectively, are two of the owners of the Healthy Planet Cleaning Co-op.

The worker-owned cooperative is the brainchild of Fuerza Laboral (Power of Workers), a Central Falls- based nonprofit organization founded in 2006 around issues of economic justice for workers. Raul Figueroa, Fuerza Laboral’s community organizer, explains, “The organization’s priority initially was to see that workers – mostly Latinos working in the service industry – got paid. We started seeing trends. People were coming back for the same issue. We were helping them to get justice, but it was a short-term win. We started educating workers about worker rights. The workers had experience, but were only getting paid minimum wage – when they got paid – and had no job security.”

Daisy’s experience illustrates the point. “I worked for 14 years at another cleaning company, and they basically brushed me off. When the opportunity to join the co-op came about, it caught my attention. I wanted to work in a friendlier environment where I felt appreciated.”

Oscar, a victim of wage theft, explains, “I had no rights or any way to grow in a company. Now I can help grow our business and am getting paid a good wage.”

Known formally as the POWER (People Owning Wider Economic Resources) Network Co-operative Business Incubation (CBI) Program, the project recruits, trains, and assists low-income workers to establish worker cooperatives that provide good quality jobs to help improve the workers’ economic security, as well as that of the community.