UNION CAB COMPANY -- Madison, Wisconsin

In this segment, Livelyhood goes for a ride with Union Cab, a worker-owned taxi cab and para-transit cooperative. In business for nearly two decades, the cooperative was founded by laid off workers from various cab companies, with histories wraught with labor disputes. With $16,000 from "our collective pockets," and a $100,000 thousand loan, "we signed all our lives away, 45 of us .. and said we were in this together," says driver David Velazquez.

Now 250 worker-owners strong, the co-op's membership elects a board of directors, including dispatchers and taxi drivers, to decide on every aspect of company policy, from benefits and pay scales to business plans. So how does a business with several hundred owners--all with a say--get anything done anyway?