About the group

After many years of planning and organizing, the Minnesota Translator and Interpreter Co-op (MNTIC) officially opened its doors for business at the end of 2021. Within the landscape of interpreter/translator co-ops, MNTIC is somewhat unusual because nearly all of the group’s interpreters come from a court and/or medical interpreting background and  they grew directly out of the advocacy efforts and frustrations of a group of court interpreters. However, since opening their doors, the co-op has been surprised to find that only about a third of their business has come from their judicial partners (public defenders, prosecutorial offices, etc.). Additionally, while they expected interpretation to be their bread and butter, translation comprises at least one half or more of their business. Like many groups, the co-op offers translation and interpretation as well as capacity building workshops and consulting for clients. They work in a variety of languages common in the Minnesota area including, Oromo, Spanish, Mandarin, Somali, and French and their clients are principally community organizations, non-profits, and institutions of higher education. 

The co-op’s structure is horizontal, with board members working together on all aspects of running the cooperative, including reviewing rates. In the future they hope to have individual committees that would take on specific aspects of the work. At the time of this writing, they have hired a marketing director and are planning to hire an administrative assistant to coordinate the work done by members of the co-op. Worker-owners would still retain an equal say in decisions that affect the group. 

In contrast to the position of court interpreters, whose roles and ability to affect their working conditions are quite limited, the worker-owners of MNTIC are relishing the opportunity to work with their clients on creating accessible multilingual spaces and setting conditions that will support both community members and the working life of the interpreter. As they’ve built up their operations, the co-op has drawn support from many of the other language justice co-ops that pre-date them, as well as online mutual support groups and listservs. 

How it all came together

One of the most unique parts of MNTIC’s origin story is that their inception involves being organized by a union. In 2014, a union organizer with the Communication Workers of America Union (CWA) approached Sally Nichols and other interpreters.  CWA was interested in organizing gig workers who didn’t have access to collective bargaining. At the time, court interpreters had not received a raise in over two decades and lacked virtually any community for peer support. With the support from CWA, Sally and others organized interpreters to advocate for a raise, a fight that ended up lasting years - but finally succeeded in 2020.

Sally and fellow worker-owner, Jenny Finden, recall that it was really difficult to get interpreters to join their fight and the process of advocating for this hard-won raise was illuminating on multiple fronts. Even for full-time staff interpreters, the work happened in isolation,and it was even more pronounced for those doing court interpretation as freelancers. The very nature of the freelance gig-economy also acted as a repressive force. Many interpreters they approached were wary of doing anything to rock the boat for fear of being black-listed. After being stonewalled by officials they had approached about a raise, the group decided to interrupt a public proceeding with banners and demand a meeting with a key decision-maker. This act lost them a lot of support from fellow interpreters who viewed this as an overtly disruptive political act.

As the court interpreters engaged in this advocacy work (which eventually became legislative advocacy), they found particular joy and solace in the opportunity to be with other interpreters. Realizing how isolated they were in the course of their daily work lives, they decided to form a worker-owned co-op hoping for more community, as well as humane and worker-controlled conditions for interpreters. 

In forming the co-op, just like in the legislative organizing, many fellow interpreters the group attempted to recruit from professional networks expressed skepticism about fair work allotment and had trouble imagining a non-hierarchical group that could also be functional. Ultimately, once MNTIC organized itself, people self-selected. Those who lacked an orientation towards collective labor or building equitable multilingual spaces beyond the role of an interpreter, had no inclination to join the group. As MNTIC comes up on its first full year of operation, the group is continuing to grow and forge a path that uniquely bridges the institutional worlds that members cut their teeth on, and the worker- and community-centered equity work that the co-op is now exploring.