Peter Schnall and Erin Wigger
So much is wrong
with the way work is presently organized in America, you could look in almost
any direction and find something terribly amiss. Part of this is surely due to
the steady pressure of globalization on the world’s companies to compete as
they strain against a slumping economy. We have a serious problem in the
world of today’s work.
Can a business
survive/stay competitive in these volatile times without sacrificing their own
worker’s health and financial security? Are there any viable alternatives to
the current business model? We believe there are. These come in the form of
companies and organizations which have gotten something right in terms of
working out the balance between their bottom line and the health, safety and
personal growth of their labor force. These companies recognize that their
assets are weighed not only in gold, but also in the health, longevity and
productivity of their workers.
Mondragón
Co-operative Corporation (MCC) is one of these. MCC is the world’s largest
worker cooperative. A multinational company based in the Basque region of
Spain (7th largest company in Spain), with 256 different businesses under
it’s umbrella, 80,000+ employees (each cooperative supporting anything from 6
to 2,000 workers), 43 schools, one college, and more than $4.8 billion of
business annually in manufacturing, services, retail and wholesale
distribution, Mondragon has become one of the world’s most successful story of
a worker-owned company (1,4).
How did it
become so successful and on what principles is it built? The Basque region has
a long history of organized labor in the form of craftsman guilds, but it wasn’t
until 1941 when a priest called José María Arizmendiarriet arrived and,
seeing the need for education free and open to all began a democratically run
Polytechnic School (1,2).
In 1956, the
threat of unemployment in the area from the shutdown of a local factory that
manufactured petrol-based heaters and cookers led José María Arizmendiarriet to
encourage several students (and workers) from his school to purchase and manage
it themselves. ULGOR, now called Fagor Electrodomésticos, was the result (3,4).
Mondragon’s
following first cooperatives founded the Caja Laboral Popular credit
co-operative bank, helping to secure the financial success and independence of
the company. It was the Business Division of Caja Laboral that served as the
catalyst for the evolution of MCC into what it is today. In our next blog we
will describe how Mondragon’s workers relate to the company and to each other
(2,3).
Mondragon is a wonderful example of an alternative business model that needs greater publicity in the U.S. For some U.S. examples of producer cooperatives, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/opinion/worker-owners-of-america-unite.html?_r=0
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