There's another interesting (but way smaller) cooperative in Spain: Igalia https://www.igalia.com/
They work in open source projects and are big contributors to Chromium/blink, WebKit, V8, Vulkan, etc...
Mondragon Corporation
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Re: Mondragon Corporation
#12From the article: At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios between executive work and field or factory work which earns a minimum wage. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an average Mondragon cooperative earns no more than 5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage paid in their cooperative. For most workers, this ratio is smaller…
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Re: Mondragon Corporation
#13They even run their own university. https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home for people who want to do their degree there and then I guess have a path into the company itself ?
If you study on the university by itself I would say that is easier to have a "first contact" with the companies that form the Corporation. However, were I work, more than 70% of the work force have studied outside Mondragon university.
Re: Mondragon Corporation
#14So some thing that are a bit less glamorous than described on the article is that one reason this works so well is because of the conditions of the place it runs in. This coop comes from the basque country, a northern autonomous region of Spain. It is a fairly rich area, with a huge port and industrial past and a pretty tight knit community.
This generates an environment that allows for certain things to happen. One is an area less prone to economic recessions, with higher wage equality and a more egalitarian and humanistic approach to business. On the negative side though there is an insidious xenophobia that permeates the area. Essentially a lot of the ads they run (for example for their supermarket brand Eroski) do so on a platform of "its better because its basque". Like basque cows, basque cheese etc. Many of our companies brag about "we only hire local people", so music festivals for example have all the staff hired locally rather than having an open hiring process or allowing bands to bring their staff.
This is a bit of a double edged sword where we are creating a bit of a local maximum for the basque country economy at the expense of a worse average for everyone else (assuming market conditions can create Nash equilibriums). Now I do believe Mondragon has done some fantastic stuff, but they are not without a fault and they also exist thanks to an environment that allows such conditions to exist and do the work they do.
Re: Mondragon Corporation
#15It’s worth noting that only 40% of the group employees are owners.
The number of non owner employees is also growing. The numbers used to be much higher when they had Fagor but they fired most of the work force when it went bankrupt in 2013 and the buying company only opened 700 jobs to replace the old plant. Now a ton of their business is their supermarket branch in Eroski and most are temp workers with obviously no owner rights.
Re: Mondragon Corporation
#16So some thing that are a bit less glamorous than described on the article is that one reason this works so well is because of the conditions of the place it runs in. This coop comes from the basque country, a northern autonomous region of Spain. It is a fairly rich area, with a huge port and industrial past and a pretty tight knit community. This generates an environment that allows for certain things to happen. One…
You forget the influence of the church. Much of the origins of the coop businesses come from church oriented communities serving their needs in some way.
I'd also argue that lots of relatively limited local maxima where everyone is happy and materially comfortable is a million times better than centralised hell of capitalism as it stands. Limited maybe, but most people won't approach the ceiling in more dynamic places. It's the greatest good for the greatest number.
Re: Mondragon Corporation
#17From the article: At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios between executive work and field or factory work which earns a minimum wage. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an average Mondragon cooperative earns no more than 5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage paid in their cooperative. For most workers, this ratio is smaller…
I know a handful of them in Galicia, but they look small-ish. Mondragon had a tech consultancy company but I can't find them.
Re: Mondragon Corporation
#18There's another interesting (but way smaller) cooperative in Spain: Igalia https://www.igalia.com/ They work in open source projects and are big contributors to Chromium/blink, WebKit, V8, Vulkan, etc...
They look small-ish though. I wonder if there's any big coop software company out there.
Re: Mondragon Corporation
#19So some thing that are a bit less glamorous than described on the article is that one reason this works so well is because of the conditions of the place it runs in. This coop comes from the basque country, a northern autonomous region of Spain. It is a fairly rich area, with a huge port and industrial past and a pretty tight knit community. This generates an environment that allows for certain things to happen. One…
You forget the influence of the church. Much of the origins of the coop businesses come from church oriented communities serving their needs in some way. I'd also argue that lots of relatively limited local maxima where everyone is happy and materially comfortable is a million times better than centralised hell of capitalism as it stands. Limited maybe, but most people won't approach the ceiling in more dynamic place…
Well it's Catholic doctrine after all.
Edit: Downvoters should read about distributism.
Re: Mondragon Corporation
#20It’s worth noting that only 40% of the group employees are owners.
The number of non owner employees is also growing. The numbers used to be much higher when they had Fagor but they fired most of the work force when it went bankrupt in 2013 and the buying company only opened 700 jobs to replace the old plant. Now a ton of their business is their supermarket branch in Eroski and most are temp workers with obviously no owner rights.
I always see the same faces in all the Eroskis in my city, are you sure most of them are temp workers?