Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mondragon Corporation

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 291 posts

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#61

Post by Tyrek »

hkt wrote: post #16
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #14

So 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…

Local maxima is explicitly not the greatest good for the greatest number. In many ways, it's the greatest good for the greatest visible number, and only for a relatively short period of time. I'm not the biggest fan of raw unbridled capitalism, but there are aspects to innovation and competition that you're absolutely passing on if you default to local maxima solutions. Long term, you're going to get outcompeted/outteched if you remain in the status quo.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#62

Post by Sawamara »

hawkice wrote: post #43
bprieto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing about this wage ratio is they had to increase it in the beginning of the cooperative because very few people were willing to take more responsibility for little more pay. So maybe there is a study to be done about what could be the optimum wage ratio that allows a company to attract top talent for management positions and at the same time is not perceived as injust and exploitative by the lower…

There is a difference between pay so poor no one is willing to take the job and pay good enough to get top talent. Clearing the first hurdle doesn't say anything about the second.

The myth of top talent is overrated, especially in managerial positions for companies where the workers have more say in decisions.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#63

Post by cfv »

cies wrote: post #50
kumarharsh wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nothing compared to Amul - a dairy behemoth in India which employs about 3.6 MILLION people. They brought in the "White Revolution" making India the largest milk producer in the world! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amul

This Amul a worker coop? I'm only interested in worker coops, should have specified that.

> Formed in 1946, it is a cooperative brand managed by a cooperative body, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which today is jointly owned by 3.6 million milk producers in Gujarat.[4]

I mean, kind of? idk if India has the concept of a worker's cooperative company but this is not super far away from it

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#64

Post by mojuba »

There's a "sister" concept of this called steward-ownership, promoted by this German organization:

https://purpose-economy.org/en/

They have a lot of interesting materials and case studies (Bosch, Zeiss and others).

Basically you can form an LLC the majority of which will be owned by the employees and will also guarantee that the company can never be acquired. There are a few schemes that can attract investments on special fixed terms, such as redeemable shares with 3x return.

This type of companies live much longer on average, according to some studies, and are also more stable and less prone to economic crises.

Anyway, fascinating stuff. I'm seriously considering steward ownership for my next company now.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#65

Post by C1sc0cat »

cies wrote: post #49
Angostura wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The John Lewis Partnership in the UK employs about 83,000 so perhaps a bit bigger. Not strictly a co-op, but very close.

Im not sure if this is a worker-coop. I'm actually only interested in worker coops. Should have clarified that.

I am a former coop member in the UK

The Main Uk coop is both a worker and consumer coop.

John Lewis is a bit of an edge case is sort of a worker coop its doesn't call its self a coop for branding purposes and its governance has some diferesnce form what a real worker coop does.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#66

Post by LatteLazy »

Does anyone know how you become an employee-owner (or cease to be one) at Mondragon? Is it a matter of buying in or length of service or are some roles owners and other roles just not?

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#67

Post by C1sc0cat »

neuw84 wrote: post #9

Hi, greetings from a worker that work at Ikerlan (a research/technological center part of the corporation). We are a second degree cooperative. Formed by workers and companies that we work for. You can see things that we do at https://www.ikerlan.es/en/ Happy to answer to questions if I can :)

Second degree? how does that work ?

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#68

Post by eb0la »

neuw84 wrote: post #26
Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By contract many are. At least in Bizkaia last time I asked is kinda how they got around giving them voting rights. I wonder if now they are giving them contratos indefinidios (full contracts) with no voting rights. But I do know most still cannot vote, and now only 40% have voting rights since Fagor went broke in 2013

I think this is more related to each company status (and laws). Eroski almost broke and is in "survival mode" right now. As I know the general objective is to be around 60-70%.

In general retail has razor-thin margins. If I remember well Carrefour and Mercadona were under 2-3%.

If you are a retail operating in Spain both rental and energy are the key factors that might take you out of business.

Just having a way to 'detect' your energy consumption is going to peak and act before it happens is a huge competitive advantage.

For instance, knowing X% your fridges at a location might have a problem and beign able to either cancel/reroute orders in transit is a huge improvement on the P&L.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#69

Post by C1sc0cat »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #15
kgwgk wrote: post #10

It’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.

Yeh Mondragon is known for some stuff that goes against the coop principals

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#70

Post by antr »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #58
antr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comment history? Left wing groups terrorists? Please enlighten us with your research.

You're an investor, it says so in your profile. Most of your comments have a fairly standard pro-markets anti-regulation view point. I was extrapolating that to be conservative but you could also be a liberal pro-markets type. So, my bad. After doing some cursory googling, it looks like you were probably referring to the ETA. I would like to hear more about the terrorism and corruption, if you feel like going into it…

You're mixing your views and opinions with facts.

All I can tell you is that our legal/compliance team did reach out to authorities.

As you can imagine, I won't entertain your ideology discussion when I'm refering to facts.

Post reply on HN