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The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

theguardian.com

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Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#21

Post by bombcar »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #4

I'd love to see more details about the business model and corporate structure and how it works. Also, they mention that the workers are "liable for any losses." - How does that work? If I own a share of Acme stock, I'm not liable for their losses, though the value of my share may go to zero. Pretty interesting idea. Are there other examples as well?

It maybe "liable for losses" in the way that shareholders often are - if they want the company to continue when it is losing money, they need to "pony up" and invest more.

But it may be a different type of corporation than the standard US "limited liability" type (where you can only have your shares go to zero unless you're significantly materially involved AND do criminal shit).

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#22

Post by thesuitonym »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #3

Co-ops are fascinating to me as an alternate evolutionary branch of capitalism. Like the marsupials to the placentals. Also like the marsupials, in most cases where co-ops compete with regular capitalist businesses they go extinct.

Co-ops are just the way that socialism can exist in a capitalist society. And while capitalist businesses can usually undermine them using all the tools of capitalism, notice that co-op workers are usually happier and paid better, co-op customers are treated better and receive better service, and the community suffers less from having a co-op in the area.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#24

Post by [deleted] »

thelastgallon wrote: post #8

> The salary differential between the highest and lowest paid workers in Mondragón, for example, remains about six to one; for the largest 500 listed companies in the US, the gap is closer to 272 to one. At the year end, members of Mondragón’s co-operatives also decide collectively on whether they should pay themselves bonuses and, if so, how much. This profit-sharing comes in addition to a base pay rate that, on ave…

[deleted]

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#25

Post by Quarrel »

The co-op structure is less used in the US, but there are quite a lot of significant employee owned corporations (which come with the limited liability benefits to shareholders).

There are also quite a few with mixed founder / employee ownership. Publix for instance employ 250,000 people across their supermarkets and are employee / founder owned.

A recent list of the largest from Oct 2023:

https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#27

Post by mgaunard »

jmyeet wrote: post #20

For all the fearmongering of the Red Scare, this is what socialism looks like. Socialism is an industrial co-op like this where workers are fairly paid for their labor. Capitalism is Walmart where all profits are captured by a handful of shareholders and executives, being subsidized by the Federal government through food stamps to employees and decimating local economies to the point where they're left with dollar st…

In my experience, people would rather be employees paid in cash whose amount is agreed ahead of time than partners where they're paid depending on the company's profits.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#28

Post by JumpCrisscross »

soco wrote: post #6
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #3

Co-ops are fascinating to me as an alternate evolutionary branch of capitalism. Like the marsupials to the placentals. Also like the marsupials, in most cases where co-ops compete with regular capitalist businesses they go extinct.

Important note: yes they go extinct in a market shaped by regular capitalist rules.

> they go extinct in a market shaped by regular capitalist rules

Source? Because unless America, much less Wyoming [1], are not “shaped by regular capitalist rules,” this statement is false.

[1] https://www.wyomingrea.org/about/coop-map/

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#29

Post by lanfeust6 »

jmyeet wrote: post #20

For all the fearmongering of the Red Scare, this is what socialism looks like. Socialism is an industrial co-op like this where workers are fairly paid for their labor. Capitalism is Walmart where all profits are captured by a handful of shareholders and executives, being subsidized by the Federal government through food stamps to employees and decimating local economies to the point where they're left with dollar st…

Socialism is a big tent, by definition that's only one possible manifestation. Incidentally co-ops are not mutually exclusive with Capitalism (private property + market economy), for the same reason mixed-market economy (as practiced by most liberal democracies) represents not purely one thing or another. Co-ops are nothing new.

> The Amish keep their surplus labor value.

People don't want to live like the Amish.

> It saddens me to see how fundamentally people misunderstand what capitalism actually is.

The right to private property + market economy.

Re: The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the largest industrial co-op

#30

Post by [deleted] »

thesuitonym wrote: post #22
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #3

Co-ops are fascinating to me as an alternate evolutionary branch of capitalism. Like the marsupials to the placentals. Also like the marsupials, in most cases where co-ops compete with regular capitalist businesses they go extinct.

Co-ops are just the way that socialism can exist in a capitalist society. And while capitalist businesses can usually undermine them using all the tools of capitalism, notice that co-op workers are usually happier and paid better, co-op customers are treated better and receive better service, and the community suffers less from having a co-op in the area.

[deleted]
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