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Mondragon Corporation

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Re: Mondragon Corporation

#101

Post by leftyted »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #25
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To advertise something as "it's better because it's basque/$COUNTRY" is not xenophobic at all. First, because by that definition then almost everyone would be (e.g. french). Second, because there are actual objective benefits of sourcing local products (e.g. environmental). I also really doubt what you explain is universally applicable as it looks to be a very large corporation anyway.

Its better because its local is not xenophobic, its better because its from within some made up geographical boundries is. There are tons of objective reasons to promote local products, we have incredible soil and weather, we have a historical tradition of shepherding and sea faring. But none of that is promoted, its the "its from here" with vague connotations. It is a large corporation that has had a huge trouble ex…

"Buy local" is not xenophobic.

Everyone knows that "buying local" is about supporting local jobs/industry. There's nothing xenophobic about caring more about your neighbors than some people you'll never meet thousands of miles away.

If it is to be a meaningful term, xenophobia has to be about fear or hatred. It can't mean "favoring local over non-local".

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#102

Post by LatteLazy »

TheNorthman wrote: post #80
LatteLazy wrote: post #66

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?

https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a-member/ > The path to becoming a member of one of the cooperatives begins much like any other employment relationship – a position must be available, and the individual needs to be the right person for the job, as well as pre-disposed to cooperation. Once that is established, the worker is hired into a six-month contract as a temporary employee, much like the provisiona…

Perfect thanks.

That all seems fair. I wonder how many people are put off by the 15k buy in? That's about 500 euros a month for 2.5 years. That's a lot for many workers imho. I wonder if its tax deductable...

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#103

Post by neuw84 »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #67
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 ?

Hi, a second degree cooperative is owned by 50% by workers and the other 50% from other cooperatives that are usually our clients. As we are a research center, is a way to have a "close relationship" with those companies and to focus our research into their areas of interest or develop new prototypes for them.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#104

Post by C1sc0cat »

cfv wrote: post #63
cies wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a producer coop and its not a worker coop

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#105

Post by pg_bot »

kgwgk wrote: post #88
pg_bot wrote: post #81

The reason why Mondragon was able to grow to its current size is their credit union Caja Laboral. Under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco "people's savings banks" were allowed to offer higher interest rates than competing banks. Therefore local citizens would deposit their funds in Caja Laboral, which would fund more cooperative businesses. There's nothing special about the region or the culture, if you artificial…

And what about the rest of the country where credit unions also exist but we didn’t get more (at least not that much) of that type of artificially favoured business structure?

I would argue that you did get more across the country, but the question is why is Mondragon more successful.

The other benfit they had was the isolation of the Basque region in Spain during the 1950s. They weren't served by railroads and the region itself is quite mountainous, so for regular people they tended to be the only game in town. In fact, their slogan at the time was "savings or suitcases". In other places credit unions would compete with each other so you couldn't establish a dominant position in the way that Caja Laboral did. Liberalization of the banking industry in Spain during the 1970s tended to level the playing field further. So you have the right mixture for a single dominant cooperative in Mondragon.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#106

Post by C1sc0cat »

nickbauman wrote: post #71
mojuba wrote: post #64

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 s…

This is another form of cooperative, especially in early stage. Once the cooperative gets established, you eventually want to become a C Corp to be able to manage investments for your employees and plan on an orderly succession.

Your confusing the coop with the company here - worker coop structures can get complex.

eg abc.coop may 100% own abc.com, the employees of abc.com will be members of abc.coop

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#108

Post by enriquto »

antr wrote: post #47

I wouldn't hold Mondragon Corporation to a very high standard. Back in 2005-06 the company I worked in was intending to acquire Mondragon's wind turbine business (Ecotecnia). This was finally acquired by Alstom. During the due diligence we saw the high level of political corruption, and terrorism financing Mondragon was involved in. Very distrubing. Once we saw this, we stopped looking at the acquisition.

By that measure you shouldn't really consider any of the large Spanish companies, as all of them have extremely close ties to francoism. At least for Mondragon they are a drop in the other bucket. Still, I would be very skeptical about these "terrorism financing", since the data you acquired was very probably massaged by the Spanish authorities to look as bad as possible.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#109

Post by enriquto »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #92
iagovar wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weak and low effort post. This is not reddit. If you didn't find anything then that's were you should stop, otherwise you're only trying to entertain your biases and push them onto us.

I love how everyone here thinks they are above bias. It's precious. I'm just honest about mine.

They are the Spanish strike force! Largely irrelevant around here, until their fragile national unity is bruised and they all jump crying foul. Pretty funny when you see them for what they are.

Re: Mondragon Corporation

#110

Post by crankylinuxuser »

antr wrote: post #70
youdontknowtho wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're coming across in a axe-to-grind uninformed manner.

You make a claim like "Mondragon invests in terrorism" and you had better back that up.

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