Mondragon Cooperatives Study Tour Explores Worker Ownership

Via Labor-L@york.edu, 2 April 1998

Cincinnati's Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center is sponsoring a 12-day study tour exploring concepts of worker ownership in the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation and other Spanish cooperatives from November 6—17, 1998.

Mondragon, located in Spain's Basque region, is the largest, most successful group of worker-owned companies. Annual sales are $4.8 Billion (U.S.) and 39% of their industrial sales were exports. Over 80 highly productive co-ops, 70 of which are industrial, employ over 29,000 people producing a wide range of goods and services. In this democratically governed, integrated complex of high-tech firms worker-owners benefit from wages and capital appreciation, job security, extensive technical education and occupational retraining. One industrial company is Spain's largest producer of consumer durables (refrigerators, stoves, electrical appliances) and Spain's fifth largest manufacturer. The complex includes a large chain of supermarkets, agricultural, construction, and service co-ops, a community development bank, technical school and social service system.

While using the Mondragon experiment as its context for analysis, the tour also spends time visiting smaller co-ops. Development strategies, the dramatic restructuring of the co-ops presented by the European Economic Community and the globalization of trade are challenges explored with Mondragon, other cooperatives, labor leaders, government representatives as well as presenters from the Institute of Cooperative Law and Social Economy of the University of the Basque Country.

The Mondragon Cooperatives Study Tour includes people with backgrounds in community and business development, labor, public policy, journalism, anti- poverty work, religious and educational institutions who are concerned with the economic stability of their communities and are willing to analyze new models and strategies for development.

Participants will meet in Madrid, Spain on November 6, 1998. The $2600 (U.S.) price of this escorted tour includes English language translations, travel in Spain, accommodations, and some meals. The tour is limited to 20 persons. If interested, inquire as soon as possible. Contact: IJPC, 215 East 14th Street, Cincinnati, OH 45210 USA, Tel: (513) 579-8547, Fax: (513) 579-0674 e-mail: IJPCCinti@aol.com