Valuing the Ongoing Look at Mondragon

Regularly held up as the prime model of a successful cooperative business network 50 years after its founding, there are approximately 100 different co-op businesses in the Mondragon system, employing 80,000 people. Bloomberg takes a turn (June 30, 2022) at keeping Mondragon in the headlights for society as a successful model – and one which continues to hold value.

““The objective of the cooperative is not to produce rich people, it’s to produce rich societies,” said Igor Herrarte, an engineer at Mondragon Assembly, which makes solar panels and machinery to help firms automate their production. “We don’t have a lot of rich people — or not very rich — but on the other hand, we also don’t have poor people.””

Any long-availed understanding about how cooperatives “produce rich societies” and not rich people is still relevant in the Mondragon system; and now in addition, other aspects of the benefit of cooperatives are being caressed out of the foundational firmament of the cooperative model. Particularly following the “Great Resignation”, as this Bloomberg article highlights, workplace decision-making and opportunities to have a say in your work life and your future, alongside a stolid reflection of reducing precariousness in the work world, and acknowledging the baby boomer retirement generation whose potential business closures threaten neighbors and families everywhere – cooperatives keep looking good.

Perhaps we can imagine how the model could reduce social ills in other concerns of life besides the workplace too, such as neighborhood segregation in cities which seems more and more to be based on income. A phrase from the Wikipedia entry on Income Segregation in Context indicates that “Income inequality is a necessary condition for income segregation. If there were no income inequality, the neighborhoods would possess the same opportunities and conditions and thus no income segregation would probably occur.”

““When I go to other areas, I notice much greater social differences. Here, the manager can be my neighbor. Elsewhere, I guess they live in gated communities,” said Baltasar Garcia Leon, who has worked for more than three decades assembling washing machines at the cooperatives. That’s brought him professional stability and relative affluence.”

Another phrase often cited is “wealth building” which at first glance might seem contrary to the work against inequality. Look below though and remember that the model is not about building rich people but rich societies. The wealth in question could be better understood as security – the ability to have savings to weather an emergency, an adequate retirement fund, or own assets in property such as a house or vehicle instead of renting. In the end, Mondragon represents the value of the cooperative model, and it’s ongoing successes and publicity keeps lighting a street, if not yet a highway, for reducing inequality and strengthening our communities.