Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Co-ops in Spain, not just Mondragon....

Just don't hear enough about co-operative businesses. On the one hand it's strange, since the first modern form was founded in the 1840s in the UK by a bunch of workers when labor unions were still outlawed. On the other hand, there is a lot of economic ideology around.... Worker cooperatives drive employment recovery Spain’s worker cooperatives, numbering in excess of 17,000, have seen a ten percentage point lesser drop in employment compared to other business models. Juan Antonio Pedreño, president of COCETA (Confederación Española de Cooperativas de Trabajo Asociado or the Spanish Confederation of Worker Cooperatives, in English), said “it shows how the loss of 1.8 million jobs could have been avoided – by all businesses operating like cooperatives. The municipalities with the lowest losses of employment are the ones where the cooperative movement is strong”. 29 June 2015 In 2007 around 24% of businesses were cooperatives. At the close of 2014 this had increased to 32.1%. During the same period the number of cooperative enterprises with more than 250 workers increased from 22% to 31.8%. 80% of worker cooperatives offer indefinite employment and 81% offer full time work. Women represent almost 50% of the workforce, whilst young people (up to the age of 39) account for almost 43%. Worker cooperatives are also more likely to be more inclusive, taking on people with difficulties..... full article at: http://www.cicopa.coop/Worker-cooperatives-drive.html