Mondragon Corporation

Mondragon Corporation is a federation of worker cooperatives and other businesses based in Spain’s Basque Country. Founded in 1956, it combines employee ownership with coordinated industrial, financial, educational, and research activities.

Worker cooperative: A business owned and democratically governed by its workers. Mondragon’s member cooperatives give workers ownership and voting rights.
José María Arizmendiarrieta: A Basque Catholic priest who promoted education and cooperative enterprise in the mid-twentieth century. His organizing and teaching inspired the cooperative movement that formed Mondragon.
Eroski: A Spanish consumer cooperative operating supermarkets and other retail businesses. It is one of Mondragon’s largest cooperative businesses and a prominent consumer-facing example.
Investor-owned corporation: A business owned by shareholders who provide capital and hold residual claims on profits. Mondragon’s worker-members, rather than outside shareholders, govern its cooperatives.
Worker buyout: The purchase of a business by its employees, often through a cooperative or employee ownership structure. Mondragon has helped preserve jobs by converting some troubled businesses into cooperatives.
General Assembly: A decision-making body in which members meet and vote on an organization’s affairs. In member cooperatives, it is the principal source of democratic authority.
Ulgor: A Basque cooperative founded in 1956 that became a major industrial enterprise. Five former students founded Ulgor, the first industrial cooperative in the movement.
Fagor Electrodomésticos: A Basque home-appliance company that operated as a Mondragon cooperative until its 2013 bankruptcy. Its collapse exposed the limits of cooperative resilience in a severe industry downturn.
Worker self-management: A system in which workers participate directly in governing their workplace or enterprise. Mondragon institutionalizes worker participation through ownership and elected cooperative bodies.
Cooperative federation: An organization through which cooperatives coordinate services, representation, or economic activity. Mondragon became a large-scale example of federated cooperation across multiple industries.

Linked from 8 pages