While I will be in Spain for the next year or so, I am actually currently employed at the The Center for Labor and Community Research(CLCR) in Chicago, USA. CLCR is a consulting and research organization that specializes in new approaches to community development, having a particular expertise in manufacturing and creating effective partnerships between labor, community, and business. We currently are involved in serveral initiatives that are advancing High Road manufacturing and development in the
We are at the center of numerous projects that have the goal of promoting the "High Road", which seeks to have a long term vision of development, enhance worker’s skills, while making a commitment to innovation, such as developing new niches and markets, adding value to existing products, investing in research and development, expanding market share, and improving the efficiency of the productive process and the productivity of employees.
Despite the fact that our vision for development is highly influnced by MCC, it is not exclusively focused on developing cooperatives as the only means of transforming and democractizing the workplace and society, instead MMC's model represents one significant trend and an important model for development. However, to truely be transformative cooperatives and the kinds of structures pioneered by the MCC must be part of a larger movement that takes into account the political sphere, as well as organized labor, elements of the business community and the community.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
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4 comments:
I really look forward to reading updates and your thoughts on Mondragon. This blog could become a really important resource-getting a realtime diary from someone on the inside.
I'm particularly interested in how Mondragon addresses start-ups (in Italy, there are lots of start-ups in services, but very few in manufacturing: instead the large co-ops buy-up other manufacturers as subsidiaries) and how Mondragon extends democratic practices and control in the firms it buys up (like EROSKI).
Is there any attempt to do this? Or do they see strategic aquisitions only in the light of how they benefit the co-op that's doing the buying?
These are two criticisms I have of the Italian co-ops, and it would be useful to know how Mondragon deals with this.
Matt, thanks for your comment. I hope that this will be a useful and educational source for you.
I am by no means currently an expert on the coops at Mondragon or their practices on buying out existing companies. I do kow that one significant difference between coops in Italy and MCC is that because there is a central apparatus a new company is not necessarily owned by another (with the obvious exception of Eroski). That is, if MCC buys a machine tool manufacturer it is not owned by another machine tool manufacturer. I can not say for a fact that they only consider the wellbeing of the purchased company though.
So it sounds like what you're saying is that the specific Mondragon co-ops don't purchase companies. It would be MCC that purchases a company and then converts it to a co-op?
In Italy, the cooperative league (the very, very rough equivalent of MCC) might help a group of workers finance a buyout or provide technical assistance. But the Cooperative League itself wouldn't purchase a company (let's say a failing manufacturer).
In Italy, it's common for an individual co-op to purchase competitors or other businesses that complement the co-ops core business.
For example, SACMI is a maker of packaging machinery and ceramic presses. They recently bought another company in Italy that's in the packaging machinery business. That company is now part of the SACMI group... but the only cooperators are the employees of the original SACMI firm (about 300 out of 1,000 employees).
They have no intention of cooperativizing the firm they bought. They regard it as a strategic acquisition that strengthens the co-op.
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