Economic Crisis | Social Profit News

Can coops go global? About Mondragón Cooperatives

April 14th, 2009 | post your4 Comments| Posted in Economic crisis, New democracy, World economy

The Mondragón Corporation is a group of manufacturing, financial and retail companies based in the Basque Country and extended over the rest of Spain and abroad. It is one of the world’s largest worker cooperatives and one important example of workers’ self-management.

Organization
The sovereign body is the 650-member Co-operative Congress, its delegates elected from across the individual co-operatives. The annual general assembly elects a governing council which has day-to-day management responsibility and appoints senior staff. For each individual business, there is also a workplace council, the elected President of which assists the manager with the running of the business on behalf of the workers.

Current developments
In the 1980s, the various companies responded to pressures of globalisation by joining together as the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation. The MCC is now the Basque Country’s largest corporation, the seventh largest in Spain. It is considered the world’s largest worker co-operative. In 2006 the MCC contributed 3.8% towards the total GDP of the Basque Country.

Education has always been key to MCC and its development, hence the conversion of the old school into the University of Mondragón in the 1990s, a private university to promote further development. Some 4,000 students attend the university campuses in Oñati , Eskoriatza and Mondragón.

MCC now constitutes over 150 companies, with important manufacturing and engineering interests, as well as retail, financial and educational arms. Its supermarket arm, Eroski, is the largest Spanish-owned retail food chain and the third largest retail group in Spain.

The Basque government and the tax authorities of the Basque provinces have special measures to help co-operatives. The Deba county around Mondragón has kept a very high employment rate even during Basque industrial crisis.

Mission
MONDRAGON’s mission combines the basic objectives of a business organisation competing in international markets with the use of democratic methods in its organisation and with special emphasis on job creation, the promotion of its workers in human and professional terms and a commitment to the development of its social environment.

MONDRAGON’s mission combines the basic objectives of a business organisation competing in international markets with the use of democratic methods in its organisation and with special emphasis on job creation, the promotion of its workers in human and professional terms and a commitment to the development of its social environment.

Listen to video presentation about Mondragón here:
www.socialprofitnews.org

Can coops go global? Mondragon is trying. (Mondragon cooperatives in Spain’s Basque region)(includes related articles on Italian and Mondragon cooperatives)

Technorati Tags: Basque Country, Basque Government, Basque Provinces, Business Organisation, Cooperative Corporation, Coops, Current Developments, Day Management, Economic crisis, Employment Rate, Industrial Crisis, Management Organization, Management Responsibility, Private University, Retail Companies, Retail Food, Retail Group, Self Management, Sovereign Body, Tax Authorities, the humanity at work, University Campuses, Worker Cooperatives, World economy

Financial Crisis Wakes Up America to Action – Making Money Democratic Way

April 14th, 2009 | post your2 Comments| Posted in Economic crisis, Events, New democracy

New America – New Currency.

The Detroit News.

Nation’s economic crisis prompts group to jump-start local economy with own bills.

Three Detroit businesses are reviving a Depression-era idea of creating local currency, Detroit Cheers, in an effort to keep money spent in Detroit circulating within the community.

During the Great Depression eight decades ago, confidence in the national economy was so shattered, and people’s ability to earn cash so limited, that thousands of communities created local currencies to save hometown commerce.

Provincial dollars allowed businesses and their customers to exchange goods and services with currency that had regional worth.

A Detroit trio of small-business owners are reviving the idea, following an emerging national trend. The businesses are creating a currency called Detroit Cheers, and more than a dozen city merchants have already agreed to accept it as real money. “The world is just now reeling from economic chaos; in Detroit, that’s how we always roll,” said Jerry Belanger, 49, a backer of the currency, as he watched the initial run of Cheers bills roll off the presses last week.

In Detroit, the jobless rate is 22.2 percent. The median sale price of a home is cheaper than a Chevrolet Aveo. Two of Detroit’s Big Three automakers are surviving on federal loans amid the global recession.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t do business in Detroit — you can. But, man, you have to support one another or you will die,” said Belanger, who owns the Park Bar and Bucharest Grill and the building that houses the Cliff Bells jazz club near the Fox Theatre and Comerica Park.

Detroit Cheers joins an estimated 75 local currency systems that have sprung up recently in the U.S., said Michael Shuman, author of “The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition.”

That includes Traverse City, where more than a 100 businesses and institutions accept “Bay Bucks” as currency.

Local money is a direct response to the national economic crisis, Shuman said.

“The federal government is desperately trying to restore consumer confidence. This is a community doing the same thing, only in miniature. They are trying to pump up local demand and revive their community’s health.”

Legal scholars say local currency is permitted as long as it doesn’t resemble federally issued money.

Belanger’s partners in the Detroit experiment are John Linardos, owner of Motor City Brewing Works, and Tim Tharp, owner of Grand Trunk Pub, formerly Foran’s Irish Pub.

The three are backing the Cheers money — which will come in $3 denominations — with 3,000 U.S. dollars, and they put the federal money in an escrow account.

Those who have agreed to accept the Detroit money include a building and furniture design firm called Dormouse, the Canine to Five dog day care center, a graphics designer, a carpenter, a nonprofit and several restaurants and bars.

And this is just through word-of-mouth: The three Cheers backers have not formally begun to pitch the idea to others, to see just how much it can grow.

The goal is to keep business flowing in their hometown and not have it be ferried off to suburbia or some corporate headquarters in Arkansas or Tokyo.

The business owners intend to give the Detroit currency to businesses and individuals they know will spend it at participating businesses.

If anyone wants to cash in the Cheers bills for U.S. dollars, one of the founders of the Detroit currency will give the person the real thing.

“There’s no question in my mind this has real value,” said Billy West, a co-owner of Dormouse.

With the currency, he said, “I can get a good meal, I can get a beer, I can help another Detroit business. That is money to me. To keep commerce in Detroit, I totally support that goal.”

Traverse City’s Bay Bucks program started four years ago. Today, there’s more than $13,000 worth of the currency circulating in the community, said Stephanie Mills, one of the creators of the program.

Beyond restaurants and bars, a local grocery store accepts the Bay Bucks; so do a bed and breakfast inn, a winery, a physician, an attorney, an accountant and tarot card readers, Mills said.

Among the largest of local currencies is BerkShares, launched three years ago in the rural Berkshires area of southern Massachusetts.

Nearly $2 million worth of local currency is circulating among businesses and private individuals, said Susan Witt, who sits on the board of the BerkShares program.

“It reformed the way many business owners and residents think about their local economy and helped educate the community on why shopping locally matters,” she said.

“The current national economy has only increased the use of BerkShares.”

Jerry Belanger, Tim Tharp and John.