18 ms·

Mondragon Corporation

442 points by taurath 7y ago

agmontpetit 7y ago
This is a video about co-ops and Mondragon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o The quality isn't great, though.
glitcher 7y ago
Wow that is quite a lot of employees, but this excerpt came across a bit odd to me: > At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people... > By 2015, 74,335 people were employed So the increase of 0.29% over a brief although somewhat ambiguous period of time is supposed to tell me what?
- chishaku 7y ago
  That in 2014, there were 74,117 employees and in 2015, there were 74,335 employees. Given the size of the company, I imagine this data exists in a tabular format and someone was just converting to a (maybe imperfect) natural language representation of the data.
  - glitcher 7y ago
    My point was they appeared to be providing an observation about the change in size over time, but the wording around the time frame is so ambiguous it could mean anything between one day and one year, plus the magnitude of the change didn't appear to be significant. In other words, those 2 statements in combination provide little to no extra value in understanding the organization.
cies 7y ago
From the article: At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios between executive work and field or factory work which earns a minimum wage. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an average Mondragon cooperative earns no more than 5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage paid in their cooperative. For most workers, this ratio is smaller because there are few Mondragon worker-owners that earn minimum wages, because most jobs are somewhat specialized and are classified at higher wage levels. The wage ratio of a cooperative is decided periodically by its worker-owners through a democratic vote. Afaik this is the biggest worker coop in existence. Does anyone know of any sizable examples of this ownership-model in tech? edit: added "worker" to "coop" (as I'm not interested in non-worker coops)
- sudoaza 7y ago
  Found these two lists, from the top of my mind i know the developers of Loomio are a coop https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25644/are-there-any-actual-examples-of-profitable-programmers-workers-cooperatives https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2564... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634152
- jboynyc 7y ago
  A great resource on this is Nathan Schneider's book Everything for Everyone: https://nathanschneider.info/books/everything-for-everyone/ https://nathanschneider.info/books/everything-for-everyone/
  - otachack 7y ago
    Backlogged this, I'm highly interested in this considering the old rat race seems out of style to me.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- iagovar 7y ago
  I know a handful of them in Galicia, but they look small-ish. Mondragon had a tech consultancy company but I can't find them.
- bprieto 7y ago
  The interesting thing about this wage ratio is they had to increase it in the beginning of the cooperative because very few people were willing to take more responsibility for little more pay. So maybe there is a study to be done about what could be the optimum wage ratio that allows a company to attract top talent for management positions and at the same time is not perceived as injust and exploitative by the lower workers.
  - qaq 7y ago
    top talent +/- makes far beyond what regular workers would perceive as unjust.
sudoaza 7y ago
Went to a talk given by them once. They have cool things like a maximum ratio between the highest and lowest salary. They've done some huge projects in the past like energy turbines and the likes.
- anthk 7y ago
  I am from Bizkaia and I'd love to work there, but as I had no luck on Derio/Zamudio neither, I am skeptical.
christkv 7y ago
They even run their own university. https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home for people who want to do their degree there and then I guess have a path into the company itself ?
- neuw84 7y ago
  If you study on the university by itself I would say that is easier to have a "first contact" with the companies that form the Corporation. However, were I work, more than 70% of the work force have studied outside Mondragon university.
- throw_away 7y ago
  General Motors used to run a university as well (they split in 1982, and renamed from General Motors Institute in 1998): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettering_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettering_University
ollybee 7y ago
In the UK there is Suma wholefoods being notable for being the largest equal pay cooperative in Europe with a turn over of £40 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_(co-operative) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_(co-operative)
- jarofgreen 7y ago
  Also in UK Food, https://www.unicorn-grocery.coop/ https://www.unicorn-grocery.coop/ in Manchester is pretty cool.
- ollybee 7y ago
  equal pay for all 200+ workers, not only between genders.
neuw84 7y ago
Hi, greetings from a worker that work at Ikerlan (a research/technological center part of the corporation). We are a second degree cooperative. Formed by workers and companies that we work for. You can see things that we do at https://www.ikerlan.es/en/ https://www.ikerlan.es/en/ Happy to answer to questions if I can :)
- justinclift 7y ago
  Seems to be many open positions for IT staff: https://www.ikerlan.es/en/job-offers https://www.ikerlan.es/en/job-offers
  - neuw84 7y ago
    Yes, We have some IT positions right now. My current position is Artificial Intelligence team leader on the ICT area and we are seeking for Full Stack engineers/researchers and Data Scientists. Moreover, we also offer always the possibility to do a PhD in different domains. (power converters, batteries, embedded electronics, safety critical systems, wireless technologies, IoT , AI, etc). In my team we have 4 PhD students right now in collaboration with different universities.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Second degree? how does that work ?
  - neuw84 7y ago
    Hi, a second degree cooperative is owned by 50% by workers and the other 50% from other cooperatives that are usually our clients. As we are a research center, is a way to have a "close relationship" with those companies and to focus our research into their areas of interest or develop new prototypes for them.
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      50% plus 1 I hope on the worker side. You do pass the ALL Rochdale principals?
kgwgk 7y ago
It’s worth noting that only 40% of the group employees are owners.
- Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
  The number of non owner employees is also growing. The numbers used to be much higher when they had Fagor but they fired most of the work force when it went bankrupt in 2013 and the buying company only opened 700 jobs to replace the old plant. Now a ton of their business is their supermarket branch in Eroski and most are temp workers with obviously no owner rights.
  - iagovar 7y ago
    I always see the same faces in all the Eroskis in my city, are you sure most of them are temp workers?
    - Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
      By contract many are. At least in Bizkaia last time I asked is kinda how they got around giving them voting rights. I wonder if now they are giving them contratos indefinidios (full contracts) with no voting rights. But I do know most still cannot vote, and now only 40% have voting rights since Fagor went broke in 2013
      - neuw84 7y ago
        I think this is more related to each company status (and laws). Eroski almost broke and is in "survival mode" right now. As I know the general objective is to be around 60-70%.
        Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
        So if they get rid of eroski and just privatise it, you think they can go back to 70%? I think lagun aro still not up there in terms of people with vote rights, no? But you work there so you probably know better
fasouto 7y ago
There's another interesting (but way smaller) cooperative in Spain: Igalia https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/ They work in open source projects and are big contributors to Chromium/blink, WebKit, V8, Vulkan, etc...
- iagovar 7y ago
  They look small-ish though. I wonder if there's any big coop software company out there.
  - abathologist 7y ago
    My suspicion is that the worker-owned cooperative model, especially if it emphasizes the more important worker self-directed part, will tend towards much smaller units of self-organization. I predict we will see confederations and networks of smallish coops, and I suspect this is for the best.
Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
So some thing that are a bit less glamorous than described on the article is that one reason this works so well is because of the conditions of the place it runs in. This coop comes from the basque country, a northern autonomous region of Spain. It is a fairly rich area, with a huge port and industrial past and a pretty tight knit community. This generates an environment that allows for certain things to happen. One is an area less prone to economic recessions, with higher wage equality and a more egalitarian and humanistic approach to business. On the negative side though there is an insidious xenophobia that permeates the area. Essentially a lot of the ads they run (for example for their supermarket brand Eroski) do so on a platform of "its better because its basque". Like basque cows, basque cheese etc. Many of our companies brag about "we only hire local people", so music festivals for example have all the staff hired locally rather than having an open hiring process or allowing bands to bring their staff. This is a bit of a double edged sword where we are creating a bit of a local maximum for the basque country economy at the expense of a worse average for everyone else (assuming market conditions can create Nash equilibriums). Now I do believe Mondragon has done some fantastic stuff, but they are not without a fault and they also exist thanks to an environment that allows such conditions to exist and do the work they do.
- hkt 7y ago
  You forget the influence of the church. Much of the origins of the coop businesses come from church oriented communities serving their needs in some way. I'd also argue that lots of relatively limited local maxima where everyone is happy and materially comfortable is a million times better than centralised hell of capitalism as it stands. Limited maybe, but most people won't approach the ceiling in more dynamic places. It's the greatest good for the greatest number.
  - TurboHaskal 7y ago
    Well it's Catholic doctrine after all. Edit: Downvoters should read about distributism.
    - jawns 7y ago
totallyunknown 7y ago
It's time for a browser extension that filters out random Wikipedia articles on HN..
tasogare 7y ago
In France, in the game industry, there is Motion Twin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Twin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Twin "Motion Twin is run as an anarcho-syndicalist workers cooperative with equal salary and decision-making power between its members." Also, this is where the Haxe programming language was created.
- Ygg2 7y ago
  Also, they made the awesome rougelike Dead Cells.
- simongray 7y ago
  > In August 2019, Motion Twin spun off a new studio, Evil Empire, composed of Dead Cells developers who wanted to continue its development while Motion Twin moved to a new project. Evil Empire is run by Motion Twin's former head of marketing and is not run as a cooperative, particularly because the company wanted to scale beyond ten employees. Motion Twin continues to participate in Dead Cells decisions. Spawning more small cooperatives when faced with financial success is a pretty nice alternative to a traditional growth strategy.
  - leftyted 7y ago
    The quote clearly says that the new company is "not run as a cooperative".
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - simongray 7y ago
      You're right. Not sure how I managed to completely misread that. That's a lot more boring then.
  - sudoaza 7y ago
    Even large corporations work in small teams and collections of small teams. There is a long tradition of management experiments in classical capitalist corporations, we need to see what works for coops and what needs to be reinvented. But by the looks much is already working out.
aurbano 7y ago
I did some freelance work for their University's Engineering Faculty in ~2014 and it was pretty cool, reading up on them here now I can see how their coop nature influenced their research, as a lot of it was about making sure that workers and management both felt important and appreciated. My work was on some "business simulators" for a management course they were preparing.You would first pick what kind of response you'd like from your employees or clients (i.e. "passion" - they would consider their project worthwhile, back the vision, realize that people are key... ) and then you'd be able to control 15 management parameters (like job security, management transparency, salary range, leadership style, training... ) then you'd see a chart with the output and even see "thoughts" that your employees would probably have.
antr 7y ago
I wouldn't hold Mondragon Corporation to a very high standard. Back in 2005-06 the company I worked in was intending to acquire Mondragon's wind turbine business (Ecotecnia). This was finally acquired by Alstom. During the due diligence we saw the high level of political corruption, and terrorism financing Mondragon was involved in. Very distrubing. Once we saw this, we stopped looking at the acquisition.
- thundergolfer 7y ago
  Got anything I can look at regarding the financing of terrorism? Wouldn’t that be extremely illegal and would absolutely need to be reported to the government?
  - antr 7y ago
    We did. The Mondragon Group already had some history of financing terrorism(1), but we didn't know affiliates outside the Basque Country could be involved. Ecotecnia was based in Barcelona. (1): http://www.interior.gob.es/noticias/detalle/-/journal_content/56_INSTANCE_1YSSI3xiWuPH/10180/1186104/ http://www.interior.gob.es/noticias/detalle/-/journal_conten...
    - therrazerr 7y ago
      so one individual that works in the corp was detained, and suddenly the whole organization finances terrorism? very convincing
    - dordoka 7y ago
      That link describes how a MCC worker was taken into custody, being charged with some degree of terrorism collaboration. He got out on bail 2 days after. [1] Caja Laboral was not involved and they even fired that worker sortly after his detention (next day). [2] I fail to see how that link proofs that the "Mondragon Group already had some historry of financing terrorism". [1]https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20020531/51262755730/libertad-bajo-fianza-para-el-directivo-de-caja-laboral-detenido-por-colaboracion-con-eta.html https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20020531/51262755730/l... [2]https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20020530/51262755722/caja-laboral-releva-de-su-puesto-al-directivo-detenido-ayer-por-colaboracion-con-eta.html https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20020530/51262755722/c...
mojuba 7y ago
There's a "sister" concept of this called steward-ownership, promoted by this German organization: https://purpose-economy.org/en/ https://purpose-economy.org/en/ They have a lot of interesting materials and case studies (Bosch, Zeiss and others). Basically you can form an LLC the majority of which will be owned by the employees and will also guarantee that the company can never be acquired. There are a few schemes that can attract investments on special fixed terms, such as redeemable shares with 3x return. This type of companies live much longer on average, according to some studies, and are also more stable and less prone to economic crises. Anyway, fascinating stuff. I'm seriously considering steward ownership for my next company now.
- nickbauman 7y ago
  This is another form of cooperative, especially in early stage. Once the cooperative gets established, you eventually want to become a C Corp to be able to manage investments for your employees and plan on an orderly succession.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Your confusing the coop with the company here - worker coop structures can get complex. eg abc.coop may 100% own abc.com, the employees of abc.com will be members of abc.coop
LatteLazy 7y ago
Does anyone know how you become an employee-owner (or cease to be one) at Mondragon? Is it a matter of buying in or length of service or are some roles owners and other roles just not?
- TheNorthman 7y ago
  https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a-member/ https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a-member/ > The path to becoming a member of one of the cooperatives begins much like any other employment relationship – a position must be available, and the individual needs to be the right person for the job, as well as pre-disposed to cooperation. Once that is established, the worker is hired into a six-month contract as a temporary employee, much like the provisional period for many employees in a conventional enterprise. > Depending on the proven suitability of the employee for the job and the availability of long-term work in the company, a good employee may be proposed for membership, or in cases where long-term work is not yet available, offered a renewed contract (for no more than three years). In some cases, “unsuitable” workers, who just don’t work out, may be asked to leave. > Once membership is mutually accepted, the worker has 36 months to contribute his or her initial capital share of €15,000 , which represents the system’s minimum annual salary. This can be amortized through salary deductions, or in some cases borrowed from a bank as “capital to work.” > At any given time at least 80% of the workers of any Mondragon cooperative must be full-fledged members.
  - LatteLazy 7y ago
    Perfect thanks. That all seems fair. I wonder how many people are put off by the 15k buy in? That's about 500 euros a month for 2.5 years. That's a lot for many workers imho. I wonder if its tax deductable...
    - yochaigal 7y ago
      They don't pay for it all at once. They get a loan from the co-op bank (Laboral Kutxa).
gloria_89 7y ago
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pg_bot 7y ago
The reason why Mondragon was able to grow to its current size is their credit union Caja Laboral. Under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco "people's savings banks" were allowed to offer higher interest rates than competing banks. Therefore local citizens would deposit their funds in Caja Laboral, which would fund more cooperative businesses. There's nothing special about the region or the culture, if you artificially favor a certain type of business structure then you will get more it. Mondragon is a classic case of incentives at work.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  And what about the rest of the country where credit unions also exist but we didn’t get more (at least not that much) of that type of artificially favoured business structure?
  - pg_bot 7y ago
    I would argue that you did get more across the country, but the question is why is Mondragon more successful. The other benfit they had was the isolation of the Basque region in Spain during the 1950s. They weren't served by railroads and the region itself is quite mountainous, so for regular people they tended to be the only game in town. In fact, their slogan at the time was "savings or suitcases". In other places credit unions would compete with each other so you couldn't establish a dominant position in the way that Caja Laboral did. Liberalization of the banking industry in Spain during the 1970s tended to level the playing field further. So you have the right mixture for a single dominant cooperative in Mondragon.
  - narag 7y ago
    There are more around the country. It's very successful model in certain sectors like agriculture.
hooverlunch 7y ago
There are lots of small tech worker coops in the U.S. and Canada. See https://techworker.coop https://techworker.coop. I co-founded one, Sassafras Tech Collective, in Ann Arbor. It's been an amazing journey. I don't think I could ever go back to working in a non-democratic workplace.
- jboynyc 7y ago
  Cool, thanks for chiming in here. > I don't think I could ever go back to working in a non-democratic workplace. I would love to read a bit more about that sometime.
  - hooverlunch 7y ago
    We are about to roll out a blog! Check https://sassafras.coop https://sassafras.coop in a month or two...
    - orthecreedence 7y ago
      Where did you register your .coop domain?
      - hooverlunch 7y ago
        First at Gaiahost, which has since gone out of business. Now at gandi.net.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Can you speak to the downsides of a democratic workplace? How do you avoid the pitfalls of a union where people end up getting compensated for things like seniority instead of skill?
  - nickbauman 7y ago
    A union is not a coop, so the forces are not the same at all. Furthermore, it's not clear that "seniority" would trump "skill" in a co-op, either. Or that the opposite is true of a more "traditional" workplace. The job of each worker-owner is, in part, to help other worker owners developer their strengths to their fullest for the benefit of co-op. An employee-owned co-operative corporation (EOCC) governs as form of direct democracy. In my experience, your biggest obstacle is going to be collective decision-making. How well you do that is a test of the people in the co-op. Consider: management is just another skill, not a rank. You don't have a boss. You have people who are counting on you. Management serves at the pleasure of the worker-owners.
irthomasthomas 7y ago
I thought Chomsky's quote was interesting. "Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker owned, it’s not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive, you're compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others."
- macspoofing 7y ago
  It's easy for anyone to take potshots from the sidelines, but surely Chomsky sees the economic, and humanitarian disasters that non-market based systems ALWAYS result in. What's the alternative here?
  - ianleeclark 7y ago
    The quote there seems to have issues with the profit motive, not market systems.
    - wuliwong 7y ago
      In my mind a "market systems" implicitly includes prices which means there would then be profit and loss. I could imagine a market of 100% barter and no generally accepted currency but I do not think that is what most people mean when they use the term "market systems." There is a lot I'm unaware of, possibly market systems without prices is one of those things?
      - ianleeclark 7y ago
        > In my mind a "market systems" implicitly includes prices which means there would then be profit and loss. Why does a price necessarily include a profit or a loss? This is a self-referential belief: my price includes a profit or loss because a prior price includes a profit or loss which would earlier ... etc, etc.
patcon 7y ago
There's a really inspiring federation of 40-ish tech worker co-ops in Argentina called FACTTIC[1], who have been developing a neat process called FIT[2] by which they share work amongst themselves via regular check-in calls. It's almost like they're part of a big meta-company together that shared opportunities based on their needs (e.g., who needs the money the most, etc.) Here's a video of a presentation they gave on the format: https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing-work-other-coops https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing-work-o... The most exciting part is that they're now trying to share the model with tech worker co-ops abroad, and maybe even figure out how to build similar trust between international co-ops. Disclaimer: I'm a member of a new tech worker co-op in Toronto, Canada (Hypha[3]), and have a big crush on FACTTIC. [1]: https://facttic.org.ar/ https://facttic.org.ar/ [2]: https://facttic.org.ar/fit/ https://facttic.org.ar/fit/ [3]: https://hypha.coop https://hypha.coop
- iagovar 7y ago
  Could coops constitute, at least, a partial solution to ageism? Many of the US commenters have expressed their frustration and experiences in this regard, perhaps cooperatives can serve as a good quality alternative. Perhaps the problem is that it seems a model that fits more with consulting than with a product company.
  - patcon 7y ago
    Hm. Interesting. I mean, I'm biased, but I believe it could. An analogy I'm trying with friends is that a worker co-op is less like a company that does a specific thing, and more like a ship that sails where it's members wish it to go. It might present as a solid "WE ARE A COMPANY THAT DOES X", but it only does that so long as that serves its members. If the destination doesn't serve the crew, they create a new destination, they don't necessarily ditch crew members. Also, the crew doesn't worry about the ship sailing away without them :)
- rolleiflex 7y ago
  We've been working with Hypha for the past few months mentioned above and it's been a good experience. My understanding is they're pretty selective about what sort of projects they take, but it's worth a shot.
sproketboy 7y ago
What about it? Fucking commies go home.
jwaldrip 7y ago
I found out about Mondragon after watching http://ownershipeconomy.net/ http://ownershipeconomy.net/ and learning more about distributism.
usrusr 7y ago
While I do have a strong soft spot for the dreamy leftist ideal of worker cooperatives (and I'm happy and impressed that an example as big and long-living as Mondragon exists), I've recently started to find the much less anticapitalistic concept of b2b buyer cooperatives far more interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATEV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATEV for example is doing just fine and feels as corporate as it gets (interviewed there once). What's so interesting about b2b cooperatives? Recently we have seen the rise of market/directory platforms in fields where the network effect is so strong that it's impossible to sustain real competition for long and once they are effectively monopolistic they can squeeze entire industries dry at will, degenerating into pure rent seeking. Poster child example: there cannot be a second booking.com, the closest they have to competition is airbnb. A buyer cooperative with the explicitly defined mission to just run the platform at low cost would be the perfect antidote and a massive improvement for everybody in the buying sector (those that purchase directory listings) and their customer base. It wouldn't even be an impediment to innovation because frontends could still be a multitude of conventional for-profits, they'd just not compete in listing breadth (they'd all get the same offers from the coop backend). Works roughly like that in the airline industries, despite multiple competing backends. The big difference: those backends are (were?) owned by airlines, not by outsiders trying to maximise value extraction.
EGreg 7y ago
There is also REI Collective in the USA Real socialism is: Mitchell Lama Housing Cooperatives Food Cooperatives Credit Unions Employee Owned Companies I define socialism as collective ownership of the means of production. By that broad definition, the public stock market — a quintessentially capitalist institution — would also be socialist, since corporations own most of the means of production in this country. So the definition needs to be refined a la Richard Wolff ... namely, DEMOCRACY inside an institution is socialism. One person - one vote. The extreme opposite of that is one share one vote where one person has so many shares that whatever he says goes: https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-investors-cant-remove-mark-zuckerberg-and-that-s-a-problem-f07d3ce7e113 https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-investors-cant-remove-mark-... All of us who run a startup probably begin in a capitalist structure, but could be encouraged to transition to a socialist structure by giving employees more voting power once the business is thriving: 1. https://amp.ft.com/content/8a70b692-0967-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957a67 https://amp.ft.com/content/8a70b692-0967-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957... 2. https://www.hrcapitalist.com/2020/02/cards-against-humanity-buys-small-company-makes-it-employee-owned.html https://www.hrcapitalist.com/2020/02/cards-against-humanity-... I specifically thought to choose the domain “hrcapitalist” for their comments on this move to socialism: ”Cards of Humanity is doing an acquihire with a twist with this acquisition - they found a troubled company for sale, and believed in the talent that existed. BUT - this form of acquihire transfers wealth to the talent not directly to their bank account, but by giving them ownership in the company. That's a powerful retention tool, and if for some reason they can't make it work, the talent is sure to remember that Cards gave them a chance to save the company and turn it around through their investment and subsequent transfer of ownership. Moving acquired talent to ownership positions is a powerful play.” This is what capitalists had to say about a move to socialism in this case. I would argue that socialist institutions (much different than state-capitalism or its near-synonym: state-socialism) are preferred to capitalist ones, in the marketplace. People form lines around the block stretching for years to get into the Mitchell Lama housing cooperatives in NYC. They have far lower costs than landlord-owned buildings, and yet the same level of facilities or better. They are effectively nonprofits, because they are run by and for the cooperators. Few vacancies because many people don’t want to leave, unlike the high turnover and 12%+ vacancy rate in privately owned buildings. I suspect credit unions vs banks are similar. Workers in a company would not vote to ship their own jobs overseas or do massive layoffs. So do I advocate libertarian socialism? Yes. I want to see more institutions be democratically governed, like many universities are close to it, etc. Note: SOCIALISM is different than SOCIAL DEMOCRACY which is typically done on a city or state level to tax capitalist organizations and give public services and universal safety nets to everyone. However, socialism isn’t a panacea. Newcomers are still hazed and treated just like countries treat peniless immigrants. So we need social democracy too. Perhaps one day social democracy will take place on a global level. (We are working on that at intercoin.org) Finally... I should say there are better systems than socialism and capitalism, that involve UBI AND COLLABORATION rather than HUNGER AND COMPETITION. They are primarily gift economies found in the information space, and include: Science Open Source Software Wikipedia The Web Cryptocurrency (as it was originally intended, ie scalable tech not the monolithic blockchain crap) was going to let the network be owned by participants and even VCs loved it for a hot second until the non scalability killed it (we’re working on that too). Wikipedia vs Britannica Web vs AOL Science vs Private Alchemy WebKit vs IE You get the idea. Who wins? Hint: not the capitalism.
wwatson 7y ago
We have a software cooperative in Austin Texas (vulk.coop). We also have a monthly virtual (using zoom) and in-person meetup group https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives if you want to know more about software cooperatives. There are papers on cooperatives found here: https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives/about/ https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives/about/. If you want more information (or even if you just want to rigorously debate) about organic entities, worker owned entities, cooperatives, etc., I would join that group.
- abawany 7y ago
  I am a member of the meetup and like the fact that most of the discussions are held online to enable remote attendance.
yochaigal 7y ago
I've visited Mondragon, both the city (and the region) as well as many of the co-ops themselves. I did a small slideshow/presentation for those interested: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EFgwKNLgRgQQf8Kv236_vUzUMzyOavQZdT2ABxn8m0g/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EFgwKNLgRgQQf8Kv236_...
Pfhreak 7y ago
I'm surprised that more disaffected tech folk aren't starting their own coops. People in companies like Especially in places like Seattle and San Francisco, where there are strong lefty communities. I wonder if we'll see the folks who get frustrated with the policies of Google/Amazon/etc splinter off to form coops.
- scrollbar 7y ago
  Yeah. I had been trying to do it for awhile but there's surprisingly little activity around here in our sector (Oakland/SF tech) My partners of the consultancy we founded last year decided to go this route. There aren't many great local examples to learn from so we're kind of figuring it out as we go. Obviously B2B tech/software/consulting is very different than for example Arizmendi, a local cooperative bakery. If anyone else is interested or involved in coops in the Bay Area, please let me know and I'd be happy to meet up. kyle@greendata.ai
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    Right? I look at Seattle and think "There should totally be a thriving tech coop scene here". But I think it's because of risk -- leaving a FAANG to found a tech coop is a risk. Why give up $400k/year for a moonshot?
- cooperka 7y ago
  I recommend checking out the annual Nonprofit Software Dev Summit in Oakland if you're interested in this. There are numerous folks from tech cooperatives who attend. Last year was amazing https://devsummit.aspirationtech.org/ https://devsummit.aspirationtech.org/
caffed 7y ago
Shameless plug :-) Democracy at Work Institute: https://institute.coop/ https://institute.coop/
zackmorris 7y ago
Does anyone know the best state(s) in which to base a cooperative? Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming are the best for corporations, the main goal being to avoid corporate income taxes: https://www.legalnature.com/guides/top-states-for-incorporation-delaware-nevada-and-wyoming-explained https://www.legalnature.com/guides/top-states-for-incorporat... Related to that, is there something to be said for basing a cooperative/corporation in your home city/state specifically to bring in tax income for schools, infrastructure, police, firefighters, etc? What about nonprofit corporations, is this a nonissue for them? In Boise, ID (where I live), HP and Micron/Crucial have enjoyed tax breaks for years as an incentive to be based here. But people have speculated that those breaks made it harder for other tech companies to compete here, because their tax burden lowered the wages they could offer. That may have set back the startup scene here for many years. It also potentially raises residential property taxes since someone has to pay for those incentives, and that's become a major issue as more people move here. I worked at HP for a year as a contractor 15 years ago and it was wonderful, so I'm not disparaging them. I'm just curious to see what others think of this issue.

442 points by taurath 7y ago

This is a video about co-ops and Mondragon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKbukSeZ29o The quality isn't great, though.

glitcher 7y ago

Wow that is quite a lot of employees, but this excerpt came across a bit odd to me: > At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people... > By 2015, 74,335 people were employed So the increase of 0.29% over a brief although somewhat ambiguous period of time is supposed to tell me what?

chishaku 7y ago
That in 2014, there were 74,117 employees and in 2015, there were 74,335 employees. Given the size of the company, I imagine this data exists in a tabular format and someone was just converting to a (maybe imperfect) natural language representation of the data.
- glitcher 7y ago
  My point was they appeared to be providing an observation about the change in size over time, but the wording around the time frame is so ambiguous it could mean anything between one day and one year, plus the magnitude of the change didn't appear to be significant. In other words, those 2 statements in combination provide little to no extra value in understanding the organization.

cies 7y ago

From the article: At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios between executive work and field or factory work which earns a minimum wage. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an average Mondragon cooperative earns no more than 5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage paid in their cooperative. For most workers, this ratio is smaller because there are few Mondragon worker-owners that earn minimum wages, because most jobs are somewhat specialized and are classified at higher wage levels. The wage ratio of a cooperative is decided periodically by its worker-owners through a democratic vote. Afaik this is the biggest worker coop in existence. Does anyone know of any sizable examples of this ownership-model in tech? edit: added "worker" to "coop" (as I'm not interested in non-worker coops)

sudoaza 7y ago
Found these two lists, from the top of my mind i know the developers of Loomio are a coop https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/25644/are-there-any-actual-examples-of-profitable-programmers-workers-cooperatives https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2564... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7634152
jboynyc 7y ago
A great resource on this is Nathan Schneider's book Everything for Everyone: https://nathanschneider.info/books/everything-for-everyone/ https://nathanschneider.info/books/everything-for-everyone/
- otachack 7y ago
  Backlogged this, I'm highly interested in this considering the old rat race seems out of style to me.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
iagovar 7y ago
I know a handful of them in Galicia, but they look small-ish. Mondragon had a tech consultancy company but I can't find them.
bprieto 7y ago
The interesting thing about this wage ratio is they had to increase it in the beginning of the cooperative because very few people were willing to take more responsibility for little more pay. So maybe there is a study to be done about what could be the optimum wage ratio that allows a company to attract top talent for management positions and at the same time is not perceived as injust and exploitative by the lower workers.
- qaq 7y ago
  top talent +/- makes far beyond what regular workers would perceive as unjust.

sudoaza 7y ago

Went to a talk given by them once. They have cool things like a maximum ratio between the highest and lowest salary. They've done some huge projects in the past like energy turbines and the likes.

anthk 7y ago
I am from Bizkaia and I'd love to work there, but as I had no luck on Derio/Zamudio neither, I am skeptical.

christkv 7y ago

They even run their own university. https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home https://www.mondragon.edu/en/home for people who want to do their degree there and then I guess have a path into the company itself ?

neuw84 7y ago
If you study on the university by itself I would say that is easier to have a "first contact" with the companies that form the Corporation. However, were I work, more than 70% of the work force have studied outside Mondragon university.
throw_away 7y ago
General Motors used to run a university as well (they split in 1982, and renamed from General Motors Institute in 1998): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettering_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettering_University

ollybee 7y ago

In the UK there is Suma wholefoods being notable for being the largest equal pay cooperative in Europe with a turn over of £40 million. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_(co-operative) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suma_(co-operative)

jarofgreen 7y ago
Also in UK Food, https://www.unicorn-grocery.coop/ https://www.unicorn-grocery.coop/ in Manchester is pretty cool.
ollybee 7y ago
equal pay for all 200+ workers, not only between genders.

neuw84 7y ago

Hi, greetings from a worker that work at Ikerlan (a research/technological center part of the corporation). We are a second degree cooperative. Formed by workers and companies that we work for. You can see things that we do at https://www.ikerlan.es/en/ https://www.ikerlan.es/en/ Happy to answer to questions if I can :)

justinclift 7y ago
Seems to be many open positions for IT staff: https://www.ikerlan.es/en/job-offers https://www.ikerlan.es/en/job-offers
- neuw84 7y ago
  Yes, We have some IT positions right now. My current position is Artificial Intelligence team leader on the ICT area and we are seeking for Full Stack engineers/researchers and Data Scientists. Moreover, we also offer always the possibility to do a PhD in different domains. (power converters, batteries, embedded electronics, safety critical systems, wireless technologies, IoT , AI, etc). In my team we have 4 PhD students right now in collaboration with different universities.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Second degree? how does that work ?
- neuw84 7y ago
  Hi, a second degree cooperative is owned by 50% by workers and the other 50% from other cooperatives that are usually our clients. As we are a research center, is a way to have a "close relationship" with those companies and to focus our research into their areas of interest or develop new prototypes for them.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    50% plus 1 I hope on the worker side. You do pass the ALL Rochdale principals?

kgwgk 7y ago

It’s worth noting that only 40% of the group employees are owners.

Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
The number of non owner employees is also growing. The numbers used to be much higher when they had Fagor but they fired most of the work force when it went bankrupt in 2013 and the buying company only opened 700 jobs to replace the old plant. Now a ton of their business is their supermarket branch in Eroski and most are temp workers with obviously no owner rights.
- iagovar 7y ago
  I always see the same faces in all the Eroskis in my city, are you sure most of them are temp workers?
  - Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
    By contract many are. At least in Bizkaia last time I asked is kinda how they got around giving them voting rights. I wonder if now they are giving them contratos indefinidios (full contracts) with no voting rights. But I do know most still cannot vote, and now only 40% have voting rights since Fagor went broke in 2013
    - neuw84 7y ago
      I think this is more related to each company status (and laws). Eroski almost broke and is in "survival mode" right now. As I know the general objective is to be around 60-70%.
      - Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago
        So if they get rid of eroski and just privatise it, you think they can go back to 70%? I think lagun aro still not up there in terms of people with vote rights, no? But you work there so you probably know better

fasouto 7y ago

There's another interesting (but way smaller) cooperative in Spain: Igalia https://www.igalia.com/ https://www.igalia.com/ They work in open source projects and are big contributors to Chromium/blink, WebKit, V8, Vulkan, etc...

iagovar 7y ago
They look small-ish though. I wonder if there's any big coop software company out there.
- abathologist 7y ago
  My suspicion is that the worker-owned cooperative model, especially if it emphasizes the more important worker self-directed part, will tend towards much smaller units of self-organization. I predict we will see confederations and networks of smallish coops, and I suspect this is for the best.

Arkhaine_kupo 7y ago

So some thing that are a bit less glamorous than described on the article is that one reason this works so well is because of the conditions of the place it runs in. This coop comes from the basque country, a northern autonomous region of Spain. It is a fairly rich area, with a huge port and industrial past and a pretty tight knit community. This generates an environment that allows for certain things to happen. One is an area less prone to economic recessions, with higher wage equality and a more egalitarian and humanistic approach to business. On the negative side though there is an insidious xenophobia that permeates the area. Essentially a lot of the ads they run (for example for their supermarket brand Eroski) do so on a platform of "its better because its basque". Like basque cows, basque cheese etc. Many of our companies brag about "we only hire local people", so music festivals for example have all the staff hired locally rather than having an open hiring process or allowing bands to bring their staff. This is a bit of a double edged sword where we are creating a bit of a local maximum for the basque country economy at the expense of a worse average for everyone else (assuming market conditions can create Nash equilibriums). Now I do believe Mondragon has done some fantastic stuff, but they are not without a fault and they also exist thanks to an environment that allows such conditions to exist and do the work they do.

hkt 7y ago
You forget the influence of the church. Much of the origins of the coop businesses come from church oriented communities serving their needs in some way. I'd also argue that lots of relatively limited local maxima where everyone is happy and materially comfortable is a million times better than centralised hell of capitalism as it stands. Limited maybe, but most people won't approach the ceiling in more dynamic places. It's the greatest good for the greatest number.
- TurboHaskal 7y ago
  Well it's Catholic doctrine after all. Edit: Downvoters should read about distributism.
  - jawns 7y ago

totallyunknown 7y ago

It's time for a browser extension that filters out random Wikipedia articles on HN..

tasogare 7y ago

In France, in the game industry, there is Motion Twin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Twin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Twin "Motion Twin is run as an anarcho-syndicalist workers cooperative with equal salary and decision-making power between its members." Also, this is where the Haxe programming language was created.

Ygg2 7y ago
Also, they made the awesome rougelike Dead Cells.
simongray 7y ago
> In August 2019, Motion Twin spun off a new studio, Evil Empire, composed of Dead Cells developers who wanted to continue its development while Motion Twin moved to a new project. Evil Empire is run by Motion Twin's former head of marketing and is not run as a cooperative, particularly because the company wanted to scale beyond ten employees. Motion Twin continues to participate in Dead Cells decisions. Spawning more small cooperatives when faced with financial success is a pretty nice alternative to a traditional growth strategy.
- leftyted 7y ago
  The quote clearly says that the new company is "not run as a cooperative".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - simongray 7y ago
    You're right. Not sure how I managed to completely misread that. That's a lot more boring then.
- sudoaza 7y ago
  Even large corporations work in small teams and collections of small teams. There is a long tradition of management experiments in classical capitalist corporations, we need to see what works for coops and what needs to be reinvented. But by the looks much is already working out.

aurbano 7y ago

I did some freelance work for their University's Engineering Faculty in ~2014 and it was pretty cool, reading up on them here now I can see how their coop nature influenced their research, as a lot of it was about making sure that workers and management both felt important and appreciated. My work was on some "business simulators" for a management course they were preparing.You would first pick what kind of response you'd like from your employees or clients (i.e. "passion" - they would consider their project worthwhile, back the vision, realize that people are key... ) and then you'd be able to control 15 management parameters (like job security, management transparency, salary range, leadership style, training... ) then you'd see a chart with the output and even see "thoughts" that your employees would probably have.

antr 7y ago

I wouldn't hold Mondragon Corporation to a very high standard. Back in 2005-06 the company I worked in was intending to acquire Mondragon's wind turbine business (Ecotecnia). This was finally acquired by Alstom. During the due diligence we saw the high level of political corruption, and terrorism financing Mondragon was involved in. Very distrubing. Once we saw this, we stopped looking at the acquisition.

thundergolfer 7y ago
Got anything I can look at regarding the financing of terrorism? Wouldn’t that be extremely illegal and would absolutely need to be reported to the government?
- antr 7y ago
  We did. The Mondragon Group already had some history of financing terrorism(1), but we didn't know affiliates outside the Basque Country could be involved. Ecotecnia was based in Barcelona. (1): http://www.interior.gob.es/noticias/detalle/-/journal_content/56_INSTANCE_1YSSI3xiWuPH/10180/1186104/ http://www.interior.gob.es/noticias/detalle/-/journal_conten...
  - therrazerr 7y ago
    so one individual that works in the corp was detained, and suddenly the whole organization finances terrorism? very convincing
  - dordoka 7y ago
    That link describes how a MCC worker was taken into custody, being charged with some degree of terrorism collaboration. He got out on bail 2 days after. [1] Caja Laboral was not involved and they even fired that worker sortly after his detention (next day). [2] I fail to see how that link proofs that the "Mondragon Group already had some historry of financing terrorism". [1]https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20020531/51262755730/libertad-bajo-fianza-para-el-directivo-de-caja-laboral-detenido-por-colaboracion-con-eta.html https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20020531/51262755730/l... [2]https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20020530/51262755722/caja-laboral-releva-de-su-puesto-al-directivo-detenido-ayer-por-colaboracion-con-eta.html https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20020530/51262755722/c...

mojuba 7y ago

There's a "sister" concept of this called steward-ownership, promoted by this German organization: https://purpose-economy.org/en/ https://purpose-economy.org/en/ They have a lot of interesting materials and case studies (Bosch, Zeiss and others). Basically you can form an LLC the majority of which will be owned by the employees and will also guarantee that the company can never be acquired. There are a few schemes that can attract investments on special fixed terms, such as redeemable shares with 3x return. This type of companies live much longer on average, according to some studies, and are also more stable and less prone to economic crises. Anyway, fascinating stuff. I'm seriously considering steward ownership for my next company now.

nickbauman 7y ago
This is another form of cooperative, especially in early stage. Once the cooperative gets established, you eventually want to become a C Corp to be able to manage investments for your employees and plan on an orderly succession.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Your confusing the coop with the company here - worker coop structures can get complex. eg abc.coop may 100% own abc.com, the employees of abc.com will be members of abc.coop

LatteLazy 7y ago

Does anyone know how you become an employee-owner (or cease to be one) at Mondragon? Is it a matter of buying in or length of service or are some roles owners and other roles just not?

TheNorthman 7y ago
https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a-member/ https://drpop.org/mondragon-how-do-you-become-a-member/ > The path to becoming a member of one of the cooperatives begins much like any other employment relationship – a position must be available, and the individual needs to be the right person for the job, as well as pre-disposed to cooperation. Once that is established, the worker is hired into a six-month contract as a temporary employee, much like the provisional period for many employees in a conventional enterprise. > Depending on the proven suitability of the employee for the job and the availability of long-term work in the company, a good employee may be proposed for membership, or in cases where long-term work is not yet available, offered a renewed contract (for no more than three years). In some cases, “unsuitable” workers, who just don’t work out, may be asked to leave. > Once membership is mutually accepted, the worker has 36 months to contribute his or her initial capital share of €15,000 , which represents the system’s minimum annual salary. This can be amortized through salary deductions, or in some cases borrowed from a bank as “capital to work.” > At any given time at least 80% of the workers of any Mondragon cooperative must be full-fledged members.
- LatteLazy 7y ago
  Perfect thanks. That all seems fair. I wonder how many people are put off by the 15k buy in? That's about 500 euros a month for 2.5 years. That's a lot for many workers imho. I wonder if its tax deductable...
  - yochaigal 7y ago
    They don't pay for it all at once. They get a loan from the co-op bank (Laboral Kutxa).

gloria_89 7y ago

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pg_bot 7y ago

The reason why Mondragon was able to grow to its current size is their credit union Caja Laboral. Under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco "people's savings banks" were allowed to offer higher interest rates than competing banks. Therefore local citizens would deposit their funds in Caja Laboral, which would fund more cooperative businesses. There's nothing special about the region or the culture, if you artificially favor a certain type of business structure then you will get more it. Mondragon is a classic case of incentives at work.

kgwgk 7y ago
And what about the rest of the country where credit unions also exist but we didn’t get more (at least not that much) of that type of artificially favoured business structure?
- pg_bot 7y ago
  I would argue that you did get more across the country, but the question is why is Mondragon more successful. The other benfit they had was the isolation of the Basque region in Spain during the 1950s. They weren't served by railroads and the region itself is quite mountainous, so for regular people they tended to be the only game in town. In fact, their slogan at the time was "savings or suitcases". In other places credit unions would compete with each other so you couldn't establish a dominant position in the way that Caja Laboral did. Liberalization of the banking industry in Spain during the 1970s tended to level the playing field further. So you have the right mixture for a single dominant cooperative in Mondragon.
- narag 7y ago
  There are more around the country. It's very successful model in certain sectors like agriculture.

hooverlunch 7y ago

There are lots of small tech worker coops in the U.S. and Canada. See https://techworker.coop https://techworker.coop. I co-founded one, Sassafras Tech Collective, in Ann Arbor. It's been an amazing journey. I don't think I could ever go back to working in a non-democratic workplace.

jboynyc 7y ago
Cool, thanks for chiming in here. > I don't think I could ever go back to working in a non-democratic workplace. I would love to read a bit more about that sometime.
- hooverlunch 7y ago
  We are about to roll out a blog! Check https://sassafras.coop https://sassafras.coop in a month or two...
  - orthecreedence 7y ago
    Where did you register your .coop domain?
    - hooverlunch 7y ago
      First at Gaiahost, which has since gone out of business. Now at gandi.net.
kortilla 7y ago
Can you speak to the downsides of a democratic workplace? How do you avoid the pitfalls of a union where people end up getting compensated for things like seniority instead of skill?
- nickbauman 7y ago
  A union is not a coop, so the forces are not the same at all. Furthermore, it's not clear that "seniority" would trump "skill" in a co-op, either. Or that the opposite is true of a more "traditional" workplace. The job of each worker-owner is, in part, to help other worker owners developer their strengths to their fullest for the benefit of co-op. An employee-owned co-operative corporation (EOCC) governs as form of direct democracy. In my experience, your biggest obstacle is going to be collective decision-making. How well you do that is a test of the people in the co-op. Consider: management is just another skill, not a rank. You don't have a boss. You have people who are counting on you. Management serves at the pleasure of the worker-owners.

irthomasthomas 7y ago

I thought Chomsky's quote was interesting. "Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker owned, it’s not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive, you're compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others."

macspoofing 7y ago
It's easy for anyone to take potshots from the sidelines, but surely Chomsky sees the economic, and humanitarian disasters that non-market based systems ALWAYS result in. What's the alternative here?
- ianleeclark 7y ago
  The quote there seems to have issues with the profit motive, not market systems.
  - wuliwong 7y ago
    In my mind a "market systems" implicitly includes prices which means there would then be profit and loss. I could imagine a market of 100% barter and no generally accepted currency but I do not think that is what most people mean when they use the term "market systems." There is a lot I'm unaware of, possibly market systems without prices is one of those things?
    - ianleeclark 7y ago
      > In my mind a "market systems" implicitly includes prices which means there would then be profit and loss. Why does a price necessarily include a profit or a loss? This is a self-referential belief: my price includes a profit or loss because a prior price includes a profit or loss which would earlier ... etc, etc.

patcon 7y ago

There's a really inspiring federation of 40-ish tech worker co-ops in Argentina called FACTTIC[1], who have been developing a neat process called FIT[2] by which they share work amongst themselves via regular check-in calls. It's almost like they're part of a big meta-company together that shared opportunities based on their needs (e.g., who needs the money the most, etc.) Here's a video of a presentation they gave on the format: https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing-work-other-coops https://agaric.coop/blog/show-and-tell-agaric-sharing-work-o... The most exciting part is that they're now trying to share the model with tech worker co-ops abroad, and maybe even figure out how to build similar trust between international co-ops. Disclaimer: I'm a member of a new tech worker co-op in Toronto, Canada (Hypha[3]), and have a big crush on FACTTIC. [1]: https://facttic.org.ar/ https://facttic.org.ar/ [2]: https://facttic.org.ar/fit/ https://facttic.org.ar/fit/ [3]: https://hypha.coop https://hypha.coop

iagovar 7y ago
Could coops constitute, at least, a partial solution to ageism? Many of the US commenters have expressed their frustration and experiences in this regard, perhaps cooperatives can serve as a good quality alternative. Perhaps the problem is that it seems a model that fits more with consulting than with a product company.
- patcon 7y ago
  Hm. Interesting. I mean, I'm biased, but I believe it could. An analogy I'm trying with friends is that a worker co-op is less like a company that does a specific thing, and more like a ship that sails where it's members wish it to go. It might present as a solid "WE ARE A COMPANY THAT DOES X", but it only does that so long as that serves its members. If the destination doesn't serve the crew, they create a new destination, they don't necessarily ditch crew members. Also, the crew doesn't worry about the ship sailing away without them :)
rolleiflex 7y ago
We've been working with Hypha for the past few months mentioned above and it's been a good experience. My understanding is they're pretty selective about what sort of projects they take, but it's worth a shot.

sproketboy 7y ago

What about it? Fucking commies go home.

jwaldrip 7y ago

I found out about Mondragon after watching http://ownershipeconomy.net/ http://ownershipeconomy.net/ and learning more about distributism.

usrusr 7y ago

While I do have a strong soft spot for the dreamy leftist ideal of worker cooperatives (and I'm happy and impressed that an example as big and long-living as Mondragon exists), I've recently started to find the much less anticapitalistic concept of b2b buyer cooperatives far more interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATEV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DATEV for example is doing just fine and feels as corporate as it gets (interviewed there once). What's so interesting about b2b cooperatives? Recently we have seen the rise of market/directory platforms in fields where the network effect is so strong that it's impossible to sustain real competition for long and once they are effectively monopolistic they can squeeze entire industries dry at will, degenerating into pure rent seeking. Poster child example: there cannot be a second booking.com, the closest they have to competition is airbnb. A buyer cooperative with the explicitly defined mission to just run the platform at low cost would be the perfect antidote and a massive improvement for everybody in the buying sector (those that purchase directory listings) and their customer base. It wouldn't even be an impediment to innovation because frontends could still be a multitude of conventional for-profits, they'd just not compete in listing breadth (they'd all get the same offers from the coop backend). Works roughly like that in the airline industries, despite multiple competing backends. The big difference: those backends are (were?) owned by airlines, not by outsiders trying to maximise value extraction.

EGreg 7y ago

There is also REI Collective in the USA Real socialism is: Mitchell Lama Housing Cooperatives Food Cooperatives Credit Unions Employee Owned Companies I define socialism as collective ownership of the means of production. By that broad definition, the public stock market — a quintessentially capitalist institution — would also be socialist, since corporations own most of the means of production in this country. So the definition needs to be refined a la Richard Wolff ... namely, DEMOCRACY inside an institution is socialism. One person - one vote. The extreme opposite of that is one share one vote where one person has so many shares that whatever he says goes: https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-investors-cant-remove-mark-zuckerberg-and-that-s-a-problem-f07d3ce7e113 https://medium.com/swlh/facebook-investors-cant-remove-mark-... All of us who run a startup probably begin in a capitalist structure, but could be encouraged to transition to a socialist structure by giving employees more voting power once the business is thriving: 1. https://amp.ft.com/content/8a70b692-0967-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957a67 https://amp.ft.com/content/8a70b692-0967-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957... 2. https://www.hrcapitalist.com/2020/02/cards-against-humanity-buys-small-company-makes-it-employee-owned.html https://www.hrcapitalist.com/2020/02/cards-against-humanity-... I specifically thought to choose the domain “hrcapitalist” for their comments on this move to socialism: ”Cards of Humanity is doing an acquihire with a twist with this acquisition - they found a troubled company for sale, and believed in the talent that existed. BUT - this form of acquihire transfers wealth to the talent not directly to their bank account, but by giving them ownership in the company. That's a powerful retention tool, and if for some reason they can't make it work, the talent is sure to remember that Cards gave them a chance to save the company and turn it around through their investment and subsequent transfer of ownership. Moving acquired talent to ownership positions is a powerful play.” This is what capitalists had to say about a move to socialism in this case. I would argue that socialist institutions (much different than state-capitalism or its near-synonym: state-socialism) are preferred to capitalist ones, in the marketplace. People form lines around the block stretching for years to get into the Mitchell Lama housing cooperatives in NYC. They have far lower costs than landlord-owned buildings, and yet the same level of facilities or better. They are effectively nonprofits, because they are run by and for the cooperators. Few vacancies because many people don’t want to leave, unlike the high turnover and 12%+ vacancy rate in privately owned buildings. I suspect credit unions vs banks are similar. Workers in a company would not vote to ship their own jobs overseas or do massive layoffs. So do I advocate libertarian socialism? Yes. I want to see more institutions be democratically governed, like many universities are close to it, etc. Note: SOCIALISM is different than SOCIAL DEMOCRACY which is typically done on a city or state level to tax capitalist organizations and give public services and universal safety nets to everyone. However, socialism isn’t a panacea. Newcomers are still hazed and treated just like countries treat peniless immigrants. So we need social democracy too. Perhaps one day social democracy will take place on a global level. (We are working on that at intercoin.org) Finally... I should say there are better systems than socialism and capitalism, that involve UBI AND COLLABORATION rather than HUNGER AND COMPETITION. They are primarily gift economies found in the information space, and include: Science Open Source Software Wikipedia The Web Cryptocurrency (as it was originally intended, ie scalable tech not the monolithic blockchain crap) was going to let the network be owned by participants and even VCs loved it for a hot second until the non scalability killed it (we’re working on that too). Wikipedia vs Britannica Web vs AOL Science vs Private Alchemy WebKit vs IE You get the idea. Who wins? Hint: not the capitalism.

wwatson 7y ago

We have a software cooperative in Austin Texas (vulk.coop). We also have a monthly virtual (using zoom) and in-person meetup group https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives if you want to know more about software cooperatives. There are papers on cooperatives found here: https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives/about/ https://www.meetup.com/Austin-Software-Co-operatives/about/. If you want more information (or even if you just want to rigorously debate) about organic entities, worker owned entities, cooperatives, etc., I would join that group.

abawany 7y ago
I am a member of the meetup and like the fact that most of the discussions are held online to enable remote attendance.

yochaigal 7y ago

I've visited Mondragon, both the city (and the region) as well as many of the co-ops themselves. I did a small slideshow/presentation for those interested: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EFgwKNLgRgQQf8Kv236_vUzUMzyOavQZdT2ABxn8m0g/edit https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EFgwKNLgRgQQf8Kv236_...

Pfhreak 7y ago

I'm surprised that more disaffected tech folk aren't starting their own coops. People in companies like Especially in places like Seattle and San Francisco, where there are strong lefty communities. I wonder if we'll see the folks who get frustrated with the policies of Google/Amazon/etc splinter off to form coops.

scrollbar 7y ago
Yeah. I had been trying to do it for awhile but there's surprisingly little activity around here in our sector (Oakland/SF tech) My partners of the consultancy we founded last year decided to go this route. There aren't many great local examples to learn from so we're kind of figuring it out as we go. Obviously B2B tech/software/consulting is very different than for example Arizmendi, a local cooperative bakery. If anyone else is interested or involved in coops in the Bay Area, please let me know and I'd be happy to meet up. kyle@greendata.ai
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  Right? I look at Seattle and think "There should totally be a thriving tech coop scene here". But I think it's because of risk -- leaving a FAANG to found a tech coop is a risk. Why give up $400k/year for a moonshot?
cooperka 7y ago
I recommend checking out the annual Nonprofit Software Dev Summit in Oakland if you're interested in this. There are numerous folks from tech cooperatives who attend. Last year was amazing https://devsummit.aspirationtech.org/ https://devsummit.aspirationtech.org/

caffed 7y ago

Shameless plug :-) Democracy at Work Institute: https://institute.coop/ https://institute.coop/

zackmorris 7y ago

Does anyone know the best state(s) in which to base a cooperative? Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming are the best for corporations, the main goal being to avoid corporate income taxes: https://www.legalnature.com/guides/top-states-for-incorporation-delaware-nevada-and-wyoming-explained https://www.legalnature.com/guides/top-states-for-incorporat... Related to that, is there something to be said for basing a cooperative/corporation in your home city/state specifically to bring in tax income for schools, infrastructure, police, firefighters, etc? What about nonprofit corporations, is this a nonissue for them? In Boise, ID (where I live), HP and Micron/Crucial have enjoyed tax breaks for years as an incentive to be based here. But people have speculated that those breaks made it harder for other tech companies to compete here, because their tax burden lowered the wages they could offer. That may have set back the startup scene here for many years. It also potentially raises residential property taxes since someone has to pay for those incentives, and that's become a major issue as more people move here. I worked at HP for a year as a contractor 15 years ago and it was wonderful, so I'm not disparaging them. I'm just curious to see what others think of this issue.