Las Cooperativas Mondragon, un modelo para un mundo en crisis

El mundo capitalista se encuentra sumergido en una profunda crisis de la que nadie tiene claro cómo salir. Una crisis en la que es evidente que algunos se hacen ricosa costa de que muchos se empobrecen. No es difícil, por lo tanto, que muchos trabajadores y economistas, busquen modelos que les alejen de los modelos capitalistas tradicionales y que, a un tiempo, sean factibles, eficaces y operativos.

Tampoco es difícil entender por qué sus miradas se detienen en el modelo cooperativo vasco y en especial en el modelo de las Cooperativas Mondragón. Nosotros aquí hemos recogido decenas de informaciones sobre cómo el mundo mira a una de las joyas de la corona de la economía vasca, que es a su vez un ejemplo de cómo el sistema cooperativo es mucho más que una utopía socialista.

Dos ejemplos para introducir las informaciones que sobre el modelo cooperativo vasco incorporamos en esta entrada  a nuestra web:

• Hace poco recogíamos la información (en dos entradas) que emitía la BBC y en el que resultaban especialmente interesantes las declaraciones de Manuel Escudero, Director de la Deusto Business School que indica como una clave del éxito económico vasco la “profunda cultura del igualitarismo” de la sociedad vasca.
• Hace un poco más de tiempo recogíamos cómo el mayor sindicato industrial norteamericano había firmado una cuerdo con la Cooperativa Mondragon para llevar el modelo vasco a los Estados Unidos

Las referenciamos de forma especial porque tienen mucho que ver con las informaciones que les traemos aquí, y que presentan a las cooperativas vascas como un modelo a seguir. Dos actuales y una publicada por The Guardian (de nuestro admirado diario británico) que se nos escapó en el mes de junio, pero que recuperamos aquí ya que, además, esta citada en otra de las informaciones.

 Naked Capitalism – 28/8/2012 – USA

The Promise and Circumscribed Potential of Worker-Owned Businesses

While our prolonged economic downturn is concentrating power and wealth in fewer and fewer hands, it is also stimulating efforts to create more democratic business models. Today’s Financial Times highlights an increased interest in worker cooperatives, with the Basque’s Mondragon as the model. From a June article in the Guardian: MC [Mondragon Corporatio] is composed of many co-operative enterprises grouped into four areas: industry, finance, retail and knowledge. In each enterprise, the co-op members (averaging 80-85% of all workers per enterprise) collectively own and direct the enterprise. Through an annual general assembly the workers choose and employ a managing director and retain the power to make all the basic decisions of the enterprise (what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits)… In short, MC worker-members collectively choose, hire and fire the directors, whereas in capitalist enterprises the reverse occurs. One of the co-operatively and democratically adopted rules governing the MC limits top-paid worker/members to earning 6.5 times the lowest-paid workers. Nothing more dramatically demonstrates the differences distinguishing this from the capitalist alternative organization of enterprises. (In US corporations, CEOs can expect to be paid 400 times an average worker’s salary – a rate that has increased 20-fold since 1965.)…

(Sigue) (Traducción automática)

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Economonitor – 28/8/2012 – USA

The Promise and Circumscribed Potential of Worker-Owned Businesses

While our prolonged economic downturn is concentrating power and wealth in fewer and fewer hands, it is also stimulating efforts to create more democratic business models. Today’s Financial Times highlights an increased interest in worker cooperatives, with the Basque’s Mondragon as the model. From a June article in the Guardian:

(Sigue) (Traducción automática)

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Financial Times -27/8/2012 – USA

When the workers run the show

James Johnson’s father was a garbage collector. His mother worked in the cafeteria of the local school. They now are both unemployed, making ends meet through government subsidy programmes. Mr Johnson, 21, has different plans for his career, building a business where he can never be laid off. Richmond Spokes, the bike shop where he works, has no boss and no owner. It is just months away from becoming a fully-fledged worker-owned co-operative, where all six employees have an equal share in the company and an equal say in how it is run. That sense of power and purpose is something Mr Johnson never had at his previous job doing computer repairs. “The computer store was just another job,” he says. “Every day when I was going to work for the man, I had to keep repairing my bike just to get to the job. I thought, why not just focus on fixing the bikes.”

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Traductor de Google. The Financial Times no admite el sistema atomático de traducción de Google. Es necesario cortar el texto y pegarlo en la página del traductor

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The Guardian – 24/6/2012 – Gran Bretaña

Yes, there is an alternative to capitalism: Mondragon shows the way

There is no alternative (“Tina”) to capitalism? Really? We are to believe, with Margaret Thatcher, that an economic system with endlessly repeated cycles, costly bailouts for financiers and now austerity for most people is the best human beings can do? Capitalism’s recurring tendencies toward extreme and deepening inequalities of income, wealth, and political and cultural power require resignation and acceptance – because there is no alternative?

(Sigue) (Traducción automática)

Last Updated on Ago 29, 2012 by About Basque Country