Even when I was living in a very liberal area, there were only a small handful of stores that advertised as worker co-ops. It’s funny too because those co-op stores were all incredibly popular and successful, so I don’t understand why they are so comparatively rare? The organizational structure seems simple to maintain, and has a high incentive for regular workers to go above and beyond since they directly benefit from the business being successful, so what’s the deal? I am speaking from a US centric view, so maybe things are different in Europe, but even with my limited knowledge I feel like they are relatively unpopular there too, but maybe not? I dunno.

  • kglitch@kglitch.social
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    1 year ago

    The Mondragon Corporation is a federation of worker-owned coops in Basque, Spain that involves 81,000 people and has been running since the 1950s. They have coops for manufacturing, banking, retail and education and they all work together to support each other.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

    The book “From Mondragon to America” (available on Kindle and elsewhere) goes into extensive detail about how it works.