Aaron Perry
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The Mondragon Cooperative Experience
Ander Etxeberria Otadui, the Head of Cooperative Dissemination for the Mondragon Corporation, gives a special “inside glimpse” into the historic and innovative Mondragon Cooperative system – one of the most important economic, entrepreneurial, and business ecosystems modeling social sustainability and community stewardship in a remarkably robust way – an example for the rest of us to study, understand, experience, and emulate. Following a week-long immersive conference at Mondragon (curated by Georgia Kelly’s Praxis Peace Institute (Ep. 137) and hosted by Ander Etxeberria Otadui), podcast host Aaron Perry speaks with Ander in two different settings about Mondragon’s unique cultural ethos, business environment, and social setting.
About the Mondragon Cooperative System
Founded in the 1950s in the Basque town of Mondragon with the guidance of Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta (“Arizmendi”), who advocated “creating God’s Kingdom on Earth,” the Mondragon Cooperative system now includes 80 independent and inter-dependent, cooperatively-owned companies with approximately 69,000 worker-owner members that generate over €10.2 billion (~$11 billion USD) in aggregate annual sales. With businesses in many sectors, ranging from manufacturing to engineering, and from retail sales to research and development, the Mondragon system is one of the world’s largest worker-owned industrial/manufacturing cooperative ecosystem that also has its own university, banking, and insurance cooperatives. Embodying a unique balance between solidarity and business acumen, the Mondragon system delivers cutting-edge competitive advantage in the global economy while also ensuring and maintaining the well-being and equity of its worker-owners and the Basque community in which the cooperatives operate. Indeed, while the Basque region was the poorest region of Spain in the 1950s, it is now the most prosperous – with the highest average income in the entire country. However, you will neither find the mega-mansions and super yachts of extreme wealth nor the travesties of systemic poverty. In Mondragon the entire community lives “in the middle,” and enjoys a cultural milieu in which senior executives, elected public officials, academics, and “blue-collar” and “white-collar” workers all mingle together on a weekly basis in their progressive weekend gatherings, enjoying refreshments and mingling in community together, all on the same level. And this cultural egalitarianism is reflected in a structural requirement of the entire cooperative system: the pay-gap differential doesn’t exceed a ratio of 6:1. That is, unlike the unfettered neoliberal “free-market” capitalism in the United States and elsewhere in the world where senior executives take home some 200-300 times more pay than the workers in their companies, at Mondragon, the highest paid executives’ earnings do not exceed an amount six times the earnings of the lowest-level full-time worker-owner member.
Mondragon has 10 Core Principles:
- Open Admission & Neutrality
- Democratic Organization
- Sovereignty of Labor
- Instrumentality & Subordinate Nature of Capital
- Participatory Management
- Wage Solidarity
- Inter-cooperation
- Social Transformation
- Universality
- Education
Perhaps best epitomizing the esprit de corps of Mondragon is the expression: “We go together!”
About the Basque Region & Basque Culture
Nestled in the northern region of Spain and southwestern region of France, with both a coastal stretch along the Bay of Biscay and a mountainous region in the Pyrenees Mountains, the Basque Region is the historic homeland of the Basque people, a distinct ethnic group whose unique language has no detectable relationship with the vast body of Indo-European languages that include the Romance, Germanic, Slavic, and Indic linguistic family. Some have suggested a linguistic connection to the ancient Atlantean culture of which Plato and many others from antiquity wrote, but this hasn’t been proven, of course. With a rich cultural and culinary heritage, the Basque region has attracted visitors throughout time, notably including author Ernest Hemingway who drafted his famous novel The Sun Also Rises there in and around the spectacular coastal town of San Sebastian. After decades of oppression and struggle under dictator Franco’s fascist regime (1939-1975), during which Hitler’s Nazi Luftwaffe bombed the Basque people as a Blitzkrieg “test run,” the Basque people have emerged as a bastion for human rights, social equity, and economic prosperity that now collaborates with peoples around the world struggling to achieve peace and prosperity. Notably, jurist René Samuel Cassin, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who co-authored the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was from the Basque Region.
About Ander Etxeberria Otadui
Ander Etxeberria Otadui serves as head of Cooperative Dissemination for Mondragon Corporation / Otalora MONDRAGON since eight years ago. He serves annually approximately two thousand people who want to know about the MONDRAGON Cooperative Experience: professionals, students, politicians… And he explains MONDRAGON in different universities and forums around the world.
Previously, he worked in another cooperative of the Corporation, IKERLAN Technology Center, as Personnel Manager, for eleven years and before in the Corporate Center of MONDRAGON in training, for seven years. First studied Technical Engineering at Mondragon University (Arrasate-Mondragón) and then Sociology at Deusto University (Bilbao).
Resources & Related Episodes
22 Video “Explore Mondragon” Series: exploremondragon.com
Praxis Peace Institute (Curator of Immersion Seminars at Mondragon): https://www.praxispeace.org/
Ep 147 – Jorge Fontanez, CEO, B Lab USA & Canada
Ep 137 – Georgia Kelly, Executive Director, Praxis Peace Institute, RE: Mondragon Cooperatives
Ep 129 – Bernard Amadei, Founder, Engineers Without Borders
Ep 109 – Dr. Robert Cloninger, MD, PhD, “Psychology of Stewardship, Happiness, & Hope”
Ep 65 – Eric Lombardi, “Social Enterprise & Protecting the Commons”
Ep 63 – David Bronner, CEO, Dr. Bronner’s (a 3rd generation “Social Enterprise”)
Ep 36 – Nicole Vitello, President, Produce Division, Equal Exchange Cooperative
Ep 25 – Hunter Lovins, Founder, Natural Capitalism Solutions; Author, A Finer Future
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth community podcast. I’m your host, Aaron William Perry. And today we’re visiting in
Mondragon, Spain with my friend Ander. Ander Etxeberria Otadui at the Mondragon cooperatives. Ander, it’s such a joy to be with you. And I’m so happy we can do a podcast with you.
It is a pleasure. Wonderful to have this opportunity to share with our audience some of the magic of the Mondragon cooperatives, but also to demystify the structures, the strategies, the very practical.
Things that you and your community are doing here. This is a very important idea. This is something real. We are normal people. Normal people are everywhere in the world. Why not something similar to Mondragon everywhere in the world?
Absolutely. Ander, Ander Etxeberria Otadui is head of cooperative dissemination in Mondragon for eight years. He serves annually approximately 2,000 people who want to know about the Mondragon cooperative experience, professionals, students, politicians. And he explains and shares with incredible expertise. I will add the Mondragon to different universities and forums all around the world.
Previously, he worked in one of the cooperatives of the Mondragon corporation called Eker Lawn Technology Center as a personnel manager. And that’s for 11 years. And before that, he was at the corporate center of Mondragon in training for seven years.
He studied technical engineering at Mondragon University and also sociology at the Deshtu University in Bilbao. Did I say that correctly? Yes.
Okay. And so here we are at Otadui Lawn, which is one of the very important hubs of the entire Mondragon ecosystem. And I was hoping Ander to kind of kick things off. You could describe to us, what is the Mondragon ecosystem? How many people are we talking about? And what’s happening here at this hub?
We are 80 cooperatives, the cooperatives are in the vast country. Then we have subsidiaries around the world, more than 80 in the United States, in China, in France, in Brazil. We are more or less 69,000 workers in the Mondragon corporation. And the turnover is more or less 10,200 million years per year.
One of the cooperatives is my cooperative is Mondragon headquarters. I am member worker owner of the headquarters. And you know how many people are we working at the headquarters? This is part of the headquarters. We are only 60 people.
In total, in the corporation 69,000 colleagues at the headquarters 60, why only 60? Because cooperatives are autonomous. They have their own general services, their own staff.
Cooperatives are a kind of companies that are friends and they are together in the group in the Mondragon corporation because they want. If there is a cooperative that is not happy in the corporation, can live the corporation.
This is a very important idea to understand Mondragon. Autonomous cooperatives together. And this is part of the headquarters. This is our training center, cooperative and management training center. So, managers of Mondragon come here to learn about negotiation, creativity, coaching.
And our members, they come here to know more about what is a cooperative, what are the values, the way to work in a cooperative. So, we have always many people here.
Yeah, it’s so exciting. And I got to say that at least in the United States, we tend to like to use the word billion, I guess. So, when you hear 10,200 million dollars in gross revenue or euros, that’s approximately 10 to 11 billion dollars US equivalent in annual sales among all of the companies that make up the Mondragon system, is that right?
Yes. Cooperatives are companies. It is about solidarity and about business. We have to be competitive. If we are not competitive, we disappear. There is no cooperative. There is no solidarity. There is no business.
So, we invest every year a lot of money in innovation. The only way to continue existing is innovation.
We’re here for a week long, immersive symposium co-hosted by our friend, Georgia Kelly at the Praxis Peace Institute. And of course, Georgia has been on the Y on Earth community podcast already talking about Mondragon.
And it is Thursday. This is a Monday through Friday experience for us. And Andre and I in the midst of our very busy and lovely schedule, only have a few minutes now at our lunch break to record at this beautiful setting, Oterlora.
And we’re going to continue recording Saturday and get into some more of the detail of the amazing things happening here and how we can think about adapting and applying some of the structures and strategies in our other projects and communities all around the world.
And for me, one of the things that is so beautiful and hopeful about what’s happening at Mondragon is that this is a system within ethic and ethos of taking care of people, competing in the marketplace, expressing innovation for environmental stewardship, for social innovation, for technological innovation.
And it doesn’t leave folks behind. It’s not about a small handful getting extraordinarily rich. Well, so many thousands of people are engaged in the process of developing that capital, that wealth, that opportunity. Instead, you have communities here in this region who all benefit when the companies are doing good by their products, their services, and their innovation.
And this to me is the pattern we need to consider implementing, proliferating and scaling into all kinds of different companies and organizations around the world. What do you think about that?
This is a model that allows not to create rich people, but to create rich societies. We have a good quality of life, workers and in general the society.
It is about a good salary or very good salary, a good health system. This is good for us, but then the aim of our cooperative is to create jobs.
So it is a kind of sharing this with others to allow them to participate in our companies, always being competitive because we are companies.
So this is a very important idea that the founder repeated and repeated. It’s not about rich people, but rich societies. And this is also for everyone.
So wonderful. I know we’re going to get into some of the details. We’re going to talk about the founding visionary, Father Jose Arzmenda, who has a much longer name than that, right?
And the many important principles we’ll talk about this. And I also want to note that in the 1950s when all of this got started, this region in Spain is the poorest region, or one of the most poor regions of Spain. And now is the most affluent, is this region of Spain?
That was very poor, maybe not the poorest in Spain. And today is one of the wealthiest.
But we don’t see this extreme of wildly large, exclusive, gated community wealth here and poverty, ghettos, slums over here. We don’t see that the extremes are eliminated, right? Everybody is happily in the middle.
It is about quality of life. I can be very, very rich. But in that case, I need a fence in my house. I need a bodyguard. I think this is not a very high quality of life. This is an old thing.
And so here we are at Oto Lero. And it is such a magnificent building in the shots with the mountains behind and the verdant green valleys below and some of the villages, some of the farmhouses, what a beautiful setting.
And I was hoping you could just tell us a little about this particular building and what’s been happening here, including with our week-long symposium. This has been our sort of headquarters meeting place, lunch place. Can you tell us a bit about that, the history and what’s happening here now?
The building is a 14th century building. At that time it was a castle in medieval times. Then it was a palace, then a farm. And since 40 years ago, it’s part of modern, it’s our 20th century.
So it is a very important hub for us, managers and general workers of the cooperatives, members. And of course we have also visitors, very important visitors, that what we do is to share what we have. We think that this is important for the world.
It is another kind of company, another way to do business. We think that it’s good for us and for the rest. And this is the message that we want to show in this building. And that we want to show thanks to this podcast and when we give a conference.
We say, or some people say about us, ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Absolutely wonderful. And a perfect tagline, if you will, for what you’re up to and for this movement toward the regeneration, renaissance of kindness, decency, innovation and stewardship.
And so under its fabulous, we could record here a bit today and we’ll do the rest of our conversation shortly. So we’ll piece that together for the episode. And thanks so much for joining the podcast.
So under its so great to be with you again, we started recording our episode a couple of days ago at Ota Laura. And now we’re in the town of Mondragon. And at your astronomy club, it’s Saturday morning. And we had so much fun last night.
Wondering around the town with your friends and experiencing the socializing, which is really unique. And we’ll talk about that. And yeah, we are going to have some time to talk through many of the details and the important information about what’s going on here at the Mondragon cooperatives for our audience. And so, yeah, thanks again for taking the time to visit with us.
You’re welcome. So maybe just to kick things off, tell us a little about this gastronomy club that we’re in right now, because I think it’s an important example of some of the fabric of the community here in the Basque region.
This is an organization, a club for to have fun, to be with our friends with our family, to have lunch dinner, the name are gastronomic clubs or chocos. And they were born first in the capital of this territory of this province in San Sebastian in the 19th century.
And then it spread in all the Basque Country. In this town, there are 22 clubs. And a club is a place to be with your friends, your families, or to be alone, just reading, working, drinking something. And especially, there is a kitchen to cook and to share the food, the meal with the people that you love.
There are 22 clubs in the town of Mondragon. Classs are organized democratically. There is a general assembly to take the most important decisions. And there is a management board with representatives of the members that take the daily decisions.
We pay a fee if we are accepted as a member. And then every year in this club, the name of this club is Amica Basté. We pay 220 euros per year. And I can use this facility whenever I want.
If I want to have a lunch, I have to go to the blackboard and to reserve the table. And I can be with me with my friends in one table and in another table, another family, another group of friends.
And it doesn’t matter what kind of people. It can be in the same table, rank and file workers, managers, repeaters of companies.
This is something common in the Basque area in our clubs. And of course, this is something that is self organized. That means that we trust on each other.
Because if I take in our bar four bottles, I have to put in the computer in my name four bottles. Then I’m going to pay through my bank account.
It is about price, scenario to our properties.
Yeah, it really is a working living example of a pattern of governance and stewardship and responsibility that we see throughout the cooperative system of businesses, some of these businesses, many hundreds of millions of dollars or euros per year and sell very large enterprises.
And I’m really excited to talk a bit about the different types of businesses that are in the overall ecosystem.
But I think that before doing so, I want to drill a little deeper into the cultural ethos, right? This spirit of trust, this spirit of self organizing, this spirit of egalitarianism.
It was so kind of you to invite me to tag along with you and your buddies last night, Friday night, everybody’s out.
Whether it’s the senior executives of the largest industrial manufacturing companies or folks doing any manner of work, school teachers, all kinds of people in the community together, interacting as a community.
Not, oh, I’m the executive or, oh, I’m the janitor or whatever, it’s friends, it’s family, it’s people who know each other and trust each other and take care of each other, right?
I don’t know if it is about vast values or it is about the conditions. If we, in general, we have jobs, we have good quality jobs, a good salary, a good health system, well, why not to share with your friends, Friday afternoon, taking beers or taking another kind of drink,
and then meeting other people that are not your close friends, but they are in the same bar, in the same square, I think it is natural if there are these conditions, wealth in general in the city.
And one of the things that’s so striking to me about visiting Mondragon is in addition to the very sophisticated approach to business and social safety nets and shared insurance and shared banking and financial services, is this deep culture of care that provides a quality of life that it seems to me, many people in many other parts of the world are longing for.
Striving for, have a sense, it could be better, and here in your community, I experience the quality of life at such a high level.
And one of the things that is so cool about the pattern of socializing is many most of the community in Mondragon have intimate cohorts, maybe you could call them a posse or a gang,
or a quadrera, it’s hard for me to say, but this is a group of friends you hang out with, weekend, week out, your whole life since kindergarten, can you tell us a bit about this?
This is also, I don’t know, if it is, this is natural for us, yes, it is cooler because it’s in this part of the world, but our friends, our close friends are forever.
The group of close friends, quadrera is the name, it is born in the killer garden, in a natural way, and then it finishes in the cemetery.
So we live, usually we live, if we are born in a town, we live in that town. Of course, we travel and we pass six months in another country for academic reasons or for job reasons, but usually we are in the area, in the area, our whole life.
So we have our friends since kindergarten, and we meet with these friends every two or three times per week, especially due to weekend.
Yeah, I had a lot of fun joining with your quadrera last night and meeting so many wonderful folks as we were moving around the town.
It was a progressive party, really, going from one bar to the next, and I loved reading in some of Hemingway’s literature, this idea of the progressive party, and it seems he absolutely experiences that here, spending so much time in the Basque region, eh?
Friday is special because after five days working is the first time that you meet that week with your friends.
So we have conversations about local things, personal things, but also about international matches.
And it is not just meeting your friends, but you are in a bar with your friends, and then you go to another bar, and in one bar or another bar, you meet a classmate, you meet a colleague of your office, or you meet a relative, and you also have a conversation because always you have something to say to other people.
Yes, so it is a good, especially a good day, Friday.
It seems to me that that kind of community fabric allows for a mode and quality of communication among many different members of the community that also shows up in the architecture, the structure of the Mondragon cooperative system of businesses, and I want to transition and invite you to explain to us the what, what is the Mondragon cooperative system?
Can you paint us the picture to help us understand what’s going on here and how it’s so unique relative to how we see businesses usually organized in other parts of the world?
On the one hand, we have cooperatives, and on the other hand, we have the group, the corporation.
These are joined to a group, that is, model corporation. This is the model model, both.
The cooperatives are working on, so I am a member of a cooperative. I work in that cooperative, and I am a proprietor of that cooperative.
It is a cooperative, that means that it is a company, an enterprise. It has, in the case of a cooperative, one site that is solidarity, the other site that is business.
If it is too much solidarity, it fails. If it is especially above all, business is not a cooperative.
It is a very, very important competitiveness. Then, I am a member, I am a worker, I have one vote.
And we vote in the General Assembly, for a spare year. We don’t vote every day. We don’t vote every week. For operational decisions, we have managers.
And what we do with profits, because we want to have profits, to continue existing, an important part of the profits, go to reserves, to invest in new machines, new technology, to continue being very competitive.
10% of the profits, the low, here, the vast cooperative low, says it has to go to the society, sports, clubs, cultural clubs, non-governmental organizations, and the rest, 20, 30% of the net profits for the workers.
And in the case of the members of the cooperative, most of the workforce are members. In that case, profits go to the capital.
Because when I am accepted as a member, I put the capital, an initial capital. We have profit, the capital goes out. We have losses, the capital goes down.
And I take the capital at the end, when I finish working in the cooperative.
This is the cooperative. What about the corporation? There are some rules. One of the rules, for example, is relocation of workers.
If I am a member of a cooperative, and one day there is no work for me in my cooperative, I have the right to work in another cooperative of the corporation.
And if there is no work for me in the rest of the cooperatives, I have the right to be trained.
I have the skill in rescuing, so I am going to have more opportunities to work in another cooperative of the corporation.
And if still there is no work for me in the corporation, I have the right to get an employment benefit for maximum three years.
This is a very important mechanism that we share in the corporation. And there is another one that is called Pulling of Results,
and means that at the end of the year, cooperatives that earn more money, help cooperatives that earn less money, or cooperatives that lose money.
How they help with money. That means that at the end of the year, in the corporation, this is the difference between the cooperatives.
We apply this mechanism, and this is the difference. We go together. All this is the modern one model.
And we go together, reminds me of one of the many slogans and wisdom sayings coming from father Aras Mendi, who was such a potent leader and catalyst in the community helping to create this entire system back in the 1950s.
Can you tell us a bit about the backstory, the history, how this all got started so many decades ago?
Aras Mendi Aras was a Catholic priest. He was born close to Bilbao, 40 kilometers from here in a town called Marquina.
And two years after the Spanish Civil War, in 1941, he came to the town of Moderna. And it was a kind of earthquake, a positive earthquake.
He met young people, young people whose parents during the war were fighting in different sides, but with Aras Mendi Aras they were together.
And they started organizing different kinds of activities, sports activities, cultural activities, and little by little the town is changing.
It was after the war. In 1943, he set up a vocational level school, the School of Professional, to give training opportunities to the young people in the region.
This is called a professional, today is Mondaón University. So, 1941, cultural activities, sports activities, 1943, education.
And among these young people, Aras Mendi Aras is going to identify the most leaders, and he’s going to convince them to study technical engineering at the university.
It was not possible for them, because they had not enough money, enough resources to access to university studies.
That was the case of the 99% of the society at that time here. But Aras Mendi Aras reached an agreement with a university in the east of Spain, and thanks to this agreement, they could study by distance, by correspondence.
So, they are going to be these young people living and working in the town of Mondaón, and then the Aras Mendi Aras is going to provide them a teacher, the afternoon evening night, to study, and so they are going to go to the university only 15 days per year to do the exams.
So, Aras Mendi Aras had engineers. He had plans, he wanted to change, to transform the society, to do a better world, and an important tool for that is a company, because we are working in a company, an important part of our day.
And Mendi Aras tried to convince the proprietors of the companies at that time in the town of Mondaón to be a fairer company, to put in the center of the company, not the capital, but people, but it was not successful.
And after years and years of activism and education, in 1956, they created these engineers, with Aras Mendi Aras, the first operative.
And that operative, as it was created by five engineers, the name of the operative was Ullwar, because they used the family name of the five founders.
That’s incredible. And I think for some of us, when we hear the word cooperative, we may not understand that while the internal culture is very much egalitarian and very much taking care of everybody in the system, very, very different from how some of the businesses are running the United States and elsewhere around the world.
On the other hand, there is an extreme sophistication and competitiveness, and not only in the arena of research and development, but also in the arena of competing in the international global markets.
You guys are selling your products and services to many nations around the world, to many other corporations around the world.
It’s an extremely interesting dynamic to me to have such a hyper competitive approach to the global economy on the one hand, and a cooperative approach to the treatment of everybody in the businesses on the other hand.
Maybe you could tell us a little bit about this, because I think sometimes the reality of the competitive advantages that the monogon system has may not be immediately apparent to folks not familiar.
Egalitarian is relative. I think that we don’t think that it’s so egalitarian in the system. It is egalitarian in terms of giving opportunities to everyone, opportunities for education, especially.
Then, at work, yes, I have one vote. Another member also has one vote, and we use this vote in the general assembly for the most important decisions, but during the year, operational decisions are taken by managers.
They have been elected by our representatives. And what about the salaries? If we say, well, this is egalitarian, all the salaries would be the same.
The same amount of money for every member or every worker, this is the case. The difference, there is a difference, because the company has to have incentives.
We have to have incentives. And the difference is not a big difference if we compare our company with other companies that are not cooperatives, the difference is one to six.
So the lowest salary in the cooperative is one. The highest is maximum six. So egalitarian is something relative. We don’t think that this is very egalitarian.
As I have said, it should be egalitarian, especially egalitarian, about giving the same opportunities to everyone to study.
Just to emphasize the point, a one to six pay differential limit in the entire system compared with many of the largest companies elsewhere in the world where we see one to one hundred, one to two hundred.
The one to six is a very significant design parameter in the system.
This is true. If we compare us with big companies around the world, one to six is very, very small. But if we ask or I ask my colleagues, or some of my colleagues, especially rank and file workers, what about the difference?
What do you think about one to six difference? They say, this is a very big difference.
It’s so interesting. Things can be so relative, as you say.
Speaking of size of companies, just to reiterate, because I think during our introduction at O to Laura, we may have mentioned this, the entire system of cooperatives is generating somewhere around ten or eleven billion euros in sales per year.
Not roughly eleven, twelve billion dollars in equivalent. I’m not trying to do the conversion math in my head with too much precision, but somewhere in that neighborhood.
That is a sizable company in the aggregate, a sizable presence in the marketplace.
What is aggregated across what is it about 80 different individual autonomous cooperatives? Can you tell us a bit about the types of cooperatives and the relative sizes of cooperatives among the 80 or so that make up the entire system?
The first cooperative, 1956, was industrial. We are in the third model and this is an industrial area since medieval times.
At that time, we are going to create a company. It is normal to be an industrial company and in this case, a cooperative.
So we have industrial cooperatives and then they thought that this is an important tool, the cooperative model, to do a better world so they started creating more cooperatives.
Not just the people that set up the first cooperative, but there were older people in the town and in the area that said, we also want to do this kind of companies.
They are successful and they are failure. So once and each other, they started creating cooperatives.
And I like to say that as the right brothers that invented the R-class, so it is said that the right brothers, they didn’t know that flying is impossible.
Our people, they didn’t know that any kind of company is possible or it is impossible to create.
So they created agricultural cooperatives, housing cooperatives, created cooperatives, consumer cooperatives, educational cooperatives, fishing cooperatives, different kind of cooperatives.
Today, we are 80 cooperatives. For big areas, retail, finance, knowledge and industry.
And some of our cooperatives have subsidiaries around the world. They own companies 100% or maybe 10% because of an alliance with another company outside.
We have more than 80 subsidiaries around the world. These companies around the world, in the United States, in France, in Brazil, in China. They are not cooperatives.
And then we also have for the corporation to function 23 umbrella companies. 69,000 workers in total.
I’m just making a little note here. Yeah, it’s so impressive.
We have the opportunity this week, right, on this beautiful week-long immersive symposium
co-hosted by the Praxis Peace Institute, our friend, Georgia Kelly, who’s also been on the podcast previously.
We have the opportunity in this beautiful week-long experience that you’ve curated for us on there to visit many of the cooperatives.
And we went into one of the big industrial manufacturing facilities, for example.
We went to the large retail grocery store, but it’s more than a grocery store.
It’s kind of got everything like a Costco or a Walmart back in the United States.
And this retail grocery store is a sizable company.
Can you explain to us a bit about how big the retail store is?
How many people are involved? How many stores there are?
The name of the retail cooperatives, the consumer cooperatives is Eroski.
And Eroski has more than 25,000 workers, more than 1,500,000 consumer members.
They have more than 1,500 stores, especially in the northeast of Spain.
And it is a consumer cooperative, that is part of the modern model, that means that workers are members.
As I have said, not all the workers are members, but most of them.
So, workers are members, and it is a consumer cooperative.
Consumers are also members.
So, me, for example, I am member, worker member of my cooperative.
My cooperative is Modern Headquarters.
This is a cooperative, one of the 80 cooperatives of the corporation.
And I am consumer member of Eroski.
Eroski, the general assembly of Eroski has 500 representatives, 500 delegates, 250,
worker members, 250, consumer members.
It is very interesting.
We also had the opportunity to visit Ikarlan, the technology research center.
And my goodness, it was not only an advanced presentation we received,
but the building itself, the campus itself, had such a feeling of sophistication and beautiful design
with many plants and glass and natural daylighting.
And you guys have so many engineers in the ecosystem doing all kinds of advanced research and development
and serving businesses outside the system and inside the system.
And you guys are supplying others like Tesla, for example, in the automobile industry.
Can you paint for us a bit of a picture about what’s going on with the R&D cooperatives
and how that relates to what’s going on with some of the industrial cooper-
other industrial cooperatives and other customers and clients that you guys are serving in the global market?
The beginning is the founder, Arizmendi Arreta, that repeated that you have to be the best.
What are you going to do? These products are going to offer this service.
You have to be the best. You have to be competitive.
If you are not competitive, you disappear.
So since 1974, we have Ikarlan, the first technological research center of the corporation
and one of the first in the vast country.
Today, there are 13 technological research centers more in the corporation
and they are working just for the cooperatives but for every other company in the world.
Yes, they are open to do research for any company.
And this is a kind of not fundamental research.
They are not discovered in Bluetooth, but is practice research.
So, especially practice research.
They transfer technology to the companies.
So, companies in this area are especially small and medium-sized.
They have enough resources to do research.
And Ikarlan, our training, our technological research centers,
are to provide them with the technology they need.
So, if Bluetooth is invented, they are going to search an application of Bluetooth for that company.
So, this is especially what they are doing.
And of course, for that, it is not just to transfer technology but they have also to learn about new technologies.
So, they have many PhDs.
And this is something very, very important for the corporation and for other companies.
And in our case, we also have the university that is also open to the society.
And we have the Mono Headquarters colleagues.
One of the departments of my cooperative, Mono Headquarters, is the Innovation Department.
So, they coordinate the university, the cooperatives, and the technological research centers.
They look the world, they monitor the world to see what new technologies are emerging.
And they also invest the corporation, invest in new technology, for example, investing in startups.
So, it is about being always competitive.
Yeah, no doubt about it.
So, there is quite a lot of detail that we can dive into and we have during the course of our week here with you.
And you’ve also produced a whole video series to help further explain the landscape, the ecosystem, what’s happening within this incredible phenomenon.
And we’re not sure if people will have to pay or will have free access, we’ll get it all sorted out before we publish this.
But can you tell us a bit about the video series and what it is in the way of a resource that will help us all even better understand what’s happening at Mondragon?
Mondragon has visitors since the 70s.
And since 20 years ago, Mondragon has one person working full time to explain what is Mondragon.
In the time of Mondragon and traveling around the world.
Now, it’s me, this person.
What about in the pandemic moment?
There were no visitors, no opportunity to travel, so we decided to do a 22 episodes series to explain Mondragon.
And we were working two years, meeting workers, meeting founders, reading books, reading our books, our magazines, our reviews, reading books, writing about Mondragon for by people from outside Mondragon.
We did a great job and this job is today since last year, 22 episodes series.
So in every episode, more or less 10 minutes, we explain one topic about Mondragon.
We explain also what are the most relevant special companies of our corporation.
And it is in three languages.
Basque language, English, Spanish, originally in one language and the other languages using subtitles.
And today, it has a price, small price, but maybe in few months it will be free.
Yes, there was a debate in our cooperative in the corporation.
If it is free, well people are not going to evaluate, to value.
And if it has a price, people are not going to watch.
So the price is a small price, but we are going to think about that.
One of the things we love to do, I didn’t even think to mention this to Andrew ahead of time, but often we’ll develop partnerships where the Y on Earth community gets some sort of a discount access price.
We’ll see if we can negotiate something on that.
But one way or the other, even if it’s the full price, I highly recommend that you check out the video series because there is so much here for us to learn from that is actionable, practical for our efforts.
And you know, this leads me to one of the questions I’ve been burning to ask all week, and I see you wanted to ask something first, so go ahead.
What pages explore Mondragon?
Exploremondragon.com.
And in our show notes, we’ll have that listed along with any other URLs and social media links that you think we ought to include.
So yeah, thank you, exploremondragon.com.
And under this, you know, I’ve really been burning to ask this.
Given the many complex interconnected challenges we’re facing in our communities all around the world, environmental and social.
What is it in the way of perhaps hope and hopefulness that you know you experience Mondragon to provide potentially to the broader world as so many of us are engaged in helping to heal and transform our systems as they in order that they have better, more positive, more healthy impacts on people and on our planet and on how we’re treating each other.
What is the fundamental message you hope our audience takes from this conversation we’re having?
Mondragon is another type of company.
It is a type of company that has a positive impact in the society. Mondragon is not an experiment.
It’s not something that was created three months ago or three years ago, but more than 65 years ago, it works.
And Mondragon works with normal people.
We are not, I don’t know what kind of people, but normal people, ordinary people.
This is an important message. It works with ordinary people.
We are doing still extraordinary things in this society because of this positive impact in the society, but this is possible why not everywhere.
What I say a positive impact is because in this area there are many cooperatives of the Mondragon model and this is the area that has one of the lowest economic inequality in the world.
Yeah, it’s tremendous.
I recall, and I think we may have even mentioned when we first recorded up at Otelora that this region of Spain was among the poorest in the 1950s and among the poorest in the 1950s and is now among the most prosperous in Spain.
And this is an extraordinary transformation.
It was after the war, two years after the end of the Spanish Civil War, when I read Mendelita came here, and I read Mendelita had two options.
One option is there are many things to do. We can do it ourselves or we can wait the government to come here to do to fill these needs.
So for Mendelita, it was also important the quote that John Fitzgerald Kennedy used it, that is don’t ask about what the country can do for you, but what can you do for your country?
We are going to do ourself, and I think this is the aim always.
Absolutely.
So we’re in a couple minutes going to transition to our behind the scenes segment, which we love to do with our guests, and that’s available to our ambassador network.
And if you haven’t joined our ambassador network and you would like to, you can go to yonearth.org to get that process started.
It’s a simple process, and you get a number of benefits, including access to our monthly online meetups, and of course access to our ambassador resources, which includes our behind the series segments with our podcast guests.
And I want to take a moment to thank several of our partners and sponsors who make our podcast series possible.
This includes Chelsea Green Publishing. We’re doing many episodes with authors from Chelsea Green, and you can get a 35% discount on any of the books and audiobooks at Chelsea Green Publishing using the code Y-O-E-3-5.
On any of these offers and deals, and to see our ecosystem of partners and supporters, you can simply go to the Y-O-E-3 website and go to the partners and supporters page, and we have links and logos for everybody.
But just to be sure to give a few shout outs, we’ve got also curium organic superfoods, wheylay waters, biodynamically regeneratively grown hemp infused aroma therapy soaking salts.
Absolutely wonderful. Earth, hero, sustainable products, soil works, biodynamic garden preparations, and of course our good friends at Earth Coast Productions who make all of the production post-production and tech stack at the Y-O-E-3 community function well.
And finally, of course, just another huge shout out to all of our Y-O-E-3 ambassadors. We are a growing global network of folks and communities all over engaged in social and environmental work.
And again, if you haven’t yet become an ambassador and you’d like to just go to the Y-O-E-3 website, and you’ll see pages one called Become an Ambassador that will get you started on your journey.
And of course, I want to mention in addition to the URL to get to the 22 episode video series that on there put together, which is exploremondragon.com, you can also go to mondragon-corporation.com for additional information.
And so on there, you know, there is so much we can continue talking about. And I got to give another shout out to Georgia Kelly and the Praxis Peace Institute and the week long immersive experience that they provide once per year in the fall generally September, October, I think next year will be October.
So I encourage you to sign up for that as soon as possible because they do fill up and she keeps it limited to a reasonable number of people, not more than two dozen people probably.
So this is an incredible opportunity to have a direct experience and also to get a lot of time with this guy, Honda, which is a total joy.
So knowing that we could go on much longer and we don’t have as much time to do that today as we might like, I want to open the floor up onto you and to be sure to say if there’s anything else you’d like to share with our audience, you know, to wrap up the podcast before we do the behind the scenes segment, please.
My friend, the floor is all yours.
This is something possible. This is something real, real people with the same need that the rest of the world.
We want to have a good quality of life and a cooperative of the monomer model allows us and the engineer of the society to have this quality of life.
Beautiful. It’s something special.
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit with me today and for hosting us all week. It’s been such a powerful magical experience.
Thank you. Esquedic Asco.
All right. Bye everybody.
Esquedic Asco.
Esquedic Asco.
Cool.
Great.
Feel good?
Yes.
Good.
Thank you.
He’s also part of a cooperative.
But for his, a cooperative of the same culture, it’s not part of the founder of one corporation, but he’s also a worker home.
Media cooperatives.
Media.
Yes.
Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, we’ve got a few, we’ve got a woman in Kyrgyzstan, and then my friend, Artem, with Earth Coast Productions, building a global network of media companies doing good work.
So yeah, it might be good to connect.
Yes, in Manor.
What’s that?
Would he be here for a few minutes?
Yes.
So for our behind the scenes piece.
So behind you guys.
Yeah, turn around.
Yeah.
Yeah, we’ll just dive in and talk a little about whatever we like.
And I have a couple of questions I might ask you that will help me understand how you got to where you are right now doing what you’re doing.
So yeah, we can, and I’ll do an informal introduction for that.
Are you ready?
Do you need anything?
Yes.
Anything?
Okay.
Let me check it.
Each of, each of Badia, Ota, do we?
Each of Badia, Ota, do we?
Yes.
Okay.
You ready?
Yes.
Okay.
Hey friends, it’s Aaron here.
And we just recorded a podcast episode with on there, each of Badia, Ota, do we?
Here at the Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain.
And on there, it’s been such a pleasure to do the podcast with you and also to spend this week with you.
It’s been incredible.
Thank you so so much for me.
Thank you.
Yeah, there’s so much to talk about with the cooperatives.
And you’ve got your 22 episode video series available online.
We mentioned that in the podcast.
And for folks who want to join the once a year of week long immersion with Praxis Peace Institute,
encourage you to get signed up for that as soon as possible.
And here we are behind the scenes for our only our ambassadors, right?
Privileged access.
And you know, I had so much fun last night, Friday night, hanging out with you and your life-long
core group of friends.
And it was lovely when we were cruising around town, everybody’s out.
And your daughters coming and going, it was nice to meet them.
They’re a bit younger than my kids.
And there’s such a palpable, visceral, real, day-to-day sense of community and safety and belonging.
And this is something, you know, at least in the United States,
a lot of people are really searching for, almost groping for.
And it’s like, what is it like living in a community, right?
Where a lot of folks maybe don’t even necessarily have a full appreciation of how special
or different this experience is relative to other communities in the world.
And how is it for you as an ambassador of the Mondragon corporation and cooperatives in community
to many other folks all around the world to have a perspective that understands,
hey, this is a pretty different experience.
I didn’t realize about this community, yes.
When I started explaining Mondragon and when I started to host visitors,
I remember that one person that came from the United States said,
and yesterday I was working in the town of Mondragon,
and I saw young people, children, playing in the central square
and their parents were in the bars.
And I said, what is strange?
And I didn’t understand.
And then in two months, another person also from the United States said the same.
And so I started asking.
And I started realizing that this is different from what we can see in other parts of the world.
And you said yesterday that this is the fish that is in the water,
doesn’t realize that it is…
The fish in the water, yeah.
Yes. So it is the case for us.
If we ask my friends, they are going to say, what is strange with this?
So if my job is to explain people from outside, what is Mondragon?
There is another job that also I am doing that is explain our people that this is something
that is not very common around the world.
So this is something, the Mondragon model, the cooperatives, that we have to preserve.
But first, we have to appreciate.
Then we have to preserve to maintain.
And we have always to improve the system.
Because if we do nothing about preservation and improvement, it is going to go down.
But first of all, appreciation.
What we have in our hands.
It is important to know.
And for that, it is important to compare us with other society.
The mirror for us are other societies.
And then for the people that are from outside, just explain what is this.
This is something normal here, why not in your country?
Very, very inspiring.
For me, also such a joy to be in architecture in a town that is human scale development.
And so many of the spaces in the United States are really, really hard on the body, the mind, the psyche.
And I love that in the river valley here, we have fairly high density development in the communities, in the towns, with the factories,
with the advanced research and development centers, the schools.
And where we are right now is maybe two minutes from hiking in the woods up into the mountains, which I did yesterday.
And I love that you and I both share a passion for hiking and backpacking, mountaineering.
Tell us a bit about this, you know, for you.
Tell us a bit about what it’s like your connection with the mountains and the forests around here.
Yes, this is a town of 22,000 inhabitants in a valley.
And in this case, not in a big city, but we have the opportunity to in five minutes be in the middle of the forest and in 30 minutes in a mountain.
And for me, it’s very special because in that moment when I’m in the forest or in the mountain, I feel part of this planet.
I feel part of the universe.
And when I’m in the hills, I feel that I’m closer to my ancestors.
And this is special.
So one thing is to be at home. One thing is to be at the office or in a workshop.
And the other one is to feel that I’m a human being and I’m part of the universe.
Yeah, I can relate to that.
It was so nice just for an hour or two yesterday to get up in the forest and see some really beautiful trees.
I feel the cool air beneath the shade and hear the birds.
We have to improve everything.
Because if you ask our people, they are going to say, no, but this is very ugly with this horrible buildings.
No, buildings and factories are too close.
And there is still pollution.
In the 60s, in the 70s, the river was very polluted and the air was quite polluted.
And we have improved a lot and we have to continue improving in that sense.
So it’s not perfect. It’s far from being perfect, but it’s much better than in the past and it’s much better than in other regions in the world.
Yeah, this reminds me.
You know, yesterday we had the opportunity to go to Mondragon University to the business school and to visit with Professor Fred, friendly, who is actually from the United States.
And was, yeah, MIT or where was he?
I think maybe MIT, but whatever.
And he’s been here for decades and has married a vast woman.
And I was struck. We spent most of the day in the university.
And there’s a series of classrooms again with this beautiful architecture, lots of glass, natural daylight, plants, important for learning.
And in each of the classrooms were the United Nations sustainable development goals, large format, like as large as the dry erase boards and the screens were looking at.
How is it that the SDGs have come, you know, to be so central to the educational framework here?
How is it that the community through leadership of folks like you and others in the ecosystem are moving more and more in that direction of sustainable development, broadly speaking?
The SDGs are in every cooperative.
Well, I will say in most of the companies, most of the government in every cooperative of Mondragon, the university, schools, industrial cooperatives.
And it is very good for the planet. And at the same time, it is very good for all of us because we are aligned.
We know what we have to do. It is not about inventing what we could do, but we know what we have to do.
And this is something that we are doing since few years ago. And I think that we are improving a lot, but we still have many things to do.
The year since years ago, in our strategic plants, in the cooperatives, and also in the strategic plan of the corporation.
Yeah, that is so important. And it was for me just so beautiful to see that walking into the classroom.
Wow, it is right here every day for the students to keep front of mind.
Well, under such a joy to have this whole week with you and to have this opportunity to visit and chat with you and do a podcast episode with you.
And my friend, I am excited that it feels like we have planted the seeds of friendship.
And I very much look forward to collaborating in various ways over the coming months and years.
And very much look forward to watching and celebrating your work and your service to the community here and others all around the world doing what you are doing.
And I guess father to father, you know, it warms my heart knowing that we are engaged in helping to make a better future for our kids and other future generations.
So I guess with all that in mind, again, opening the floor up to you and this is for our ambassadors in particular.
If there is anything more you would like to say or we can keep chatting for a few minutes too if you have some things you want to chat about.
We say that we have to give our children a better legacy.
And I was in summer in United States and it was I don’t remember in what museum there was a quote that said it is not about giving a better legacy.
But it is to the next generations but it is about to give them back what they have borrowed us.
So it is a kind of they have given us just for some months or some years this planet our children, then we have to give them back in a better condition.
The same for the cooperatives. So because if there is a cooperative, the cooperatives has to continue in that place.
It has to continue giving job opportunities. It has to continue creating wealth for the people that are working there and in general for the society around.
Beautiful.
All right, my friend. You feeling you feeling complete for now? Yeah.
Yeah, so good to visit with you. Yeah, it meets you, my friend. Thank you.
Yeah, welcome. Bye, everybody.
It’s got to go.
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