A business model rarely mentioned in the US

[Old Crank]

The Co-op. It doesn't have to be just a grocery store full of hippies.

The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the globe’s largest industrial co-operative, with workers paying for the right to share in its profits – and its losses. In return for giving more to their employer, they expect more back

When Marisa Fernández lost her husband to cancer a few years ago, her employers at the Eroski hypermarket went, she says, “above and beyond to help me through the dark days afterwards, rejigging my timetable and giving me time off when I couldn’t face coming in.”


She had a chance to return the favour recently when the store, in Arrasate-Mondragón in Spain’s Basque Country, was undergoing renovations. Fernández, 58, who started on the cashier desk 34 years ago, and now manages the store’s non-food section, volunteered to work extra shifts over the weekend along with her colleagues to ensure everything was ready for Monday morning. “It’s not just me. Everyone is ready to go the extra mile,” she says.

Such harmonious employer-worker relations are the stuff of corporate dreams, and they are no accident here: the Eroski retail chain is part of Mondragón Corporation, the largest industrial co-op in the world. As a fully signed-up member, Fernández co-owns part of the supermarket chain that also employs her. “It feels like mine,” she says. “We work hard, but it’s a totally different feeling from working for someone else.”



https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/24/in-the-us-they-think-were-communists-the-70000-workers-showing-the-world-another-way-to-earn-a-living?utm_term=6629d55cf6b4b87e6af146f98f923fe2&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email

[mopinko]

1. we'll have a co-op grocery in my hood in june.

it’s taken several yrs to make it happen, but it opens soon.
we also have a beloved small hardware store where the owners retired and sold the store to their employees.
but we r a hood full of old hippies and weirdos.

[jimfields33]

2. Publix in Florida is sorta like this.

Each worker owns a part of it through profit sharing.

[ProfessorGAC]

3. That's A Decent Example

The employees own about 80% of the company. They're the largest employee owned company in the US.