A Manufacturer of Equality

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



A Manufacturer of Equality
JUNE 1, 2015

In the United States, top corporate execs sometimes make more in an hour than their workers can make in a year. At Mondragon, one of Spain’s largest companies, no execs can make more in an hour than their workers make in a day.

Sky-high corporate CEO pay, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz notes in a new report, “creates social norms” that drive up levels of inequality far beyond corporate payrolls.

Those “social norms,” cheerleaders for our current corporate order insist, simply reflect economic reality. In a globalized world where corporations tally sales and profits in the many billions, their argument goes, no modern major business could possibly survive — let alone thrive — without shelling out top executive pay that stretches into the many millions.

The owners of one of the largest businesses in Spain would beg to disagree.

Their nearly 60-year-old enterprise — named Mondragon for the Basque town in northern Spain that gave it birth — has nearly 75,000 employees working in everything from heavy industry and retail to banking and education. A big-league business, in other words, by any metric.

Yet Mondragon doesn’t shell out millions to any of its top executives. No executive at Mondragon makes anything close to even a single million. ......................(more)

- See more at: http://toomuchonline.org/this-business-manufactures-equality/#sthash.hho5mBU6.dpuf

[Hoyt]

1. This is an interesting story, and what I wish more companies were like. There pay/benefits,

employee ownership, management philosophy, etc., is exemplary.

But, the company also has 122 plants in other countries, including 18 in China. They recognize the need for international trade and investment. They, also do some good things in those countries, that will help those countries grow and prosper.