Worker-Owned Cooperatives Offer A Vision Of A Different Kind Of Capitalism
A new documentary, Shift Change, explores a kind of company where the workers are also the owners, which results in a quite different economic model than we’re used to.
In an era when income disparities and anger with financial institutions in the U.S. are generating powerful social movements, it’s not surprising that people are starting to look towards alternative business models. Shift Change, a new movie from filmmakers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, looks at the world of worker cooperatives, where reasonable salaries, job security, and general work satisfaction prevail.
Nowhere are the benefits of this model more obvious than in the Mondragon Corporation, a giant federation of worker cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain (there’s nothing about dragons involved, it was founded in a town called Mondragon) that works in finance, retail operations, production of consumer goods and industrial components, and more. Co.Exist spoke with Young about her experiences making the film, and visiting the notoriously closed-off Mondragon Corporation.
Phi Beta Iota: Worker-owned cooperatives do not out-source jobs and do focus on community equities.
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