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MONDRAGON -- CONNECTION AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION
MONDRAGON: CONNECTION AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION
- Can the Ethical Sector reform the Private and Public Sectors?
By Jim Miller
The issue is transition. Given that the Mondragon Experiment has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that cooperation trumps competition in our business models, can the lessons of this experiment be learned by the “free enterprise” [private capital] sector? Could the public sector benefit from these lessons? Since 1926, our world economy has been moving from a “hand craft” stage of consumerism to the “high speed production line” stage of consumerism.
Each decade has introduced new products and services to buy, made cheaper by a combination of advanced technology and greatly devalued personal labor. Even the Great Depression taught us that consumerism is good – by contrast. With federal deficit spending continuing to supply the money with which U.S. consumers purchase the vast sea of goods and services, the business model which produces the most for the least price is leading the race to the bottom.
If consumerism has taken the main stage, then also, Mondragon is one of the players on that stage. If the vice is consumerism, and it means to continue along its ruinous path, then the Ethical Sector does not stand a chance to transfer its wisdom to the other sectors, using the main stage.
The solution, if there is one, is to create a “side stage”. Indeed there are many folks who could apply to act on that stage: the un- and under-employed, the wage slave, workers whose jobs have been or are about to be “outsourced”, the few intellectuals who give a damn, and civic activists, committed to a sustainable world community.
Mondragon is a worker-centric collection of networked cooperatives which strives to compete with scions of industrial wealth built on the backs of the desperately poor workers in all parts of the world. By spreading the net profit among the workers rather than concentrating the profit in the hands of the CEO’s and shareholders of traditional corporations, Mondragon has opened a new chapter in consumerism for the benefit of the workers as well as consumers.
One of Mondragon’s cooperatives is Eroski, a very large retail chain, heavily fortified with goods produced by other Mondragon cooperatives. It sells groceries at wholesale and retail, cleaning products, textiles, domestic appliances, travel, fish, liquids and frozen foods. [MacLeod, 1997, p. 171] En[i] Eroski is the third largest retail chain in Spain and competes against Nos. 1, 2 and 4, which are multi-nationals. It has over ----- stores and grosses above $----- and nets $ -----. It has ---- workers.
Eroski, as well as other cooperatives, are not without criticism. Sharryn Kasmir, in her study of Mondragon, En[ii] interviews, Itxair, a 40 year old Basque physical therapist who volunteers her time for the Social Council of Eroski. Itxair’s criticism was that consumers were reluctant to return faulty items purchased from Eroski, preferring to repair the item themselves. Kasmir’s take on Itxair’s criticism is that it demonstrates the stress between Mondragon’s conflicted goals, one of which stresses consumption and the other, class affiliation. “… Itxair believed she was fighting individualism. The consumer identity she envisioned directly competes with that of the class, one of the primary collective identities among townspeople.” [Kasmir, 1996, p. 88].
Kasmir analyzed how the Basque working class made the passage from “a class itself” to a “class for itself”. [Kasmir, 2002, p. 91]
If the root of “all evil” is consumerism and Mondragon contributes to consumerism, then how does Mondragon’s social goals – that of supporting the community – square with its main business – production of goods and services? Answer: it does not square. Mondragon has lost the original path laid out by Don Jose Maria Arrizmendiarrieta and is following the “free enterprise” rather than the “fair enterprise” path. Mondragon has bought “private firms” and left them private. Cooperatives hire workers who are not members.
Mondragon is itself a holding company, just like many transnationals. Mondragon joint ventures with private firms and owns stock in many of them. Mondragon has morphed into the type of enterprise which is at odds with its original purpose – support of the local community, and not just the Basque local communities.
The above criticism is very general; there are many examples within Mondragon where the individual factory or cooperative has transformed a local community from a low wage, high unemployment area, to having citizens with comfortable incomes and job security. En[iii] Still, the overarching effort of Mondragon has been to join the race for the bottom by producing goods and services for the insatiable demands of consumers, driven by years of brain washing by means of high performance advertising through the media, our schools and institutions.
If the “side show” of the Ethical Sector is to grab the attention of voters, consumers and family members, it will have to do a better job: Create a better model for human life, provide the guidance, and establish a base of operations from which to launch its program of disruptive change. Many attempts are being made, principally by the environmental and conservation movements, metal health and wellness advocates, homeopathic remedy providers, and a host of well-wishers. Thinkers and doers need to combine and produce very concrete, specific examples of successful transitions. Actually, they have, some with excellent results, at least in terms of the workers and their communities and regions. En[iv]
The great contribution of Mondragon to cooperativism should not be over shadowed by its chase for the consumer dollar. It has served as a powerful example for emulation by many other cooperatives which now gird the globe. MacLeod, a scholar based in Cape Breton, Canada, explores a wide variety of cooperatives in North America. En[v]
The vital lesson Mondragon has to teach us is that a worker-centric business can adapt and be financially successful and sustainable, even in the face of massive swings in political control and global competitive changes. The vitality is imparted by the workers, the resources they bring to the table and by the quality of management.
Thus Mondragon is a beacon of hope, shining trough the fog of consumer demand, high tech and punitive effects of globalization on a vast population of poor and near-poor. It is more likely than not, that by populating the Ethical Sector with models derived from Mondragon, the “side show” will be come the “main stage”. The private and public sectors will either have adapt or go out of business. Consumer can “vote” with their dollars. When they vote by purchasing goods and services from enterprises which are members of the Ethical Sector, then the message will have been sent to the private capital sector.
To Mondragon’s credit, it has generally increased employment while other companies are cutting jobs to increase the “bottom line”. When Mondragon acquires a company, the number of jobs usually goes up. When private companies merge, they tout the savings from job elimination. The question remains: Can Mondragon be successfully replicated in other parts of the world’s economy?
Kasmir’s quest for the answer led her to examine the myth of the dragon – equality among Basque people and the issue of repeatability. Her studies were from the worker perspective. In the 70’s and 80’s worker participation increased with the introduction of circles of quality, employee stock ownership, and the “de-bureaucratization” of managerial strategies. The Scanlon Project, which involved pay to workers and worker groups who contributed to production efficiency, became industrial watch-words. These attempts not only improved the “bottom line” but were attempts to confront the problems of shift work, the assembly line, rountinization of tasks and the ever increasing pressure to improve productivity. En[vi]
However, such worker-led iniatives did not shield the worker from the introduction in the Mondragon cooperatives of just-in-time production, increased pace of work, the hiring of partime and temporary (up to one year) workers in place of Members and the purchase and operation by Mondragon of private capital firms. As cooperatives became successful, the management level pushed the entities to widen the pay gap by raising the salary cap from 1:6 to 1:10, arguing that competition of the private capital companies for talent drove middle and upper managers from the cooperatives to the private capital sector. While the proposal of 1:10 was defeated in 1990, it was a harbinger of growing discontent between managers and workers. Further, the penchant for Basque people to engage in political discussion, activism, and protest is a core cultural value.
Kasmir propounds that the conceptualizing of cooperatives by Father Arizmendiarrieta was a means of over-coming the class conflict between the socialist and anti-socialist movements and the owners of Basque businesses. En[vii] Kasmir reflected on the fact that many writers of the Mondragon story focused on the myth told by the managers, who painted a picture of cooperativism as being at its heart, a very adaptable system in the factory and commercial setting. They had not interviewed the workers.
These writers failed to distinguish between the actors as agents of change and the structure of cooperatives as an agent of change. “The cooperative system, complete with its seemingly innate ability to solve problems, is the model for social change, and the cooperative structure is replicated, not the qualities of activism of a particular group or class of people. ****
This insight may provide a second lesson to those of us who became interested in Mondragon because we thought cooperatives provided a better alternative for workers: to be skeptical of models that make business forms rather than people as the agents of social change.” [Kasmir, p. 196]
The “social glue” which bonded workers with each other in non-work settings included the daily round of bars after normal day shifts, the graffiti on the town walls and buildings, demonstrations, fiestas, and church activities. “Eroski introduced the notions of ‘appropriate’ consumption and pioneered consumer identity, which had been unfamiliar concepts in Mondragon.” Don Jose Maria, from the outset, used education as a means of reducing class conflict. During Kasmir’s interview with workers, she noted that most of them considered themselves middle class. However, they did not see the cooperatives as their firms in any meaningful way which they would if a family-owned enterprise. [Id., 197]
We are left with the proposition that the mere fact of ownership in common does not promote class identity or a sense of commitment to the success of the commonly owned business. Fn[1] There needs to be something more. The something more is the cohesive bond among like minded activists who put people above machines and property.
The MASA model, the something more, is to create a community, a “campus”, where on the same land, we build our houses, our factories, our farms, our communities and our future. Mutual Aid Society of America, a child of Mondragon, will grow as a member of the Ethical Sector. Home Grown Organics will grow food and fiber using biodynamic farm management methods (no toxic rescue chemicals). Econo Energy will use waste fry oil and animal fats to produce biodiesel for a cleaner air and use of green waste. Eventually, Montana Synergy will supply oil for the biodiesel from algae grown in photobioreactors inside buildings in the cold country and covered ponds in the warm country. Windsail Power will offer a new approach to the use of wind to generate electricity. Low head hydroelectric systems, include the use of the Windsail Power system, will allow for the low cost storage of electricity. Heaters and boilers which use waste oils of all kinds, together with energy flywheels, will provide heating and cooling of buildings and use by industrial and agricultural processes. Combined heat and power systems will further enhance the efficiency of buildings and processes.
More importantly, MASA will formulate educational systems which are low cost, effective, instant, world-wide and dedicated as much to creating material wealth as social and intellectual wealth. The Montana Laptop Project is one such system. If adopted, it will provide a wireless laptop to every Montana student K-12. With this personalized educational tool, a student has access to an enormous repository of online courses and educational resources, 7/24, worldwide and instantly, often for free. As virtual schools and universities become available, there will be a shift toward the Ethical Sector.
MASA means to be one of the leaders of that shift, joining with other cooperatives and workers in the vineyards of ethics and worker-as-owner cooperatives. Education is vital if any meaningful, significant change is to take place in the greater mass of humanity. The use of the power of the Web will be one the key means of communication. “…[T]he priority for Mondragon is to increase jobs and preserve the community. This manifests the over-riding fidelity of Mondragon to its most basic distinguishing characteristic: The Priority of People over Capital.” [MacLoed, p. 161]. Respectfully submitted, Jim Miller jimmiller5417@yahoo.com July 4, 2004, edited May 22, 2007
- Can the Ethical Sector reform the Private and Public Sectors?
By Jim Miller
The issue is transition. Given that the Mondragon Experiment has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that cooperation trumps competition in our business models, can the lessons of this experiment be learned by the “free enterprise” [private capital] sector? Could the public sector benefit from these lessons? Since 1926, our world economy has been moving from a “hand craft” stage of consumerism to the “high speed production line” stage of consumerism.
Each decade has introduced new products and services to buy, made cheaper by a combination of advanced technology and greatly devalued personal labor. Even the Great Depression taught us that consumerism is good – by contrast. With federal deficit spending continuing to supply the money with which U.S. consumers purchase the vast sea of goods and services, the business model which produces the most for the least price is leading the race to the bottom.
If consumerism has taken the main stage, then also, Mondragon is one of the players on that stage. If the vice is consumerism, and it means to continue along its ruinous path, then the Ethical Sector does not stand a chance to transfer its wisdom to the other sectors, using the main stage.
The solution, if there is one, is to create a “side stage”. Indeed there are many folks who could apply to act on that stage: the un- and under-employed, the wage slave, workers whose jobs have been or are about to be “outsourced”, the few intellectuals who give a damn, and civic activists, committed to a sustainable world community.
Mondragon is a worker-centric collection of networked cooperatives which strives to compete with scions of industrial wealth built on the backs of the desperately poor workers in all parts of the world. By spreading the net profit among the workers rather than concentrating the profit in the hands of the CEO’s and shareholders of traditional corporations, Mondragon has opened a new chapter in consumerism for the benefit of the workers as well as consumers.
One of Mondragon’s cooperatives is Eroski, a very large retail chain, heavily fortified with goods produced by other Mondragon cooperatives. It sells groceries at wholesale and retail, cleaning products, textiles, domestic appliances, travel, fish, liquids and frozen foods. [MacLeod, 1997, p. 171] En[i] Eroski is the third largest retail chain in Spain and competes against Nos. 1, 2 and 4, which are multi-nationals. It has over ----- stores and grosses above $----- and nets $ -----. It has ---- workers.
Eroski, as well as other cooperatives, are not without criticism. Sharryn Kasmir, in her study of Mondragon, En[ii] interviews, Itxair, a 40 year old Basque physical therapist who volunteers her time for the Social Council of Eroski. Itxair’s criticism was that consumers were reluctant to return faulty items purchased from Eroski, preferring to repair the item themselves. Kasmir’s take on Itxair’s criticism is that it demonstrates the stress between Mondragon’s conflicted goals, one of which stresses consumption and the other, class affiliation. “… Itxair believed she was fighting individualism. The consumer identity she envisioned directly competes with that of the class, one of the primary collective identities among townspeople.” [Kasmir, 1996, p. 88].
Kasmir analyzed how the Basque working class made the passage from “a class itself” to a “class for itself”. [Kasmir, 2002, p. 91]
If the root of “all evil” is consumerism and Mondragon contributes to consumerism, then how does Mondragon’s social goals – that of supporting the community – square with its main business – production of goods and services? Answer: it does not square. Mondragon has lost the original path laid out by Don Jose Maria Arrizmendiarrieta and is following the “free enterprise” rather than the “fair enterprise” path. Mondragon has bought “private firms” and left them private. Cooperatives hire workers who are not members.
Mondragon is itself a holding company, just like many transnationals. Mondragon joint ventures with private firms and owns stock in many of them. Mondragon has morphed into the type of enterprise which is at odds with its original purpose – support of the local community, and not just the Basque local communities.
The above criticism is very general; there are many examples within Mondragon where the individual factory or cooperative has transformed a local community from a low wage, high unemployment area, to having citizens with comfortable incomes and job security. En[iii] Still, the overarching effort of Mondragon has been to join the race for the bottom by producing goods and services for the insatiable demands of consumers, driven by years of brain washing by means of high performance advertising through the media, our schools and institutions.
If the “side show” of the Ethical Sector is to grab the attention of voters, consumers and family members, it will have to do a better job: Create a better model for human life, provide the guidance, and establish a base of operations from which to launch its program of disruptive change. Many attempts are being made, principally by the environmental and conservation movements, metal health and wellness advocates, homeopathic remedy providers, and a host of well-wishers. Thinkers and doers need to combine and produce very concrete, specific examples of successful transitions. Actually, they have, some with excellent results, at least in terms of the workers and their communities and regions. En[iv]
The great contribution of Mondragon to cooperativism should not be over shadowed by its chase for the consumer dollar. It has served as a powerful example for emulation by many other cooperatives which now gird the globe. MacLeod, a scholar based in Cape Breton, Canada, explores a wide variety of cooperatives in North America. En[v]
The vital lesson Mondragon has to teach us is that a worker-centric business can adapt and be financially successful and sustainable, even in the face of massive swings in political control and global competitive changes. The vitality is imparted by the workers, the resources they bring to the table and by the quality of management.
Thus Mondragon is a beacon of hope, shining trough the fog of consumer demand, high tech and punitive effects of globalization on a vast population of poor and near-poor. It is more likely than not, that by populating the Ethical Sector with models derived from Mondragon, the “side show” will be come the “main stage”. The private and public sectors will either have adapt or go out of business. Consumer can “vote” with their dollars. When they vote by purchasing goods and services from enterprises which are members of the Ethical Sector, then the message will have been sent to the private capital sector.
To Mondragon’s credit, it has generally increased employment while other companies are cutting jobs to increase the “bottom line”. When Mondragon acquires a company, the number of jobs usually goes up. When private companies merge, they tout the savings from job elimination. The question remains: Can Mondragon be successfully replicated in other parts of the world’s economy?
Kasmir’s quest for the answer led her to examine the myth of the dragon – equality among Basque people and the issue of repeatability. Her studies were from the worker perspective. In the 70’s and 80’s worker participation increased with the introduction of circles of quality, employee stock ownership, and the “de-bureaucratization” of managerial strategies. The Scanlon Project, which involved pay to workers and worker groups who contributed to production efficiency, became industrial watch-words. These attempts not only improved the “bottom line” but were attempts to confront the problems of shift work, the assembly line, rountinization of tasks and the ever increasing pressure to improve productivity. En[vi]
However, such worker-led iniatives did not shield the worker from the introduction in the Mondragon cooperatives of just-in-time production, increased pace of work, the hiring of partime and temporary (up to one year) workers in place of Members and the purchase and operation by Mondragon of private capital firms. As cooperatives became successful, the management level pushed the entities to widen the pay gap by raising the salary cap from 1:6 to 1:10, arguing that competition of the private capital companies for talent drove middle and upper managers from the cooperatives to the private capital sector. While the proposal of 1:10 was defeated in 1990, it was a harbinger of growing discontent between managers and workers. Further, the penchant for Basque people to engage in political discussion, activism, and protest is a core cultural value.
Kasmir propounds that the conceptualizing of cooperatives by Father Arizmendiarrieta was a means of over-coming the class conflict between the socialist and anti-socialist movements and the owners of Basque businesses. En[vii] Kasmir reflected on the fact that many writers of the Mondragon story focused on the myth told by the managers, who painted a picture of cooperativism as being at its heart, a very adaptable system in the factory and commercial setting. They had not interviewed the workers.
These writers failed to distinguish between the actors as agents of change and the structure of cooperatives as an agent of change. “The cooperative system, complete with its seemingly innate ability to solve problems, is the model for social change, and the cooperative structure is replicated, not the qualities of activism of a particular group or class of people. ****
This insight may provide a second lesson to those of us who became interested in Mondragon because we thought cooperatives provided a better alternative for workers: to be skeptical of models that make business forms rather than people as the agents of social change.” [Kasmir, p. 196]
The “social glue” which bonded workers with each other in non-work settings included the daily round of bars after normal day shifts, the graffiti on the town walls and buildings, demonstrations, fiestas, and church activities. “Eroski introduced the notions of ‘appropriate’ consumption and pioneered consumer identity, which had been unfamiliar concepts in Mondragon.” Don Jose Maria, from the outset, used education as a means of reducing class conflict. During Kasmir’s interview with workers, she noted that most of them considered themselves middle class. However, they did not see the cooperatives as their firms in any meaningful way which they would if a family-owned enterprise. [Id., 197]
We are left with the proposition that the mere fact of ownership in common does not promote class identity or a sense of commitment to the success of the commonly owned business. Fn[1] There needs to be something more. The something more is the cohesive bond among like minded activists who put people above machines and property.
The MASA model, the something more, is to create a community, a “campus”, where on the same land, we build our houses, our factories, our farms, our communities and our future. Mutual Aid Society of America, a child of Mondragon, will grow as a member of the Ethical Sector. Home Grown Organics will grow food and fiber using biodynamic farm management methods (no toxic rescue chemicals). Econo Energy will use waste fry oil and animal fats to produce biodiesel for a cleaner air and use of green waste. Eventually, Montana Synergy will supply oil for the biodiesel from algae grown in photobioreactors inside buildings in the cold country and covered ponds in the warm country. Windsail Power will offer a new approach to the use of wind to generate electricity. Low head hydroelectric systems, include the use of the Windsail Power system, will allow for the low cost storage of electricity. Heaters and boilers which use waste oils of all kinds, together with energy flywheels, will provide heating and cooling of buildings and use by industrial and agricultural processes. Combined heat and power systems will further enhance the efficiency of buildings and processes.
More importantly, MASA will formulate educational systems which are low cost, effective, instant, world-wide and dedicated as much to creating material wealth as social and intellectual wealth. The Montana Laptop Project is one such system. If adopted, it will provide a wireless laptop to every Montana student K-12. With this personalized educational tool, a student has access to an enormous repository of online courses and educational resources, 7/24, worldwide and instantly, often for free. As virtual schools and universities become available, there will be a shift toward the Ethical Sector.
MASA means to be one of the leaders of that shift, joining with other cooperatives and workers in the vineyards of ethics and worker-as-owner cooperatives. Education is vital if any meaningful, significant change is to take place in the greater mass of humanity. The use of the power of the Web will be one the key means of communication. “…[T]he priority for Mondragon is to increase jobs and preserve the community. This manifests the over-riding fidelity of Mondragon to its most basic distinguishing characteristic: The Priority of People over Capital.” [MacLoed, p. 161]. Respectfully submitted, Jim Miller jimmiller5417@yahoo.com July 4, 2004, edited May 22, 2007
[1] “Yet, in Mondragon, property ownership is not important to cooperators. I found a similar situation among women workers I studied in Fall River, Massachusetts. These women bought their textile firm and, with the help of the Industrial Cooperatives Association, formed a cooperative based on the Mondragon model. Contrary to the ideology of worker ownership, they continued to identify as working class. They did not, for example, envision their stake in their firm as something that would affect their children’s lives. To the contrary, after buying their firms, they became more committed union members than they were before the buyout (Kasmir, 1991). therefore, that property itself does not transform workers, though ideologies of worker ownership and cooperation do remake working classes in other ways.” Id., p. 197.
===============================================
[i] END NOTES
[i] Whyte, William Foote and Whyte, Kathleen King; Making Mondragon; ILR Press, Ithaca, NY; 1991, 2nd Ed. ISBN: 0-7914-3004-9
[i] Whyte, William Foote and Whyte, Kathleen King; Making Mondragon; ILR Press, Ithaca, NY; 1991, 2nd Ed. ISBN: 0-7914-3004-9
[ii] Kasmir, Sharryn, The Myth of Mondragon, State University of New York Press, 1996; pp. 87 – 88.
[iii] INSERT REFERENCE
[iv] MacLeod reviews the Valencia Experiment. A group of activists formed the Rural Christian Action, spawned by the renewed Catholic Church thinking which called upon Christians to take responsibility and action for making society more just and closed to the ideals of the early Church. The area was in Catalonia, Spain, which had suffered under Franco as much as did the Basque region. Josep Soriano, like Don Jose Maria, was one of the activists who engaged in discussions with fellow youth, about social justice. Within this group, the formed a housing cooperative, Covipar, which provided housing. This cooperative generated a consulting business, a cooperative bank and factories. Mondrgaon server as a model for the Valencia Experiment. With the cash flow and the dediation of the leaders, the Valencia group addressed the need for education and established Florida, a polytechnical college, in addition to agricultural schools. They developed a coopertive, Covamur, for the purpose of promoting female enterpreneurship. This cooperative failed because they were unable to recruit professional women managers. A construction cooperative failed because the skilled craftsmen could get the same or better salaries from conventional companies and not have to get involved in the social side of a cooperative. MacLeod, pp. 102- 103.
[v] MacLeod, 1997. See generally Chapter 7, North American Glimmerings, pp. 113 – 138. His list: New Dawn Enterprises, Cape Breton: housing, dental center, variety of job creation enterprises. IN 1990, with a $500,000 interest free loan from the local federal development agency, Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation, created and funded Banking Communint Asset, a development pool which helped incubate new companies and help existing ones grow. Consulted with worked with Credit Union Central, Cooperators Insurance and University College of Cape Breton. Leveraged the half-million loan to a capital amount of one million dollars. Financed a mini-mall; rescued East Coast Rope; purchased bankrupt A & B Mechanical, a plumbing and heating company; purchased a bankrupt hotel, Bras d’Or Lakes, at the head of the canal between Bras d’Or Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, and turned management over to the local inidan tribe, the Mi’kmaq community; and purchased a bankrupt radio station which was profitable two years late. The accomplishments were triggered inside of two years, with no grants and without a full-time staff. Colville, Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, B.C.: training for unemployed and community advisory. Created Central Island Community Development and Colville Investment Corporation to manage land and housing financing. Revelstoke, B.C.: Created the Revelstoke Enterprise Centre: job development, $2.8 restoration, Maritime Railway Museum, tree farm. Great Northern Peninsula Development Corporaiton, Newfoundland and Labador: Responded to the shut down of the fishing industry. Raised one million to establish a new commercial complex and moved into forestry, crafts and aquaculture. La Ronge Indigenous Initiative, Northern Saskatchewan. The first indian nation Band formed the Kitsaki Development Corporation to releive unemployment. With technology transfer, created processing and marketing of dried meat products, wild rice and services such as insurance, funerals, trucking, a motof hotel and services to mining companies. Mouvement Cooperatif Acadien, New Brunswick: Organized the New Brunswick Mouvement Cooperatif, made up of 130 cooperative organizations, 1300 volunteers and 3000 employees. Formed the Acadian credit unions with over $1.5 billion in assets. Funder start-ups and grow-ups, including credit unions, cooperative stors, and insurance companies. Created La Societe d’Investissement du Mouvement Acadien, and completed financing of $2.6 million by the end of 1992. Financied local cooperatives and businesses dedicataed to job development. Solidarite, Quebec: Created Mouvement Desjardins, credit unions which lend to worker investments in job creation. Quebec is the province with the most worker-owned enterprises in Canada. Algoma, Ontario: Put together financing and contracts for the workers to buy-out the Algoma Steel company which was scheduled for closure in 1990. The purpose was to save 6000 jobs in Sault Ste. Marie, a community of 60,000 people. By 1994, the net profit was over $100 million. Crocus Investment Fund of Manitoba, Manitoba: Initiated by the Manitoba Credit Union Central, the Manitoba Government Employee’s Stike Fund and by the Manitoba Federation of Labour in 1990. Now (1997) holds over $50 million in assets. Cape Breton Labourer’s Development Corporation, Cape Breton: Funded by the Cape Breton Labourers’ Development Corporation by a levy of 25 cents per union member per hour of paid employment. Builds and delivers single family residences for $300 per month. Others: La Relance Economique du Sud-Oeust de Montreal, Home First Society, Carrot Commno, Duffield First Nation Prouct, Vancity Credit Union, and in Mexico: the Yucape Project, Chac Lol.
[vi] Kasmir, Pp. 193 – 195.
[vii] Kasmir, P. 195.
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I HAVE FOUR GRADUATE DEGREES, AND I CANNOT UNDERSTAND THIS. HE NEEDS TO RETURN TO COMMON ENGLISH AND REDUCE THE BULK BY AT LEAST 60%. I COULDN'T EVEN DISCOVER WHERE THE "ETHICS" CAME IN FOR CERTAIN, THOUGH HE ALLUDES TO SEVERAL DIFFERENT THINGS.
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