In the aftermath of our CBE Week series, the United Steelworkers reached an agreement with Mondragon in October to begin collaborating on the creation of industrial cooperatives in the US. This is a huge milestone in union involvement with worker ownership in the US, as well as an unprecedented step by Mondragon in attempting to expand their cooperative practices outside of Spain.
Archive for January, 2010
Press Release: USW Forms Collaboration With Mondragon
Sunday, January 17th, 2010NYTimes: “In Detroit, Entrepreneurs See Opportunity”
Sunday, January 17th, 2010Last week The New York Times published an article profiling a few businesses which had started recently in the Cass Corridor, and the beginning virtuous cycle they may represent. While there’s always activity around Wayne State, the clustering of businesses in this particular area could definitely help rev things up.
Community Based Enterprise Week
Sunday, January 17th, 2010Back in September, C2BE hosted a series of speaking events around Detroit featuring Mikel Lezamiz of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation of Spain, the largest cooperative corporation in the world. He presented the MCC as a model which could be followed in Detroit, describing how they went from having nothing in the aftermath of WWII to generating billions of Euros in sales per year, all owned by the workers in the company. We received some very good press coverage for the series of events, including:
- A Detroit Today interview with C2BE Chair Deborah Groban Olson (9/21/09)
- Model D Media’s C2BE focuses on creative job creation with events (9/22/09)
- The Metro Times’ Co-ops to the Rescue? (9/23/09)