(Source: Southern Cross, 20 June 2012)
FATHER Bonaventure Hinwood (on the Southern Cross, May 30) asks for suggestions for ending poverty and hunger, but only good economics can do this. In April 2012 there was a seminar on Alternative Economics Models at UCD Dublin. The guest speaker was David Erdal who has written a best-selling book, Beyond the Corporation, which discusses the idea that when employees own the business, productivity improves.
It is a book for our times, offering
inspiration and vision in the wake of financial meltdown. It is essential
reading at a time when the orthodox corporate economy has been badly shaken.
Erdal provides lots of stories of success models not will o ' the wisp
theories, including the Mondragon Co-op in Spain's Basque country--"a
convincing example of what can be done if Catholic Social teaching is taken
seriously" (The Month, May
1977).
It was a cause of fascination in the
1970s, before the globalization juggernaut came along which mesmerised people's
critical faculties with its promises of instant gratification. Mondragon was
set up over 50 years ago by a young Basque priest, in a region devastated by
war. The Guardian newspaper caked it
an "unparalleled social and economic experiment which has transformed the
region. It provides one of the most exciting examples in the contemporary world
of what can be done when the classic conflict of capitalist society, between
capital and labour, has been superseded."
Erdal states that Europe's second
largest coach manufacturer and fifth largest manufacturer of electrical
appliances belong to Mondragon. The workers are keen and happy, and so no one
has ever been sacked and there has been only one strike when a co-op grew too
large and personal relationships had broken down. As the economist EF
Schumacher put it: "Small is beautiful!"
I believe that co-ops like Mondragon can
play a significant role in what Pope John Paul ll called "the
indispensable transformation of the structures of economic life"
