The first of a series about more sustainable and just economies, WEconomics: Italy is available now from Bullfrog Films.

WATCH A PREVIEW of WECONOMICS: ITALY

WEconomics – preview of a new film from the makers of SHIFT CHANGE from Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin on Vimeo.

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REVIEWS of WECONOMICS

“Fabulous! I can’t overstate the importance of this film right now! There’s a democratic form of enterprise that works because it’s aligned with the human need for connection, meaning and agency. The film beautifully captures the power of cooperatives in a world in desperate need of hope–not pie in the sky but evidence-based hope. May it be viewed worldwide, fueling the cooperative movement.”

Frances Moore Lappé, Co-Founder, Small Planet Institute, Author, Diet for a Small Planet and EcoMind

“Is this the occupy movement? No, it’s Northern Italy’s answer to corporate rapacity and state indifference-an ecologically conscious cooperative movement that provides elder and child care, manufacturing, retail sales and more and is sufficiently stable, flexible and resilient to bring prosperity and security to all. This is democracy in action. Bring it to your students with this film; practice it in your classroom. All will benefit.”

Paul Durrenberger, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, Author, The Anthropology of Labor Unions

“Advocates for a more community based economy here in the US have much to learn from Italy’s Emilia Romagna region, where decades of sophisticated cooperative development and policymaking have helped turn one of the poorest parts of the country into one of its most economically prosperous, and have produced innovative new models for aligning economic activity and social service delivery with human and communitarian values. WEconomics: Italy takes us into the democratic workplaces at the heart of this historical trajectory, illuminating the dense networks of solidarity and the deep processes of cultural change behind Emilia Romagna’s vibrant cooperative ecosystem.”

Gar Alperovitz, Co-founder, The Democracy Collaborative, Co-chair, The Next System Project

“A powerful film demonstrating that mainstream economists have gotten it wrong. WEconomics: Italy shows how Bologna’s cooperatives are producing an alternative economy that puts people, ecological issues, and the social fabric of society at the forefront, and still survive in the difficult economic times that we live in! The film is an absolute must-see for anyone, anywhere interested in alternatives that are both progressive and successful!”

Michelle Williams, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand

“WEconomics: Italy shows vividly how cooperatives can be woven into the fabric of an entire region–in this case Emilia-Romagna in Italy. The film offers living examples of how social entrepreneurship, cross-sector partnerships, and, above all, democratic workplaces can strengthen communities and transform how we do business. This short documentary gives us a glimpse into how we can move cooperatives from the relative margins of our economy here in the U.S. to the central place they deserve.”

George Cheney, Professor of Communication Studies, University of Colorado – Colorado Springs, Author, Values at Work

“WEconomics: Italy expands the discussion of cooperatives as a structure for producing and distributing goods to a model for providing needed, desperately needed, social services…This film is positive, upbeat, and offers ample opportunity to introduce cooperatives to students.”

Karen McCormack, Associate Professor and Chair, Dept. of Sociology, Wheaton College

The worker coops and employee owned businesses listed in the regional categories below provide decent jobs in workplaces where employees have a stake. These businesses are less likely to move away from their local communities – contributing to a more sustainable economy.

**Please note that the information below is just a starting point, and is not exhaustive. New cooperative businesses are popping up all over, with lots of young people getting involved. And retiring baby boomers are selling their businesses to employees, so these businesses can continue. The movement is growing every day.

Would you like to suggest an addition to one or more of the regional bullets below? Highlight employee owned businesses in another state? Please contact us.

US Coops and Worker Owned Businesses By Region

To download a PDF of the information below, click here:

SHIFT CHANGE_US Coops and Worker Ownership By Region

*Map of United States of America (on homepage) by FreeVectorMaps.com

As the Dean of the Business School at Mondragon University explains , “Cooperatives are not isolated. They share suppliers, they share markets, and they share in the general economic climate.” Sales of home appliances like refrigerators and dishwashers fell by 75% in just three years. Fagor’s competitors in Europe were producing in low wage countries and importing those products to Europe. Over the past few years, the other cooperatives in the Mondragon network had pumped in over $300 million euros in emergency funds to try to keep Fagor Home Appliances afloat, but with the greater Spanish economy stagnating this was not enough. However, unlike what happened in the US when the home appliance industry moved to Mexico and beyond, Fagor workers are not thrown into the street with no options. Nearly all will find positions in other Mondragon cooperatives, some will take early retirement, and all are eligible for extended unemployment benefits.

We discussed the situation extensively with Mondragon leadership, worker/owners of several coops, and faculty at Mondragon University. Despite the extraordinary measures of assistance from other Mondragon coops, the bankruptcy at Fagor is causing real hardships. Worker owners will lose their investment in the company. Other companies in the region that have been suppliers to Fagor are losing their principal customer. And as Fagor members transition to other Mondragon coops, those coops will need to lay off probationary workers, those who had not yet become members but were expecting to do so.

Worker/owners across the Mondragon cooperatives are discussing the Fagor bankruptcy and how to avoid anything like this happening again. We talked with Alaitz, a second generation member of Fagor Automation [which is still going strong] one of whose sisters is a worker owner at Fagor Home Appliances. Alaitz has the last word in SHIFT CHANGE, where she talks with pride about the Mondragon Cooperatives and vows to keep working to make them stronger for her children. She said that she had been thinking about what she says in SHIFT CHANGE and about whether she would say the same thing again after what has happened. “Yes,” she said, “I certainly would.”

We were fortunate to have the photographic skills of Brooke Anderson, who documented both the VIP pre-reception at Arizmendi Bakery (one of the coops featured in SHIFT CHANGE) and also the screening and discussion that followed. Please enjoy these images from the event.

Follow us on Facebook to view more photos from other screenings across the country.

Take a look at the preview and please share your comments.

Cab driver Rebecca Kemble is board president of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and President of CICOPA North America.

Rebecca works at Union Cab, founded in 1979, which now boasts 228 worker members – drivers, mechanics, office staff, and dispatchers. Committed to environmental sustainability, they are replacing gas guzzling Crown Victorias with hybrid vehicles. And they designed their own computerized dispatch system to respond to calls for service with the nearest available vehicle, reducing mileage and improving service and efficiency.

Rebecca drove us around and pointed out other long standing Madison coops like Nature’s Bakery and Community Pharmacy. “Worker cooperatives are sustainable businesses, especially in hard times. They are more flexible with changes in the market and give the highest priority to people working in the business. In the U.S. few people are aware of worker cooperatives, but with the economic crisis we are finding lots of interest.”

Isthmus founder John Kessler.

Inspired by Mondragón’s example, Isthmus Engineering was founded 25 years ago. The cooperative designs and builds state of the art automation systems for a broad range of industries. With 50 employees, the majority worker owners, Isthmus is highly project oriented. Self-directed teams of mechanical and controls engineers, plus highly skilled electricians and machinists, collaborate to design, build, and test equipment that meets their customers’ needs.

“The core principle is one worker one vote, not each dollar one vote,” says founder John Kessler. “We’re not giving up anything by being a worker cooperative. It’s an excellent way to run a business.”

Lisa Thoms

A proud workers coop, Isthmus holds weekly board meetings over a catered lunch, so members can more easily stay abreast of current projects. And finances are completely transparent, even how much each person is paid.

Engineer Lisa Thoms, Vice President of the cooperative, explained. “We vote on hourly pay rates every year, based on each member’s discipline, experience, and contributions. So we all have a say in deciding what our fellow worker/owners are paid. But no member is paid more than twice as much as anyone else.”

“We’re democratic with a small ‘d’,” says engineer Ole Olson, “Everyone can have input in a decision. It doesn’t always go your way, but you know how and why the decision is made and that’s different from a conventional company.” Ole, who sits on the Isthmus coop affairs committee, is active with the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives and in MadWorCs, a budding network of Madison worker cooperatives that promotes support among coops in the area, and encourages creation of new coops.

Ole Olson

Inspired by the experience of Mondragón, where complex support networks among individual coops developed over 50 years, similar networks exist in Western Massachusetts. [Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives], the San Francisco Bay Area [Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives] and Austin TX [Cooperation Texas]. The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland are being developed as part of a network from the outset.

“We started with nothing, and everything we have achieved was because of our own hard work and dedication,” explains Jose Maria Ormaetxea, who was one of the five founding members of the Mondragon coops in 1956. Now these worker owned coops employ 85,000 people and had revenues of about 25 billion dollars in 2010.

We have to interrupt our reports on worker owned companies in the U.S., because we are now visiting the Mondragon coops in the Basque region of northern Spain. Our days are long and intense as we film in numerous factories, universities, research centers, the coop bank and social service agency. We’ve been given complete access to coop managers, regular workers and others in the region to report on what these remarkable cooperatives have achieved and the complex ways they work together to benefit their worker owners and the economy of the entire region.

People here are feeling the effects of the economic crisis, of course, but unemployment in the Basque country is half what it is in the rest of Spain. The cooperatives take a variety of measures to prevent layoffs of members. They can vote to reduce their own hours or pay, or workers may be transferred temporarily to other cooperatives that are not as affected by the downturn. These worker owned coops employ 85,000 people and had revenues of about 25 billion dollars in 2010.

This worker owned bike factory builds some of the finest bicycles in the world. The Orbea sponsored mountain bike team now holds the world and Olympic championships.

We look forward to sharing more stories, both from here and from North America, in the coming weeks, as we wrap up our Mondragon filming and begin editing the documentary, Shift Change. Stay tuned.

The U.S. Senate is on record recognizing 2012 as International Year of the Cooperatives, and many conferences and other events will call attention to cooperatives next year. We expect to complete Shift Change in time to screen at such events and appear on television to widen and deepen the discussions of how cooperatives can help restore economic stability and social equity.