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.”

In addition to the appearance of footage from two segments of the film during the program, Moyers & Company also posted an interview with SHIFT CHANGE filmmakers Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young on their website.

Help us spread the word by sharing this site with your friends and networks. If you learned about SHIFT CHANGE via the Moyers & Company broadcast, we hope you’ll stay in touch by following us on Facebook and Twitter, signing up for our monthly E-newsletter, and contacting us about hosting a screening in your region.

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

Shift Change Producer Melissa Young

Dear friends, cooperators, and supporters,

Maybe you, like me, have felt discouraged about the state of our economy, and the imbalance of political and economic power in the U.S. today. It was this feeling of discouragement and frustration that initially set me on a path to look for concrete, accessible alternatives.

A friend suggested that my partner Mark Dworkin and I learn more about the Mondragon cooperatives, in the Basque country of Spain; when we did, we were moved and inspired. We knew we wanted to do something to spread the word about this successful model of worker-ownership and its potential to change the culture of work—not just in Spain but around the world. We learned that there are hundreds of thriving cooperatives and worker-owned enterprises right here in North America, but that their stories are seldom told. Because Mark and I are filmmakers by profession, we felt that we could help tell those stories, and in doing so help others envision and implement a new economic democracy. We decided to make a film about it.

We are now in the final phases of completing that film, Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work. It is a project that has been equally grueling and exhilarating; sobering and uplifting; exhausting and encouraging. I’ve been very impressed by the examples I’ve seen of democratically run enterprises in Mondragon and in the U.S. These organizations operate in all sectors—engineering, baking, green house-cleaning, fair-trade food, home healthcare, pharmacies, cab companies, breweries…. They paint a new picture of “work,” creatively and equitably re-imagined.

I know that these stories will change the way that many people think. I believe that the visions of success we are presenting in Shift Change will mobilize people to seek new possibilities in their own workplaces, businesses, communities, and lives.

Like so many of the stories featured in the film, Shift Change itself is a cooperative effort. With your help, we’ll finish the project and show that it is possible to have a successful business where employees have a stake and a say; where decisions are made in a way that benefits local communities and without huge hierarchies and disparities of salary. Employee owned and managed enterprises are not the only solution to many of the difficulties we face, but they demonstrate that it is possible to make a difference, and to contribute toward a society with more equality and fairness—a society of which I will be proud to be a part.

We hope you will let us know about your work and your dreams, and that you’ll help us bring this film to light. Please take a look at our online funding campaign on the website Kickstarter to learn more, leave a comment, and make a contribution: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1287935035/shift-change-putting-democracy-to-work.

Thanks for your help,

Melissa Young

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.

Sheep grazing in the hills of Spanish Basque Country

We recently returned from a research trip to the beautiful Basque Country in northern Spain where the Mondragon Corporation has its roots. While we won’t actually begin filming at the Mondragon factories until this fall, we had a wonderful time touring the area, making connections, and further honing our vision of the kinds of stories we want to feature in the film, Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work.

Thoughts on our trip

Well, 9 hours of time zone change does take some adjustment….

We booked a rural guesthouse for lodging near Mondragon, and found ourselves in a lovely area of small farms, close to town. Like many areas that we saw, there were small farms on the hillsides, with towns and cities tucked into valleys, often with a huge factory on the outskirts, a source of employment for people of that town.

Many of the towns, like Mondragon, have a long history, and the central part of the town, the “casco viejo,” has a stone plaza and narrow walking streets. In the summer season especially after work, these central areas are full of people who are out visiting with neighbors and enjoying the offerings of local cafes and bars, often “pintxos”, snacks of incredible variety, and small glasses of beer or wine. Children run rampant. People seem relaxed.

On one such afternoon in Mondragon, we met some members of one of the Fagor Cooperatives, the oldest and largest of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. They shared some of their views, let us know that all were doing a re-training around cooperativism and the roots of the Mondragon system which was inspired by a Catholic priest, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta 55 years ago.

Basque country has a very long industrial history, and particularly around the town of Mondragon, we saw factories everywhere, factories that produce household appliances, auto parts, industrial machinery, etc. But in addition to that, many institutions are organized as coops, such as Mondragon University, a banking system, language training centers, social service agencies, research and development centers, and a major supermarket chain. Employees in the Mondragon coop system number around 85,000.

After a week or so in that part of Basque country, we traveled to the town of Gernika [commonly called Guernica]. This town is known from the Picasso painting “Guernica” of what was a devastating airstrike by German and Italian Nazi war planes during the Spanish civil war that leveled the city in 1937. It has been rebuilt, but retains a central plaza and walking streets.

Maier, a factory on the outskirts of Guernica affiliated with the Mondragon cooperatives, produces plastic auto parts and employs 1,000 residents. Passing by one afternoon we struck up a conversation with two men leaving the factory. They explained some of the benefits they saw of working in the cooperative. With the recent downturn in the economy, the coop members voted to reduce their own salaries rather than lay people off.

The economic downturn has had a major impact in Spain, where unemployment is 20%. This provoked massive demonstrations particularly in the Plaza Puerta del Sol in Madrid where thousands camped for weeks. We saw tents pitched in the plazas of Bilbao and Vitoria in Basque country, but unemployment is only at 8% there.

This visit was a great introduction to the beauty of Basque country, and the people who proudly speak the Basque language unrelated to any other in the world, [but fortunately for us, also Spanish]. We are eager to return in the fall to film for the segment of Shift Change about the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation to show the impact of an economy organized around cooperatives after several decades.