Mondragon Corporation – a federation of co-operatives

petrocrat

Worker cooperatives are fully compatible with capitalism. Only mentioning it because sometimes this idea gets unfairly maligned due to some mistaken association with socialism or even communism. There should be more of these sorts of entities in the USA and Europe, and frankly everywhere. It's an assured route towards better conditions for the working class, by making them owners and stakeholders in a more substantial way than merely holding some stock equity (which is kind of a superficial ownership that's sometimes presented as this same type of worker cooperative ownership).

johnnyainsworth

Worth noting that is completely legal in the USA and even encouraged by the tax code. They are called ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Program). An ESOP configured as an S-Corp that is 100% employee owned pays no federal business tax. Some examples of well known ESOPs in the US are Wawa, Bob's Red Mill, and W. L. Gore & Associates (makers of Gore-Tex).

mtct88

Why don't cooperatives of IT professionals exist? It's a business with low capital entry and high dividends. Workers should prefer to own their company as risks are really low (in contrast to other industries).

feverzsj

They moved most production work to factories in China, which ironically aren't cooperative.

kingsfoil

"Mutualism" by Sara Horowitz was an interesting book that discussed some of the history of this style of worker owned businesses. She traces some of it's history, and points out other examples of this style of worker or member governance showing up in other organizations: https://www.porchlightbooks.com/products/mutualism-sara-horo... Great read, highly recommend.

yogthos

Most people don't know this, but Huawei is another giant cooperative. > Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd. is a private company wholly owned by 169,054 of its employees and retired beneficiaries. As of December 31, 2025, company founder Ren Zhengfei's investment accounts for nearly 0.59% of the company’s total share capital. https://www.huawei.com/en/media-center/company-facts