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Speaker 1: About six months into the pandemic, an Ohio based cooperative

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Speaker 1: network received an influx of requests from small businesses that

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Speaker 1: wanted to turn themselves into worker owned co ops. For

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Speaker 1: a lot of folks, they have been unhappy with how

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Speaker 1: their current jobs, the current economy has been working for them,

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Speaker 1: and the idea of being part of something truly holding

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Speaker 1: workers as a most important piece is really really attractive.

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Speaker 1: That's Ellen Vira. She's the director of coop Organizing at

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Speaker 1: co op Sincy, a network of around dozen cooperative businesses

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Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, Ohio, where workers manage, own, and ultimately share

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Speaker 1: in the profits of their labor co ops. Since has

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Speaker 1: been around for about a decade, but in that fall

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Speaker 1: of alone it got applications to help another dozen businesses

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Speaker 1: go coop. One of the businesses that reached out was

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Speaker 1: the Shine Nurture Center, a Monostori style day air next

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Speaker 1: to the lush mount Airy Forest in Cincinnati. As the

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Speaker 1: pandemic dragged on, its founder and owner wanted to move on.

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Speaker 1: Like many people, she was reevaluating her life and decided

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Speaker 1: to go back to school, but she didn't want to

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Speaker 1: shut down the center she'd built and run for the

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Speaker 1: last six years, so she decided to sell it to

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Speaker 1: the teachers who worked there. My name is Beth Heya.

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Speaker 1: I work here at Shin Nurture Center Cooperative and I'm

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Speaker 1: currently the office manager and we are a nature based center,

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Speaker 1: so we're mostly outside in Mount Airy. We're very lucky

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Speaker 1: we have a path right out of our parking lots

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Speaker 1: and we get to go back there a lot with

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Speaker 1: the kiddos. Beth is one of four teachers who went

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Speaker 1: from working in the center to owning it. Before, she

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Speaker 1: says she was at the whims of administrators and parents

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Speaker 1: and at times found herself in less than ideal working conditions.

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Speaker 1: Now she's a business owner. She and the other teacher

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Speaker 1: owners have a say in how things get run. That

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Speaker 1: includes increasing pay and benefits and making sure class rooms

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Speaker 1: aren't understaffed, and at the end of the year, she

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Speaker 1: and the other owners will share in its profits too.

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Speaker 1: There's not a lot of like groping about, like why

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Speaker 1: we're doing something, because we all understand why we got

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Speaker 1: to those steps. You can see why co ops would

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Speaker 1: be attractive during a pandemic that created enormous economic uncertainty.

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Speaker 1: It gives people some power over their work lives, if

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Speaker 1: they can work from home or take sick days, or

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Speaker 1: when they clock in, and what they get paid. Looking

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Speaker 1: at the childcare crisis, being an educator, there's just a

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Speaker 1: lot of pressure put on childcare and there's not a

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Speaker 1: lot of voice given to the folks who are in

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Speaker 1: charge of it. So I think for post pandemic I

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Speaker 1: think this might be a really good solution for teachers

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Speaker 1: at centers who feel like they want to have a voice. Yet,

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Speaker 1: cops are still relatively rare in the US. Just around

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Speaker 1: a hundred people work at the companies and coops and

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Speaker 1: see for example. But there is somewhere worker co ops

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Speaker 1: abound and it's a place of notable equality. Mandragone is

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Speaker 1: a group of around a hundred cooperatives in the Basque

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Speaker 1: region of Spain that's been around for half a century.

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Speaker 1: It covers nearly eighty thousand workers across all sorts of industries.

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Speaker 1: Nobody there is wildly rich, but there isn't much poverty either.

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Speaker 1: It's the kind of place that often gets dismissed as

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Speaker 1: a special place doing a special thing that can't be

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Speaker 1: replicated elsewhere. But now more and more people are thinking

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Speaker 1: maybe they can be the next mandragone jobless claims coming in,

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Speaker 1: I mean really jumping from the week before, pretty brutal,

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Speaker 1: three point to a million record six point six million

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Speaker 1: Americans filed for unemployment last week and then working for

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Speaker 1: the worst infected by the pandemic. Prices of public housing

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Speaker 1: resail flats have hit an old time high in the

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Speaker 1: first well. Now to the billionaire boom. According to Bloomberg,

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Speaker 1: super riocht charters are up over three and a billionaire

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Speaker 1: was created every twenty six I was during this pandemic.

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Speaker 1: Is time for a wealth tax in America? Welcome back

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Speaker 1: to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. For the last seven weeks,

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Speaker 1: we've gone around the world to see how the pandemic

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Speaker 1: made things more or less equal. The answer depended on

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Speaker 1: all sorts of variables, a country's pre existing economic conditions,

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Speaker 1: how it managed the virus itself, and what financial decisions

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Speaker 1: were made facing a global economic crisis. In some places,

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Speaker 1: there were some pleasant surprises, like in the US, where

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Speaker 1: the poorest got some stability and economic security for the

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Speaker 1: first time in decades. In others, like India, economic desperation

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Speaker 1: lad people to make life altering choices that derailed their futures.

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Speaker 1: The question as we head into the next phase of

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Speaker 1: the pandemic is how lasting will any of these trends be.

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Speaker 1: That's what led us to work our own co ops.

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Speaker 1: Interest in worker own co ops tends to spike during

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Speaker 1: times of crisis. At a very basic level, worker co

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Speaker 1: ops they tend to emerge where there's a market failure.

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Speaker 1: That's Mike Paul Mary, an associate researcher at the Ohio

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Speaker 1: Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University. He says that

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Speaker 1: people who feel left out of the economy seek out

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Speaker 1: alternatives to traditional business models. After the two thousand eight recession,

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Speaker 1: for example, he says, the number of co ops in

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Speaker 1: the US has more than doubled. To him, they are

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Speaker 1: key to closing wealth gaps. A lot of our beIN

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Speaker 1: a quality today is driven by inequality and wealth and assets.

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Speaker 1: What employee ownership allows you to do and not just

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Speaker 1: provide a higher wage via income, but it gives individuals

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Speaker 1: who otherwise wouldn't have wealth and assets wealth and assets,

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Speaker 1: providing them that cushion and closing that gap as well.

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Speaker 1: And some employe ownership kind of attacks I would say

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Speaker 1: economic inequality at its fruit. While the pandemic isn't over yet.

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Speaker 1: Mike says there's been a notable uptick and interest in

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Speaker 1: the co op model. People see it as a gateway

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Speaker 1: to greater equality and security when the next pandemic or

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Speaker 1: whatever crisis comes around. But how realistic is that and

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Speaker 1: how did it work? My colleague Jeanette Newman went to

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Speaker 1: the Basque region in Spain to visit them Undergone co ops,

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Speaker 1: the mecca of worker cooperatives, to see how they fared

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Speaker 1: during the pandemic and what lessons can be learned about

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Speaker 1: creating a more equal world. Here she is with the story.

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Speaker 1: I'm standing on an assembly line watching some workers build

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Speaker 1: washing machines. The company is called fog Or Industrial. It's

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Speaker 1: one of the hundred or so cooperatives that are part

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Speaker 1: of the Moundergo network. One of the workers on the

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Speaker 1: assembly line is Baltasar Garcia Leone. Balta, as he's called,

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Speaker 1: is fifty nine years old. He has a clean shaven

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Speaker 1: head and an athletic build thanks to frequent outings with

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Speaker 1: his cycling buddies. He's been building washing machines at Mundergone

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Speaker 1: cooperatives for more than three decades. He's telling me how

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Speaker 1: the assembly line works. Balt and his colleagues on the

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Speaker 1: line build twenty two washing machines every day. They're sold

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Speaker 1: to hotels and restaurants. When the pandemic hit, Balta's assembly line,

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Speaker 1: like many around the world, down shifted. Every Friday, they

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Speaker 1: sent us home, so we missed out on a lot

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Speaker 1: of ours. Bolt and his colleagues also worked fewer hours

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Speaker 1: on the days they went into the factory. Those were scary,

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Speaker 1: uncertain times. Balta was worried about the virus like everyone else,

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Speaker 1: but he was less worried than many people about his

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Speaker 1: paycheck and his savings. Thousands of workers at Mondragon felt

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Speaker 1: the same in those chaotic first months. As COVID nineteen

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Speaker 1: up ended everything around the world, Mundergone was, by comparison,

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Speaker 1: an oasis of calm for workers. The reason moundergone has

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Speaker 1: a playbook to protect jobs that it's been honing for

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Speaker 1: more than half a century. Mundragon's first cooperative was founded

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties by a priest and some of

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Speaker 1: his acolytes. Since then, crisis after crisis, the cooperatives have

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Speaker 1: found a way to keep unemployment and inequality in check.

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Speaker 1: The pandemic was no exception your Bilk. When I go

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Speaker 1: to other areas, I noticed much greater social differences. Here

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Speaker 1: the manager can be my neighbor. Elsewhere, I guess they

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Speaker 1: live in gay good communities. Joblessness here is much lower

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Speaker 1: than in the rest of Spain, and the level of

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Speaker 1: income inequality is on par with countries such as Finland

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Speaker 1: and Norway. The differences that the Nordic countries have relatively

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Speaker 1: high taxes they redistribute wealth. In the undergone region, taxes

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Speaker 1: are lower than in the Nordics. The cooperatives create wealth

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Speaker 1: for a lot of people. One way they do that

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Speaker 1: is by digging up their annual profits among workers. Assembly

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Speaker 1: Line workers like Balta, for example, have retirement savings that

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Speaker 1: are in line with top managers. The objective of the

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Speaker 1: cooperative is not to produce rich people, is to produce

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Speaker 1: rich societies. At the end of the day, even if

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Speaker 1: you are not rich, if you belong to a rich society,

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Speaker 1: you will be happy that he works at Moundergon Assembly.

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Speaker 1: It makes solar panels as well as machinery to help

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Speaker 1: firms automate their production. Most of the cooperatives in the

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Speaker 1: network are industrial. One of them is even making rocket

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Speaker 1: parts for Blue Origin. That's the aerospace company owned by

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Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. As a rule, managers across the Moundergone network

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Speaker 1: can only earn six times more than the lowest paid worker.

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Speaker 1: At some places, like yours cooperative, the gap is even

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Speaker 1: smaller three to onegre and many of his colleagues or engineers,

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Speaker 1: they do similar work, he says, so they are in

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Speaker 1: similar pay or associeties. Here very realitarian. We don't have

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Speaker 1: a lot of rich people are not very rich. But

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Speaker 1: in the other hand, we also don't have poor people.

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Speaker 1: The CEO or the engineer or the man who makes

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Speaker 1: the photocopies. We all belong to the same social group.

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Speaker 1: But how do those egalitarian ideals hold up when times

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Speaker 1: get tough? How did the cooperatives and their worker owners

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Speaker 1: survive the worst economic crisis in a century? I speak

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Speaker 1: to under Chevita. He's an executive at headquarters called Moundergone Corporation.

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Speaker 1: The corporation overseas the one hundred or so cooperatives that

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Speaker 1: form part of the Moundergone network. When a crisis hits,

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Speaker 1: all the co ops rely on a safety managed by headquarters. Understays.

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Speaker 1: The goal is to preserve jobs and That means the

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Speaker 1: safety net has to be flexible. For that we have

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Speaker 1: different mechanisms. If there is no work for me in

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Speaker 1: my corporative, I have the right to work in another

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Speaker 1: corporative of the corporation. If there is no work for

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Speaker 1: me in the corporation, I have the right to be

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Speaker 1: trained to be more employable. And if still there is

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Speaker 1: no work for me the corporation, I have the right

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Speaker 1: to get an unemployment benefit for maximum two years. This

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Speaker 1: is great. That does sound great, and under makes it

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Speaker 1: seem so easy, But the cooperative model doesn't always work perfectly.

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Speaker 1: About a decade ago, the co op where Balta was

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Speaker 1: working went bankrupt. It was in the aftermath of the

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Speaker 1: global recession. That was a wake up call for Balta

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Speaker 1: and many others. Failure is possible. So even when things

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Speaker 1: appear to be running smoothly at Montrigone during the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: in the backup workers minds, the threat of failure loomed.

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Speaker 1: I visit Bolts at his apartment to learn more about

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Speaker 1: how he survived that bankruptcy and the pandemic. He lives

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Speaker 1: just outside the town of Mondragon. The area is surrounded

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Speaker 1: by forested mountain tops which gave way to pastures and farmland.

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Speaker 1: Further down in the narrow mountain valleys sit box the

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Speaker 1: industrial warehouses where the cooperatives manufacture their products. I ring

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Speaker 1: Bolt's doorbell. All right, we sit down at his kitchen table.

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Speaker 1: He proudly points to a white washing machine from his

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Speaker 1: cooperative tucked underneath the countertop. Balta joined his first co

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Speaker 1: op in n He worked there for more than two decades.

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Speaker 1: In two thousand thirteen, it went bankrupt after struggling through

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Speaker 1: Spain's double dip recession bolting. Around nine workers lost their jobs.

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Speaker 1: It was the biggest crisis the cooperatives had ever faced.

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Speaker 1: Enjoy of course, I was scared. I had done an

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Speaker 1: interview or two at that time, But I mean I

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Speaker 1: was forty eight years old. I was already pretty old.

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Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be difficult. But Mondragon

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Speaker 1: eventually found new jobs at other cooperatives for most of

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Speaker 1: the workers, including Balta. He got a position at Fogor Industrial,

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Speaker 1: where he is now. Other workers went into early retirement. Still,

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Speaker 1: the bankruptcy meant that Balta and other members lost the

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Speaker 1: money they had been stashing away for years in their

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Speaker 1: retirement savings. Accounts. That was a lesson for everyone at Mondragone.

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Speaker 1: When a crisis hits, workers after react quickly to show

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Speaker 1: up the finances of their cooperatives and prevent things from

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Speaker 1: getting worse. During the pandemic, Bolton his colleagues tried to

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Speaker 1: put that lesson into practice. In the U S and

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Speaker 1: other countries. Unemployment spiked in the early days of the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: Business slowed down or came to a halt, and executives

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Speaker 1: had to cut costs, so they laid off workers. Balton

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Speaker 1: other operative members or workers and owners. So it wasn't

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Speaker 1: an option for them to fire themselves, but they still

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Speaker 1: had to find a way to cut costs, otherwise they

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Speaker 1: could end up saving themselves. But tanking the cooperative seen

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Speaker 1: our interest in every respect that the cooperative does well,

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Speaker 1: our livelihood depends on so making money that has to

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Speaker 1: be the baseline, because a company can have a really

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Speaker 1: nice financial targets, but if it doesn't earn any money

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Speaker 1: in the end, it's gone. It would be destroyed. This

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Speaker 1: is where Mundergones Crisis playbook kicks in. The leadership team,

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Speaker 1: which is made up of assembly line workers like Balta

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Speaker 1: and members who have more executive experience meant to make

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Speaker 1: a plan. First, they decided to lay off a few

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Speaker 1: dozen workers who aren't members of the cooperative. Only around

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Speaker 1: one third of workers at Undergone are also members. Some

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Speaker 1: people don't qualify. New members have to be voted in

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Speaker 1: by existing members. If someone as a reputation as being

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Speaker 1: a bit irresponsible or isn't considered a team player, they

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Speaker 1: might not be accepted. Others don't want to pay the

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Speaker 1: roughly sixteen thousand dollars it costs to become a member.

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Speaker 1: That's a kind of down payment to join the cooperative.

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Speaker 1: It goes into a savings fund for the worker. Next.

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Speaker 1: Balta's co op trim salaries on days they didn't work,

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Speaker 1: which ended up being more than anticipated they would get

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Speaker 1: of their salaries. We missed a lot of ours. We

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Speaker 1: couldn't recover a lot of those hours. How did the

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Speaker 1: co op afford to pay Balta and his colleagues for

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Speaker 1: all those days they didn't work after all revenue had fallen.

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Speaker 1: Wondergoing Headquarters stepped in and tapped a kind of insurance program.

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Speaker 1: It has co ops that were doing well, such as

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Speaker 1: those producing medical gear and bicycles, transferred funds to co

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Speaker 1: ops like Balta's, where workers had missed a lot of

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Speaker 1: days under the monder going executive we spoke too earlier

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Speaker 1: explains that mechanism we are bright for nine thousand workers

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Speaker 1: in the enemic year and it had a cost of

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Speaker 1: thirteen point to million euros. So when we are talking

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Speaker 1: about solidarity, it is also about money. Honors comments should

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Speaker 1: dispel any images you might have in your mind of

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Speaker 1: the cooperatives as a kind of utopian commune in the

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Speaker 1: Spanish countryside. On another's at mundergo and talk about money

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Speaker 1: and profits with the same ease as any capitalist. The

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Speaker 1: co ops are first and foremost a business. They need

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Speaker 1: to be profitable. At a publicly traded company, the goal

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Speaker 1: is to return profits to shareholders. The goal of the cooperatives,

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Speaker 1: by contrast, is to be profitable in order to create

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Speaker 1: and maintain good jobs. Another big difference is how the

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Speaker 1: cooperatives share their profits. Bolton, the other worker owners decide

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Speaker 1: that we gather at an annual general assembly, and that's

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Speaker 1: where a lot of the important issues are presented and

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Speaker 1: are voted on by all of the members. Ahead of

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Speaker 1: the annual meeting, the leadership team comes up with a

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Speaker 1: proposal to raise, lower, or maintain salaries. They also come

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Speaker 1: up with a plan for profit sharing. Then the leadership

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Speaker 1: team briefs workers, hashing out any disagreements at meetings and

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Speaker 1: around the water cooler. Finally, they all vote. Advocates of

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Speaker 1: worker cooperatives often emphasize the importance of one worker, one vote.

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Speaker 1: That means each member's vote has the same weight. Balta

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Speaker 1: says the phrase gives people an idealized impression of what

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Speaker 1: actually happens at the annual meetings. It's ultimately the manager

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Speaker 1: who's in charge. I mean, it's very nice to say

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Speaker 1: from the outside that we are represented. I feel qualified

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Speaker 1: to make decisions at my own job, but not at

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Speaker 1: the company level. While Balta doesn't want to be responsible

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Speaker 1: for setting company strategy, he does value having a say

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Speaker 1: and how the company has run, and if workers aren't

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Speaker 1: happy with the leadership team, they can vote them out.

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Speaker 1: I am part of that company. I make decisions. I

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Speaker 1: vote yes or I vote know. The annual meetings aren't

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Speaker 1: without conflict. Some tensions always emerge when hundreds of people

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Speaker 1: are deciding what to pay themselves. As people are on

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Speaker 1: under going like to say, this is not paradise and

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Speaker 1: we're not angels. Last year, Balta and some colleagues voted

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Speaker 1: against a proposal to increase executive pay. While salary differences

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Speaker 1: in Undergoing are minimal by global standards, Balta worries the

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Speaker 1: increases are a slippery slope to greater inequality. Okay, okay,

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Speaker 1: I think the differences are getting bigger, and that's what

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Speaker 1: bothers me. I understand that a qualified person has to

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Speaker 1: be paid, but maybe a different system has to be found.

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Speaker 1: In the end, the salary increase went through. Balta is

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Speaker 1: still frustrated about that. But that's democracy, he says. Your

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Speaker 1: candidate doesn't always win. I think for a minute about

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Speaker 1: an average US company, Then think about a majority of

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Speaker 1: employees at that company voting to cut their salaries during

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Speaker 1: a crisis. It seems like a long shot, right. Some

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Speaker 1: employees would probably say, well, I performed well where my

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Speaker 1: division is thriving, so why should I take a hit.

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Speaker 1: That's different from how workers at Undergone and other worker

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Speaker 1: cooperatives think about salary cuts. They're also the owners, so

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Speaker 1: a salary cut helps to ensure the survival of their company.

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Speaker 1: It's about shared ownership. Mike Paul Mary, the Kent State

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Speaker 1: co op expert we spoke too earlier, explains there's this

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Speaker 1: democratic component that makes worker cooperatives so much different than

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Speaker 1: just owning a share in a company. Every person gets

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Speaker 1: one vote regardless of how long they've been there, so

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Speaker 1: it's detached from capital and at the same level, the

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Speaker 1: way that the profits are distributed at the end of

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Speaker 1: the year are based on hours worked, and so it's

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Speaker 1: very equitable. It might seem a little surprising, but if

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Speaker 1: people have a steak in the business doing well, they're

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Speaker 1: going to care more. If you work at a company

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Speaker 1: where the company does great and it does absolutely nothing

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Speaker 1: for your life, who cares? Whereas where you have a

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Speaker 1: real steak where you will really benefit, people tend to

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Speaker 1: call out sick a lot less that employee on companies.

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Speaker 1: People tend to have a much different relationship with management

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Speaker 1: and employee on companies. They're more likely to say something,

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Speaker 1: and they're more likely to look at their coworker and say, hey,

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Speaker 1: you're kind of slack and you know can let's let's

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Speaker 1: do something here. And the co ops that are part

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Speaker 1: of the Monergo network are just a fraction of the

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Speaker 1: thousands of co ops located all across the Basque region.

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Speaker 1: Explain worker co ops have flourished in this part of

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Speaker 1: the world in part because shared ownership is an important

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Speaker 1: part of the culture that's different than in the US

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Speaker 1: co ops since he told us they have to hold

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Speaker 1: classes on how to build a culture of solidarity. But

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Speaker 1: in the Basque region, the benefits and responsibilities of owning

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00:21:09,880 --> 00:21:12,760
Speaker 1: something with a group of people are almost second nature. Too.

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Speaker 1: Many people around here uphold these values even when they're

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Speaker 1: having fun. One evening, I joined under the co op

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Speaker 1: executive for dinner. We walked through the town of Mondragone.

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Speaker 1: It's narrow streets are lined with old stone buildings. We're

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Speaker 1: going to go to a club Basque traditional calinary club chocomica.

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Speaker 1: They are a place to be with your friends, colleagues, family,

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Speaker 1: and today. For example, in the town of Manga One,

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Speaker 1: we are twenty two south Habitans. We have twenty two clubs.

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Speaker 1: Culinary clubs are essentially a private restaurant that's collectively owned

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Speaker 1: and run by a group of acquaintances. The club votes

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Speaker 1: to elect new members and everyone pays a membership fee.

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Speaker 1: We walk down some stairs and come into a big

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Speaker 1: room that looks like a restaurant with long wooden tables.

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Speaker 1: Some of Ander's friends await us, including cape O Leton,

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Speaker 1: a journalist, and a fantastic chef. He's prepared a dish

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Speaker 1: traditional and nearby son Sebastian Hake, white asparagus, hard boiled eggs,

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Speaker 1: and clams in a white wine sauce. He also sizzles

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Speaker 1: up some rearby stakes and we have some red wine.

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Speaker 1: At culinary clubs, you can find a CEO of a

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Speaker 1: company and an assembly line worker at the same table.

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Speaker 1: All members pay the same fee and have equal access

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Speaker 1: to a professional kitchen and spacious dining room. That's a

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Speaker 1: major perk in this food obsessed region. Around here, people

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00:22:56,280 --> 00:22:59,760
Speaker 1: tend to live in apartments where kitchens aren't particularly big. Also,

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00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 1: there aren't a lot of restaurants in many of the

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Speaker 1: small towns. Many of the culinary club members and the

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Speaker 1: workers at Mondragon were born and raised nearby. This culture

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00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:12,960
Speaker 1: have shared ownership is in their blood. That culture, though,

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00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:21,639
Speaker 1: can sometimes feel exclusionary to outsiders. But what would I

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Speaker 1: like most of all, I'd like to see more people

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Speaker 1: who are representative of the whole society and the cooperatives.

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Speaker 1: That's Diego Montoya he's originally from Columbia. Diego says he

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Speaker 1: would like to see more Colombians, Ecuadorians, Senegalese and others

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Speaker 1: who weren't born in the area but who were part

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Speaker 1: of Basque society joined the cooperatives. About twenty years ago,

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Speaker 1: Diego left his native Columbia guerrilla groups such as the FARC.

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Speaker 1: We're fighting the government. When Diego and his sister arrived

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Speaker 1: in the Basque region, they had to sleep on the streets. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: Diego found work as a waiter than in construction, but

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Speaker 1: he wanted a job at of the cooperatives, so he

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00:24:01,440 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 1: decided to get his engineering degree. After a decade in Mondragone,

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Speaker 1: when he was nearly forty, he finally became a member.

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Speaker 1: I've reached a place of fability, which gives me peace

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Speaker 1: of mind. And also I'm not worried that at my

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Speaker 1: age they're gonna fire me. They're not gonna fire me.

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Speaker 1: Diego wants more people like himself to be able to

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Speaker 1: experience the benefits of Mondragon's cooperatives. He says that one

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Speaker 1: hurdle is that some of the co ops strongly encouraged

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Speaker 1: members to speak the Basque language well. He appreciates that

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Speaker 1: the language is an important part of Basque identity. He

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00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:44,080
Speaker 1: doesn't want it to be a barrier to entry. Diego's wife,

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Speaker 1: Maria Protegi, has co ops in her blood. She grew

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Speaker 1: up in the town of Mondragon and her father was

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Speaker 1: an important figure in the early cooperative movement. I'm speaking

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Speaker 1: to both of them at a small weekend home that

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Speaker 1: Maria's family owns. It's a short drive from Mondragon. We're

396
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:01,679
Speaker 1: sitting outside and have a great view of the Basque

397
00:25:01,720 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 1: mountains in the distance, miles and miles of green. They

398
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:08,520
Speaker 1: would get together, all of them to help one of

399
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: the farms, you know. Like also, land means neighborhood work.

400
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Speaker 1: Maria's head of customer service at Orbea, am undergone co

401
00:25:16,560 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 1: op that makes bicycles. It's a well known brand in

402
00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:23,640
Speaker 1: Spain and among cyclists globally. When the pandemic struck many

403
00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:27,399
Speaker 1: of Orbea's clients, bicycle shops around the world shut down.

404
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:31,200
Speaker 1: Maria says Orbea decided to act to avoid pushing its

405
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:35,439
Speaker 1: clients into bankruptcy. When restrictions started to lift, demand for

406
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:38,879
Speaker 1: bicycles surged, Orbea has had a great couple of years.

407
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:41,240
Speaker 1: I asked Maria if she and her colleagues voted to

408
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 1: boost their salaries as a result. No, we are quite

409
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Speaker 1: conservative and we are very aware of the cycles. ORBEA

410
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: was founded in eighteen forty, so I guess they passed

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00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:54,719
Speaker 1: a lot of bad things out of good things. And

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00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:58,359
Speaker 1: so whenever it's going very well, we always get like, okay,

413
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Speaker 1: just in case, we get these my any justin cage,

414
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:05,199
Speaker 1: you know, well the justin caage boxes full because we

415
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:07,760
Speaker 1: know that, you know, but things come, Maria says. The

416
00:26:07,760 --> 00:26:10,560
Speaker 1: stability of the cooperative is the stability of hundreds of

417
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 1: people's livelihoods who are playing with many people's money. That's

418
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 1: something that it makes you think twice. In general, Europe

419
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:23,080
Speaker 1: was a relatively stable place for many workers. During the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: Spain and other countries rolled out national furlow programs. They

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00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 1: subsidized the salaries of tens of millions of employees who

422
00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 1: couldn't work. The difference is that the scale of these

423
00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:37,919
Speaker 1: programs was new. There were major growing pains. Some workers

424
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 1: didn't get their furlow payments for months. For example, at Mondragon,

425
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 1: there were no growing pains during the pandemic. Their crisis

426
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 1: playbook is tried and tested back in Balta's kitchen, he

427
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:58,199
Speaker 1: tells me I was co op has been doing. In

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Speaker 1: May of this year, Balton, the members of his cooperative

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00:27:01,280 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: gathered for their annual meeting. Demand for washing machines has

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00:27:04,600 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 1: been picking up. FuG Or reported a profit workers increase

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00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: their salaries by about five and they voted to distribute

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Speaker 1: some of those profits to members. Each member got the

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00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 1: equivalent of thousands of dollars deposited in a savings fund. Yes, here,

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Speaker 1: my experience has been very positive. The worst that could

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00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:29,639
Speaker 1: happen to me happened. I lost my job when I

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Speaker 1: was forty eight, fifty years old. Now I'm fifty nine

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00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 1: years old and I'm still working, and I've held on

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Speaker 1: to everything I've fought for. I've held onto it. Not

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00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: everywhere can be like Mandergone, but it's become a kind

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00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: of north star for places like co ops Sency. That's

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00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:59,159
Speaker 1: what Kristen Barker, one of the other founders of the

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00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 1: co Op Network, told me. On issues like inequality, I

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00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:06,000
Speaker 1: think there's just a tendency to throw up our hands

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00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:08,880
Speaker 1: and feel like we can't really do anything on here.

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Speaker 1: But you look at Mandragon, a living, breathing, proven model

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00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:20,000
Speaker 1: of extraordinary progress. This is possible, and this is what

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00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:24,359
Speaker 1: we want to be about. Creating the pandemic has led

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00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 1: to unimaginable devastation and trauma, but it has also shown

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00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 1: that there are proven models that create greater equality. Whether

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00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 1: it's the co ops of Mondragone, or giving people cash

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00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: like in the US, or the power of community based

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00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:46,800
Speaker 1: programs like in Kenya. There are things that work. It's

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Speaker 1: now up to us to decide if we'll learn any

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Speaker 1: of those lessons. This is our last episode of this

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00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: season of The Paycheck. Last week's episode said that Singapore

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00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:02,960
Speaker 1: has no manufacturing sector. We have corrected the error, as

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00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:06,920
Speaker 1: the category now accounts for of its GDP. Thank you

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00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:10,080
Speaker 1: so much for listening. If you like our show, please

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00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:12,840
Speaker 1: head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen

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00:29:12,880 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 1: to podcasts to rate and review. This episode was hosted

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00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: by Me Rebecca Greenfield and reported by Jeanette Newman and Me.

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00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: It was edited by Daniel Balby and Me with help

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00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:28,440
Speaker 1: from Francesca Levy, Janet Paskin, and rock Sheeta Soluja. We

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00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: also had editing help from Shelly Banjo, Kristin b Brown,

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00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 1: Gilda to Carly, Nicole Flato, Elissa McDonald, and Kay Schultz.

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00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Gilda to Carly and sound

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00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:43,200
Speaker 1: engineered by Matt Kin. Original music is by Leo Sidrin.

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00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: The voice actors you heard were Alex Mario and Juan

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00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:52,600
Speaker 1: Carlos Ernandez. Special thanks to Magnus Henrickson, Mckinninda Kuiper, Margaret Sutherland,

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00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: and Stacy Wong. Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.

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Speaker 1: What do