Speaker 1: About six months into the pandemic, an Ohio based cooperative
Speaker 1: network received an influx of requests from small businesses that
Speaker 1: wanted to turn themselves into worker owned co ops. For
Speaker 1: a lot of folks, they have been unhappy with how
Speaker 1: their current jobs, the current economy has been working for them,
Speaker 1: and the idea of being part of something truly holding
Speaker 1: workers as a most important piece is really really attractive.
Speaker 1: That's Ellen Vira. She's the director of coop Organizing at
Speaker 1: co op Sincy, a network of around dozen cooperative businesses
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati, Ohio, where workers manage, own, and ultimately share
Speaker 1: in the profits of their labor co ops. Since has
Speaker 1: been around for about a decade, but in that fall
Speaker 1: of alone it got applications to help another dozen businesses
Speaker 1: go coop. One of the businesses that reached out was
Speaker 1: the Shine Nurture Center, a Monostori style day air next
Speaker 1: to the lush mount Airy Forest in Cincinnati. As the
Speaker 1: pandemic dragged on, its founder and owner wanted to move on.
Speaker 1: Like many people, she was reevaluating her life and decided
Speaker 1: to go back to school, but she didn't want to
Speaker 1: shut down the center she'd built and run for the
Speaker 1: last six years, so she decided to sell it to
Speaker 1: the teachers who worked there. My name is Beth Heya.
Speaker 1: I work here at Shin Nurture Center Cooperative and I'm
Speaker 1: currently the office manager and we are a nature based center,
Speaker 1: so we're mostly outside in Mount Airy. We're very lucky
Speaker 1: we have a path right out of our parking lots
Speaker 1: and we get to go back there a lot with
Speaker 1: the kiddos. Beth is one of four teachers who went
Speaker 1: from working in the center to owning it. Before, she
Speaker 1: says she was at the whims of administrators and parents
Speaker 1: and at times found herself in less than ideal working conditions.
Speaker 1: Now she's a business owner. She and the other teacher
Speaker 1: owners have a say in how things get run. That
Speaker 1: includes increasing pay and benefits and making sure class rooms
Speaker 1: aren't understaffed, and at the end of the year, she
Speaker 1: and the other owners will share in its profits too.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of like groping about, like why
Speaker 1: we're doing something, because we all understand why we got
Speaker 1: to those steps. You can see why co ops would
Speaker 1: be attractive during a pandemic that created enormous economic uncertainty.
Speaker 1: It gives people some power over their work lives, if
Speaker 1: they can work from home or take sick days, or
Speaker 1: when they clock in, and what they get paid. Looking
Speaker 1: at the childcare crisis, being an educator, there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure put on childcare and there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of voice given to the folks who are in
Speaker 1: charge of it. So I think for post pandemic I
Speaker 1: think this might be a really good solution for teachers
Speaker 1: at centers who feel like they want to have a voice. Yet,
Speaker 1: cops are still relatively rare in the US. Just around
Speaker 1: a hundred people work at the companies and coops and
Speaker 1: see for example. But there is somewhere worker co ops
Speaker 1: abound and it's a place of notable equality. Mandragone is
Speaker 1: a group of around a hundred cooperatives in the Basque
Speaker 1: region of Spain that's been around for half a century.
Speaker 1: It covers nearly eighty thousand workers across all sorts of industries.
Speaker 1: Nobody there is wildly rich, but there isn't much poverty either.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of place that often gets dismissed as
Speaker 1: a special place doing a special thing that can't be
Speaker 1: replicated elsewhere. But now more and more people are thinking
Speaker 1: maybe they can be the next mandragone jobless claims coming in,
Speaker 1: I mean really jumping from the week before, pretty brutal,
Speaker 1: three point to a million record six point six million
Speaker 1: Americans filed for unemployment last week and then working for
Speaker 1: the worst infected by the pandemic. Prices of public housing
Speaker 1: resail flats have hit an old time high in the
Speaker 1: first well. Now to the billionaire boom. According to Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: super riocht charters are up over three and a billionaire
Speaker 1: was created every twenty six I was during this pandemic.
Speaker 1: Is time for a wealth tax in America? Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the paycheck. I'm Rebecca Greenfield. For the last seven weeks,
Speaker 1: we've gone around the world to see how the pandemic
Speaker 1: made things more or less equal. The answer depended on
Speaker 1: all sorts of variables, a country's pre existing economic conditions,
Speaker 1: how it managed the virus itself, and what financial decisions
Speaker 1: were made facing a global economic crisis. In some places,
Speaker 1: there were some pleasant surprises, like in the US, where
Speaker 1: the poorest got some stability and economic security for the
Speaker 1: first time in decades. In others, like India, economic desperation
Speaker 1: lad people to make life altering choices that derailed their futures.
Speaker 1: The question as we head into the next phase of
Speaker 1: the pandemic is how lasting will any of these trends be.
Speaker 1: That's what led us to work our own co ops.
Speaker 1: Interest in worker own co ops tends to spike during
Speaker 1: times of crisis. At a very basic level, worker co
Speaker 1: ops they tend to emerge where there's a market failure.
Speaker 1: That's Mike Paul Mary, an associate researcher at the Ohio
Speaker 1: Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University. He says that
Speaker 1: people who feel left out of the economy seek out
Speaker 1: alternatives to traditional business models. After the two thousand eight recession,
Speaker 1: for example, he says, the number of co ops in
Speaker 1: the US has more than doubled. To him, they are
Speaker 1: key to closing wealth gaps. A lot of our beIN
Speaker 1: a quality today is driven by inequality and wealth and assets.
Speaker 1: What employee ownership allows you to do and not just
Speaker 1: provide a higher wage via income, but it gives individuals
Speaker 1: who otherwise wouldn't have wealth and assets wealth and assets,
Speaker 1: providing them that cushion and closing that gap as well.
Speaker 1: And some employe ownership kind of attacks I would say
Speaker 1: economic inequality at its fruit. While the pandemic isn't over yet.
Speaker 1: Mike says there's been a notable uptick and interest in
Speaker 1: the co op model. People see it as a gateway
Speaker 1: to greater equality and security when the next pandemic or
Speaker 1: whatever crisis comes around. But how realistic is that and
Speaker 1: how did it work? My colleague Jeanette Newman went to
Speaker 1: the Basque region in Spain to visit them Undergone co ops,
Speaker 1: the mecca of worker cooperatives, to see how they fared
Speaker 1: during the pandemic and what lessons can be learned about
Speaker 1: creating a more equal world. Here she is with the story.
Speaker 1: I'm standing on an assembly line watching some workers build
Speaker 1: washing machines. The company is called fog Or Industrial. It's
Speaker 1: one of the hundred or so cooperatives that are part
Speaker 1: of the Moundergo network. One of the workers on the
Speaker 1: assembly line is Baltasar Garcia Leone. Balta, as he's called,
Speaker 1: is fifty nine years old. He has a clean shaven
Speaker 1: head and an athletic build thanks to frequent outings with
Speaker 1: his cycling buddies. He's been building washing machines at Mundergone
Speaker 1: cooperatives for more than three decades. He's telling me how
Speaker 1: the assembly line works. Balt and his colleagues on the
Speaker 1: line build twenty two washing machines every day. They're sold
Speaker 1: to hotels and restaurants. When the pandemic hit, Balta's assembly line,
Speaker 1: like many around the world, down shifted. Every Friday, they
Speaker 1: sent us home, so we missed out on a lot
Speaker 1: of ours. Bolt and his colleagues also worked fewer hours
Speaker 1: on the days they went into the factory. Those were scary,
Speaker 1: uncertain times. Balta was worried about the virus like everyone else,
Speaker 1: but he was less worried than many people about his
Speaker 1: paycheck and his savings. Thousands of workers at Mondragon felt
Speaker 1: the same in those chaotic first months. As COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: up ended everything around the world, Mundergone was, by comparison,
Speaker 1: an oasis of calm for workers. The reason moundergone has
Speaker 1: a playbook to protect jobs that it's been honing for
Speaker 1: more than half a century. Mundragon's first cooperative was founded
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties by a priest and some of
Speaker 1: his acolytes. Since then, crisis after crisis, the cooperatives have
Speaker 1: found a way to keep unemployment and inequality in check.
Speaker 1: The pandemic was no exception your Bilk. When I go
Speaker 1: to other areas, I noticed much greater social differences. Here
Speaker 1: the manager can be my neighbor. Elsewhere, I guess they
Speaker 1: live in gay good communities. Joblessness here is much lower
Speaker 1: than in the rest of Spain, and the level of
Speaker 1: income inequality is on par with countries such as Finland
Speaker 1: and Norway. The differences that the Nordic countries have relatively
Speaker 1: high taxes they redistribute wealth. In the undergone region, taxes
Speaker 1: are lower than in the Nordics. The cooperatives create wealth
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. One way they do that
Speaker 1: is by digging up their annual profits among workers. Assembly
Speaker 1: Line workers like Balta, for example, have retirement savings that
Speaker 1: are in line with top managers. The objective of the
Speaker 1: cooperative is not to produce rich people, is to produce
Speaker 1: rich societies. At the end of the day, even if
Speaker 1: you are not rich, if you belong to a rich society,
Speaker 1: you will be happy that he works at Moundergon Assembly.
Speaker 1: It makes solar panels as well as machinery to help
Speaker 1: firms automate their production. Most of the cooperatives in the
Speaker 1: network are industrial. One of them is even making rocket
Speaker 1: parts for Blue Origin. That's the aerospace company owned by
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. As a rule, managers across the Moundergone network
Speaker 1: can only earn six times more than the lowest paid worker.
Speaker 1: At some places, like yours cooperative, the gap is even
Speaker 1: smaller three to onegre and many of his colleagues or engineers,
Speaker 1: they do similar work, he says, so they are in
Speaker 1: similar pay or associeties. Here very realitarian. We don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of rich people are not very rich. But
Speaker 1: in the other hand, we also don't have poor people.
Speaker 1: The CEO or the engineer or the man who makes
Speaker 1: the photocopies. We all belong to the same social group.
Speaker 1: But how do those egalitarian ideals hold up when times
Speaker 1: get tough? How did the cooperatives and their worker owners
Speaker 1: survive the worst economic crisis in a century? I speak
Speaker 1: to under Chevita. He's an executive at headquarters called Moundergone Corporation.
Speaker 1: The corporation overseas the one hundred or so cooperatives that
Speaker 1: form part of the Moundergone network. When a crisis hits,
Speaker 1: all the co ops rely on a safety managed by headquarters. Understays.
Speaker 1: The goal is to preserve jobs and That means the
Speaker 1: safety net has to be flexible. For that we have
Speaker 1: different mechanisms. If there is no work for me in
Speaker 1: my corporative, I have the right to work in another
Speaker 1: corporative of the corporation. If there is no work for
Speaker 1: me in the corporation, I have the right to be
Speaker 1: trained to be more employable. And if still there is
Speaker 1: no work for me the corporation, I have the right
Speaker 1: to get an unemployment benefit for maximum two years. This
Speaker 1: is great. That does sound great, and under makes it
Speaker 1: seem so easy, But the cooperative model doesn't always work perfectly.
Speaker 1: About a decade ago, the co op where Balta was
Speaker 1: working went bankrupt. It was in the aftermath of the
Speaker 1: global recession. That was a wake up call for Balta
Speaker 1: and many others. Failure is possible. So even when things
Speaker 1: appear to be running smoothly at Montrigone during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: in the backup workers minds, the threat of failure loomed.
Speaker 1: I visit Bolts at his apartment to learn more about
Speaker 1: how he survived that bankruptcy and the pandemic. He lives
Speaker 1: just outside the town of Mondragon. The area is surrounded
Speaker 1: by forested mountain tops which gave way to pastures and farmland.
Speaker 1: Further down in the narrow mountain valleys sit box the
Speaker 1: industrial warehouses where the cooperatives manufacture their products. I ring
Speaker 1: Bolt's doorbell. All right, we sit down at his kitchen table.
Speaker 1: He proudly points to a white washing machine from his
Speaker 1: cooperative tucked underneath the countertop. Balta joined his first co
Speaker 1: op in n He worked there for more than two decades.
Speaker 1: In two thousand thirteen, it went bankrupt after struggling through
Speaker 1: Spain's double dip recession bolting. Around nine workers lost their jobs.
Speaker 1: It was the biggest crisis the cooperatives had ever faced.
Speaker 1: Enjoy of course, I was scared. I had done an
Speaker 1: interview or two at that time, But I mean I
Speaker 1: was forty eight years old. I was already pretty old.
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be difficult. But Mondragon
Speaker 1: eventually found new jobs at other cooperatives for most of
Speaker 1: the workers, including Balta. He got a position at Fogor Industrial,
Speaker 1: where he is now. Other workers went into early retirement. Still,
Speaker 1: the bankruptcy meant that Balta and other members lost the
Speaker 1: money they had been stashing away for years in their
Speaker 1: retirement savings. Accounts. That was a lesson for everyone at Mondragone.
Speaker 1: When a crisis hits, workers after react quickly to show
Speaker 1: up the finances of their cooperatives and prevent things from
Speaker 1: getting worse. During the pandemic, Bolton his colleagues tried to
Speaker 1: put that lesson into practice. In the U S and
Speaker 1: other countries. Unemployment spiked in the early days of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: Business slowed down or came to a halt, and executives
Speaker 1: had to cut costs, so they laid off workers. Balton
Speaker 1: other operative members or workers and owners. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: an option for them to fire themselves, but they still
Speaker 1: had to find a way to cut costs, otherwise they
Speaker 1: could end up saving themselves. But tanking the cooperative seen
Speaker 1: our interest in every respect that the cooperative does well,
Speaker 1: our livelihood depends on so making money that has to
Speaker 1: be the baseline, because a company can have a really
Speaker 1: nice financial targets, but if it doesn't earn any money
Speaker 1: in the end, it's gone. It would be destroyed. This
Speaker 1: is where Mundergones Crisis playbook kicks in. The leadership team,
Speaker 1: which is made up of assembly line workers like Balta
Speaker 1: and members who have more executive experience meant to make
Speaker 1: a plan. First, they decided to lay off a few
Speaker 1: dozen workers who aren't members of the cooperative. Only around
Speaker 1: one third of workers at Undergone are also members. Some
Speaker 1: people don't qualify. New members have to be voted in
Speaker 1: by existing members. If someone as a reputation as being
Speaker 1: a bit irresponsible or isn't considered a team player, they
Speaker 1: might not be accepted. Others don't want to pay the
Speaker 1: roughly sixteen thousand dollars it costs to become a member.
Speaker 1: That's a kind of down payment to join the cooperative.
Speaker 1: It goes into a savings fund for the worker. Next.
Speaker 1: Balta's co op trim salaries on days they didn't work,
Speaker 1: which ended up being more than anticipated they would get
Speaker 1: of their salaries. We missed a lot of ours. We
Speaker 1: couldn't recover a lot of those hours. How did the
Speaker 1: co op afford to pay Balta and his colleagues for
Speaker 1: all those days they didn't work after all revenue had fallen.
Speaker 1: Wondergoing Headquarters stepped in and tapped a kind of insurance program.
Speaker 1: It has co ops that were doing well, such as
Speaker 1: those producing medical gear and bicycles, transferred funds to co
Speaker 1: ops like Balta's, where workers had missed a lot of
Speaker 1: days under the monder going executive we spoke too earlier
Speaker 1: explains that mechanism we are bright for nine thousand workers
Speaker 1: in the enemic year and it had a cost of
Speaker 1: thirteen point to million euros. So when we are talking
Speaker 1: about solidarity, it is also about money. Honors comments should
Speaker 1: dispel any images you might have in your mind of
Speaker 1: the cooperatives as a kind of utopian commune in the
Speaker 1: Spanish countryside. On another's at mundergo and talk about money
Speaker 1: and profits with the same ease as any capitalist. The
Speaker 1: co ops are first and foremost a business. They need
Speaker 1: to be profitable. At a publicly traded company, the goal
Speaker 1: is to return profits to shareholders. The goal of the cooperatives,
Speaker 1: by contrast, is to be profitable in order to create
Speaker 1: and maintain good jobs. Another big difference is how the
Speaker 1: cooperatives share their profits. Bolton, the other worker owners decide
Speaker 1: that we gather at an annual general assembly, and that's
Speaker 1: where a lot of the important issues are presented and
Speaker 1: are voted on by all of the members. Ahead of
Speaker 1: the annual meeting, the leadership team comes up with a
Speaker 1: proposal to raise, lower, or maintain salaries. They also come
Speaker 1: up with a plan for profit sharing. Then the leadership
Speaker 1: team briefs workers, hashing out any disagreements at meetings and
Speaker 1: around the water cooler. Finally, they all vote. Advocates of
Speaker 1: worker cooperatives often emphasize the importance of one worker, one vote.
Speaker 1: That means each member's vote has the same weight. Balta
Speaker 1: says the phrase gives people an idealized impression of what
Speaker 1: actually happens at the annual meetings. It's ultimately the manager
Speaker 1: who's in charge. I mean, it's very nice to say
Speaker 1: from the outside that we are represented. I feel qualified
Speaker 1: to make decisions at my own job, but not at
Speaker 1: the company level. While Balta doesn't want to be responsible
Speaker 1: for setting company strategy, he does value having a say
Speaker 1: and how the company has run, and if workers aren't
Speaker 1: happy with the leadership team, they can vote them out.
Speaker 1: I am part of that company. I make decisions. I
Speaker 1: vote yes or I vote know. The annual meetings aren't
Speaker 1: without conflict. Some tensions always emerge when hundreds of people
Speaker 1: are deciding what to pay themselves. As people are on
Speaker 1: under going like to say, this is not paradise and
Speaker 1: we're not angels. Last year, Balta and some colleagues voted
Speaker 1: against a proposal to increase executive pay. While salary differences
Speaker 1: in Undergoing are minimal by global standards, Balta worries the
Speaker 1: increases are a slippery slope to greater inequality. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I think the differences are getting bigger, and that's what
Speaker 1: bothers me. I understand that a qualified person has to
Speaker 1: be paid, but maybe a different system has to be found.
Speaker 1: In the end, the salary increase went through. Balta is
Speaker 1: still frustrated about that. But that's democracy, he says. Your
Speaker 1: candidate doesn't always win. I think for a minute about
Speaker 1: an average US company, Then think about a majority of
Speaker 1: employees at that company voting to cut their salaries during
Speaker 1: a crisis. It seems like a long shot, right. Some
Speaker 1: employees would probably say, well, I performed well where my
Speaker 1: division is thriving, so why should I take a hit.
Speaker 1: That's different from how workers at Undergone and other worker
Speaker 1: cooperatives think about salary cuts. They're also the owners, so
Speaker 1: a salary cut helps to ensure the survival of their company.
Speaker 1: It's about shared ownership. Mike Paul Mary, the Kent State
Speaker 1: co op expert we spoke too earlier, explains there's this
Speaker 1: democratic component that makes worker cooperatives so much different than
Speaker 1: just owning a share in a company. Every person gets
Speaker 1: one vote regardless of how long they've been there, so
Speaker 1: it's detached from capital and at the same level, the
Speaker 1: way that the profits are distributed at the end of
Speaker 1: the year are based on hours worked, and so it's
Speaker 1: very equitable. It might seem a little surprising, but if
Speaker 1: people have a steak in the business doing well, they're
Speaker 1: going to care more. If you work at a company
Speaker 1: where the company does great and it does absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: for your life, who cares? Whereas where you have a
Speaker 1: real steak where you will really benefit, people tend to
Speaker 1: call out sick a lot less that employee on companies.
Speaker 1: People tend to have a much different relationship with management
Speaker 1: and employee on companies. They're more likely to say something,
Speaker 1: and they're more likely to look at their coworker and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you're kind of slack and you know can let's let's
Speaker 1: do something here. And the co ops that are part
Speaker 1: of the Monergo network are just a fraction of the
Speaker 1: thousands of co ops located all across the Basque region.
Speaker 1: Explain worker co ops have flourished in this part of
Speaker 1: the world in part because shared ownership is an important
Speaker 1: part of the culture that's different than in the US
Speaker 1: co ops since he told us they have to hold
Speaker 1: classes on how to build a culture of solidarity. But
Speaker 1: in the Basque region, the benefits and responsibilities of owning
Speaker 1: something with a group of people are almost second nature. Too.
Speaker 1: Many people around here uphold these values even when they're
Speaker 1: having fun. One evening, I joined under the co op
Speaker 1: executive for dinner. We walked through the town of Mondragone.
Speaker 1: It's narrow streets are lined with old stone buildings. We're
Speaker 1: going to go to a club Basque traditional calinary club chocomica.
Speaker 1: They are a place to be with your friends, colleagues, family,
Speaker 1: and today. For example, in the town of Manga One,
Speaker 1: we are twenty two south Habitans. We have twenty two clubs.
Speaker 1: Culinary clubs are essentially a private restaurant that's collectively owned
Speaker 1: and run by a group of acquaintances. The club votes
Speaker 1: to elect new members and everyone pays a membership fee.
Speaker 1: We walk down some stairs and come into a big
Speaker 1: room that looks like a restaurant with long wooden tables.
Speaker 1: Some of Ander's friends await us, including cape O Leton,
Speaker 1: a journalist, and a fantastic chef. He's prepared a dish
Speaker 1: traditional and nearby son Sebastian Hake, white asparagus, hard boiled eggs,
Speaker 1: and clams in a white wine sauce. He also sizzles
Speaker 1: up some rearby stakes and we have some red wine.
Speaker 1: At culinary clubs, you can find a CEO of a
Speaker 1: company and an assembly line worker at the same table.
Speaker 1: All members pay the same fee and have equal access
Speaker 1: to a professional kitchen and spacious dining room. That's a
Speaker 1: major perk in this food obsessed region. Around here, people
Speaker 1: tend to live in apartments where kitchens aren't particularly big. Also,
Speaker 1: there aren't a lot of restaurants in many of the
Speaker 1: small towns. Many of the culinary club members and the
Speaker 1: workers at Mondragon were born and raised nearby. This culture
Speaker 1: have shared ownership is in their blood. That culture, though,
Speaker 1: can sometimes feel exclusionary to outsiders. But what would I
Speaker 1: like most of all, I'd like to see more people
Speaker 1: who are representative of the whole society and the cooperatives.
Speaker 1: That's Diego Montoya he's originally from Columbia. Diego says he
Speaker 1: would like to see more Colombians, Ecuadorians, Senegalese and others
Speaker 1: who weren't born in the area but who were part
Speaker 1: of Basque society joined the cooperatives. About twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: Diego left his native Columbia guerrilla groups such as the FARC.
Speaker 1: We're fighting the government. When Diego and his sister arrived
Speaker 1: in the Basque region, they had to sleep on the streets. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Diego found work as a waiter than in construction, but
Speaker 1: he wanted a job at of the cooperatives, so he
Speaker 1: decided to get his engineering degree. After a decade in Mondragone,
Speaker 1: when he was nearly forty, he finally became a member.
Speaker 1: I've reached a place of fability, which gives me peace
Speaker 1: of mind. And also I'm not worried that at my
Speaker 1: age they're gonna fire me. They're not gonna fire me.
Speaker 1: Diego wants more people like himself to be able to
Speaker 1: experience the benefits of Mondragon's cooperatives. He says that one
Speaker 1: hurdle is that some of the co ops strongly encouraged
Speaker 1: members to speak the Basque language well. He appreciates that
Speaker 1: the language is an important part of Basque identity. He
Speaker 1: doesn't want it to be a barrier to entry. Diego's wife,
Speaker 1: Maria Protegi, has co ops in her blood. She grew
Speaker 1: up in the town of Mondragon and her father was
Speaker 1: an important figure in the early cooperative movement. I'm speaking
Speaker 1: to both of them at a small weekend home that
Speaker 1: Maria's family owns. It's a short drive from Mondragon. We're
Speaker 1: sitting outside and have a great view of the Basque
Speaker 1: mountains in the distance, miles and miles of green. They
Speaker 1: would get together, all of them to help one of
Speaker 1: the farms, you know. Like also, land means neighborhood work.
Speaker 1: Maria's head of customer service at Orbea, am undergone co
Speaker 1: op that makes bicycles. It's a well known brand in
Speaker 1: Spain and among cyclists globally. When the pandemic struck many
Speaker 1: of Orbea's clients, bicycle shops around the world shut down.
Speaker 1: Maria says Orbea decided to act to avoid pushing its
Speaker 1: clients into bankruptcy. When restrictions started to lift, demand for
Speaker 1: bicycles surged, Orbea has had a great couple of years.
Speaker 1: I asked Maria if she and her colleagues voted to
Speaker 1: boost their salaries as a result. No, we are quite
Speaker 1: conservative and we are very aware of the cycles. ORBEA
Speaker 1: was founded in eighteen forty, so I guess they passed
Speaker 1: a lot of bad things out of good things. And
Speaker 1: so whenever it's going very well, we always get like, okay,
Speaker 1: just in case, we get these my any justin cage,
Speaker 1: you know, well the justin caage boxes full because we
Speaker 1: know that, you know, but things come, Maria says. The
Speaker 1: stability of the cooperative is the stability of hundreds of
Speaker 1: people's livelihoods who are playing with many people's money. That's
Speaker 1: something that it makes you think twice. In general, Europe
Speaker 1: was a relatively stable place for many workers. During the pandemic,
Speaker 1: Spain and other countries rolled out national furlow programs. They
Speaker 1: subsidized the salaries of tens of millions of employees who
Speaker 1: couldn't work. The difference is that the scale of these
Speaker 1: programs was new. There were major growing pains. Some workers
Speaker 1: didn't get their furlow payments for months. For example, at Mondragon,
Speaker 1: there were no growing pains during the pandemic. Their crisis
Speaker 1: playbook is tried and tested back in Balta's kitchen, he
Speaker 1: tells me I was co op has been doing. In
Speaker 1: May of this year, Balton, the members of his cooperative
Speaker 1: gathered for their annual meeting. Demand for washing machines has
Speaker 1: been picking up. FuG Or reported a profit workers increase
Speaker 1: their salaries by about five and they voted to distribute
Speaker 1: some of those profits to members. Each member got the
Speaker 1: equivalent of thousands of dollars deposited in a savings fund. Yes, here,
Speaker 1: my experience has been very positive. The worst that could
Speaker 1: happen to me happened. I lost my job when I
Speaker 1: was forty eight, fifty years old. Now I'm fifty nine
Speaker 1: years old and I'm still working, and I've held on
Speaker 1: to everything I've fought for. I've held onto it. Not
Speaker 1: everywhere can be like Mandergone, but it's become a kind
Speaker 1: of north star for places like co ops Sency. That's
Speaker 1: what Kristen Barker, one of the other founders of the
Speaker 1: co Op Network, told me. On issues like inequality, I
Speaker 1: think there's just a tendency to throw up our hands
Speaker 1: and feel like we can't really do anything on here.
Speaker 1: But you look at Mandragon, a living, breathing, proven model
Speaker 1: of extraordinary progress. This is possible, and this is what
Speaker 1: we want to be about. Creating the pandemic has led
Speaker 1: to unimaginable devastation and trauma, but it has also shown
Speaker 1: that there are proven models that create greater equality. Whether
Speaker 1: it's the co ops of Mondragone, or giving people cash
Speaker 1: like in the US, or the power of community based
Speaker 1: programs like in Kenya. There are things that work. It's
Speaker 1: now up to us to decide if we'll learn any
Speaker 1: of those lessons. This is our last episode of this
Speaker 1: season of The Paycheck. Last week's episode said that Singapore
Speaker 1: has no manufacturing sector. We have corrected the error, as
Speaker 1: the category now accounts for of its GDP. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening. If you like our show, please
Speaker 1: head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts to rate and review. This episode was hosted
Speaker 1: by Me Rebecca Greenfield and reported by Jeanette Newman and Me.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Daniel Balby and Me with help
Speaker 1: from Francesca Levy, Janet Paskin, and rock Sheeta Soluja. We
Speaker 1: also had editing help from Shelly Banjo, Kristin b Brown,
Speaker 1: Gilda to Carly, Nicole Flato, Elissa McDonald, and Kay Schultz.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Gilda to Carly and sound
Speaker 1: engineered by Matt Kin. Original music is by Leo Sidrin.
Speaker 1: The voice actors you heard were Alex Mario and Juan
Speaker 1: Carlos Ernandez. Special thanks to Magnus Henrickson, Mckinninda Kuiper, Margaret Sutherland,
Speaker 1: and Stacy Wong. Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
Speaker 1: What do