Sky-high corporate CEO pay, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz notes in a new report, “creates social norms” that drive up levels of inequality far beyond corporate payrolls.
Those “social norms,” cheerleaders for our current corporate order insist, simply reflect economic reality. In a globalized world where corporations tally sales and profits in the many billions, their argument goes, no modern major business could possibly survive — let alone thrive — without shelling out top executive pay that stretches into the many millions.
The owners of one of the largest businesses in Spain would beg to disagree.
Their nearly 60-year-old enterprise — named Mondragon for the Basque town in northern Spain that gave it birth — has nearly 75,000 employees working in everything from heavy industry and retail to banking and education. A big-league business, in other words, by any metric.
Yet Mondragon doesn’t shell out millions to any of its top executives. No executive at Mondragon makes anything close to even a single million.
How could that be? Mondragon just happens to operate as a cooperative and may be, many analysts believe, the world’s most significant worker-owned business.
Josu Ugarte, the president of Mondragon International, spent a chunk of last month touring the United States, as part of the co-op’s ongoing outreach to people and groups looking for alternatives to corporate business as usual. What alternative for corporate compensation does Mondragon offer? Too Much editor Sam Pizzigati caught up with Ugarte in Washington, D.C. and explored that question with him.
- See more at: http://toomuchonline.org/this-business-manufactures-equality#sthash.VSS9p97P.dpuf
Sky-high corporate CEO pay, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz notes in a new report, “creates social norms” that drive up levels of inequality far beyond corporate payrolls.
Those “social norms,” cheerleaders for our current corporate order insist, simply reflect economic reality. In a globalized world where corporations tally sales and profits in the many billions, their argument goes, no modern major business could possibly survive — let alone thrive — without shelling out top executive pay that stretches into the many millions.
The owners of one of the largest businesses in Spain would beg to disagree.
Their nearly 60-year-old enterprise — named Mondragon for the Basque town in northern Spain that gave it birth — has nearly 75,000 employees working in everything from heavy industry and retail to banking and education. A big-league business, in other words, by any metric.
Yet Mondragon doesn’t shell out millions to any of its top executives. No executive at Mondragon makes anything close to even a single million.
How could that be? Mondragon just happens to operate as a cooperative and may be, many analysts believe, the world’s most significant worker-owned business.
Josu Ugarte, the president of Mondragon International, spent a chunk of last month touring the United States, as part of the co-op’s ongoing outreach to people and groups looking for alternatives to corporate business as usual. What alternative for corporate compensation does Mondragon offer? Too Much editor Sam Pizzigati caught up with Ugarte in Washington, D.C. and explored that question with him.
Read the interview at Too Much
Go to the GEO front page
Comments
Carlos Adcock
Just Amazing... I am so encouraged by such an effort, and especially its people. Thank You Mr. Josu Ugarte and the wonderful Mondragon companies, with special thanks to Mondragon International for reaching out to other countries, like the U.S.A. which is in Great Need of such fine organizations. Workers in the USA are frustrated, mostly living life on the edge of financial destitution (USA is a very Expensive country to live in) and our middle classes aren't doing much better. Please keep all that is Mondragon as healthy as possible, and please keep encouraging and being a great leader to all of us to form groups and companies like yours.