How might the American models compare to the giant cooperative in the Basque region of Spain—Mondragon?
GA: Mondragon has over 100,000 workers in a very complicated group of 100 or more integrated co-ops. They pay back loans to a central fund and then build more co-ops in an integrated fashion. In 90 percent of them, the ratios of pay from top to bottom are 4 to 1. In others, it’s 9 to 1. Compare that with American corporations, which are 200 or 300 to 1. These co-ops are highly productive and state of the art with advanced technology, not your corner kind of tiny co-op. In the city of Cleveland, some groups are creating a large-scale Mondragon-type of cooperative. It will include a worker-owned laundry, with high-tech, green advanced technology, a solar-installation cooperative company, a land trust with a large-scale industrial-scale greenhouse and solar and geothermal heating. They’re going online over the next year and will produce 2,000-3,000 heads of lettuce each day. It’s linked to the public purchasing of hospitals and universities, which provide some of the contracts for food an
