On March 30th, the Murphy Institute hosted “Building a Worker Coop Ecosystem: Mondragon Meets the Five Boroughs,” a public conversation featuring Frederick Freundlich of Mondragon University and moderated by Stephanie Guico.

The conversation began with an explanation by Freudlich of the Mondragon network of worker coops in the Basque region of Spain. The network includes approximately 120 cooperatives and 130 affiliates or subsidiaries, all working across four broad areas — manufacturing, retail, finance, knowledge — and creating a livelihood for approximately 74,000 people. Freundlich discussed the history of the Mondragon system, tracing its origins back to the Spanish Civil War and describing the emergence of ancillary institutions, such as the cooperative bank, that have provided resources and support to the cooperative network throughout its development.

He situated the development of the cooperatives alongside the network infrastructure practices that have come to support them, including coop-to-coop collaboration, and commonly-held institutions.

As the conversation opened to the audience, attendees asked questions about feasibility, scalability, and the potential to bring the wisdom and practices developed in Mondragon here to New York City. Those in the room working on cooperative development in New York described some of their work and recent wins, including the $1.2million recently allocated to the New York City Network of Working Cooperatives (NYC NOWC) by the City.

Given the visible failures of global capitalism and the increasing momentum around cooperatives in the city and worldwide, this is an exciting moment in cooperative development. The Murphy Institute is currently exploring ways to incorporate worker cooperatives into our curriculum and public programming, as well as exploring a potential partnership with Mondragon.