Not Jobs Careers

In response to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which helped to create jobs, the Recovery Act supported as many as 3.5 million jobs across the country by the end of 2010.

Obama himself is partly culpable for helping to create the 2011 fiscal framework that locked us in that seemingly interminable argument over austerity with the Republicans, and it remains to be seen what future fiscal deals Obama and the Democrats agree to.

I would like to bring forth a "New Model" that being one that will empower the people. One that aligns with "Common Understanding" that most of the peoples of the world can agree with. Leverages the economic powers of governance and the skills and abilities of individuals. Allowing individuals to take responsibility for their own future.

Since many of our most prestigious economic institutions have embarrassed themselves at our expense over the last year, maybe it’s time to look around.

Worker-owned and -managed businesses combine the romance of entrepreneurship with solid family values and commitment to community. What’s not to like?

Since the start of the industrial revolutions there has been a noble experiment both here and abroad of businesses that are owned and democratically controlled by their worker/owners. If you know about these types of businesses, you probably think of them as small and local. For the most part that’s true here in the US. However, if we look across the Atlantic we find a very different story.

Since its modest beginnings in 1956 as technical college and a small workshop producing paraffin heaters, the Mondragon Corporation is a worker owned collective of cooperatives that is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of turnover (almost $2B) and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2008 it was providing employment for 92,773 people working in 256 companies in four areas of activity: Finance, Industry, Retail and Knowledge. This model is also prominent in Italy and other countries in Europe. The story in the US has been not so strong.

Research by Richard Freeman, Henry Hansmann, Douglas Kruse, John Pencavel, Louis Putterman, Richard Wolff, and others have validated much of the "economic sense" of worker coops it is time to leverage that knowledge and take a new path towards economic prosperity.

 Maybe worker-owned and -managed companies, have more complex goals than maximizing profit, and are less growth-oriented than other companies but they have proven to be more stable and self sufficient in tough times.. When the times get tough, the tough form co-ops.