Depressed California city turns to Spanish cooperative business model
The city of Richmond, California is fighting a local recession with origins that stretch back at least 60 years. For this economically depressed city the answer to the boom and bust style of business that often leaves communities in tatters is a democratic, cooperative model inspired by the Mondragon Corporation, a federation of worker-owned cooperatives in Spain’s Basque region. Richmond was an industrial boomtown during the Second World War, but suffered a harsh economic downturn in the post war years. Unemployment is currently at 17% in the city and crime is high. But cooperatives are offering hope in the form…
