Mondragon, the Basque truck-making coop. They've been going for as long as I have, because they were founded in the year I was born.
John Lewis, a UK department store. It's not exactly a coop, but it's pretty close. The staff are referred to as "partners". They're in financial difficulties at the moment, I think, but that's not because workers participate in the company. They're one of the few UK department stores still standing. Waitrose (a John Lewis brand) is easily the classiest supermarket/grocery in the UK - people choose where to buy expensive homes based on how close the nearest Waitrose is.
It's easier to set up a private company than a joint-stock corporation, and it's easier to set up a joint-stock corporation than a cooperative. It should be easiest to set up a cooperative, rather than hardest.
Oh - and there's the Coop Bank. Wait - that went broke due to dreadful mismanagement, and was bought by a VC outfit. So how come they're still allowed to call themselves that?
There's still a number of local chains of fairly small grocers, operating as autonomous members of the Cooperative Wholesale Society (the bank was originally part of the CWS). These are decent shops, well-run at a local level, but I'm not impressed by their head-office management. If you take their discount card, then you get to participate in board elections and so on. It's a "customer coop".
John Lewis, a UK department store. It's not exactly a coop, but it's pretty close. The staff are referred to as "partners". They're in financial difficulties at the moment, I think, but that's not because workers participate in the company. They're one of the few UK department stores still standing. Waitrose (a John Lewis brand) is easily the classiest supermarket/grocery in the UK - people choose where to buy expensive homes based on how close the nearest Waitrose is.
It's easier to set up a private company than a joint-stock corporation, and it's easier to set up a joint-stock corporation than a cooperative. It should be easiest to set up a cooperative, rather than hardest.
Oh - and there's the Coop Bank. Wait - that went broke due to dreadful mismanagement, and was bought by a VC outfit. So how come they're still allowed to call themselves that?
There's still a number of local chains of fairly small grocers, operating as autonomous members of the Cooperative Wholesale Society (the bank was originally part of the CWS). These are decent shops, well-run at a local level, but I'm not impressed by their head-office management. If you take their discount card, then you get to participate in board elections and so on. It's a "customer coop".