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Dear Race and other colleagues,
I find the idea of this new group really excellent.
We are considering
employee share ownership and workers' co-operatives as first cousins. They are
two similar forms of co-entrepreneurship which I consider as the main point in
employee share ownership.
As EFES (European Federation of Employee Share
Ownership) we have a very good co-operation with CECOP (the European
Confederation of Workers' Co-operatives and Participative Enterprises).
In
the next years, we'll certainly make more use of this cousinship. I had a first
discussion with CECOP and it looks well that this cousinship could help us in
different situations in Europe (f.i. some countries are not interested about
employee share ownership but they are well open to co-operativism).
In the
Bask country and Spain, they have strong and original forms of employee
ownership: you have Mondragon, but you also have the SALs (Sociedades Anonymas
Laborales = employee owned companies) which are not co-operatives but ordinary
(EO) companies; within the last ten years, they created around 16.000 SALs and
100.000 new jobs (these companies are mainly starters).
Our next annual
conference will happen in Bilbao and Mondragon in November 2002. We'll have at
least a full day presentation of these original forms.
I'd like this new
group to help us for this part of our programme.
Best wishes
Marc Mathieu
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 2:58
PM
Subject: Re: MDRGN: Re: MDRGN Inaugural
Message
on 1/4/02 11:28 pm, RaceM at race@netspace.net.au wrote:
Dear Robert Oakeshott
Thank you for your message. I
am delighted to hear from you, as I have admired your work enormously ever
since being introduced to it by Shirley Williams in the early 1980s. The
late Bill Whyte apart, I guess nobody has equalled your contribution in
bringing Mondragon to attention, and, while I am sometimes down-hearted
about the prospects of the lessons of the Mondragon experience being taken
to heart and put to use elsewhere, it remains the best pointer to a better
way of doing business and a better social order that we
have.
Unfortunately, I am having technical problems of my own this
morning - albeit with the printer rather than the computer - but I will put
a copy of the book on which the draft paper on the web site is based - my
1999 Jobs of Our Own: Building a Stakeholder Society - in the mail for
you if you will let me have your postal address, and follow-up with a hard
copy of the paper in the event that you are unable to download it from the
COG web site. Thanks again for your example and inspiration, and all good
wishes, Race Mathews
dear race mathews. Thanks very much
for your friendly and generous email in response to my earlier brief message.
My address here is 14 Lichen Court, Queens Drive London N4 2BH. I much
look forward to hearing from you again. all the best from robert
oakeshott.
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