Re: Mondragon: Fwd: New ILO Recommendation on the Promotion of Cooperatives

[robert oakeshott <robert.oakeshott@virgin.net>]

on 8/9/02 5:49 am, RaceM at race@netspace.net.au wrote:

> 
> Dear Robert
> 
> Thanks for your message, and for your appreciative comments about
> 'Jobs of Our Own'. As to 'Rerum Novarum', I had always until I wrote
> the book called the encyclical just that, but in the course of the
> research I came across 'De Rerum Novarum' in what I took to be an
> authoritative source, and adopted it as translating to 'Of New
> Things'. Which shows among other things that a distant recollection
> of schooldays Latin is a dangerous thing. I haven't commented on your
> 'Jobs and Fairness' because I haven't yet had the opportunity to read
> it properly - the Parliamentary Library here came up with a copy on
> inter-library loan, but it had to be returned before I had had time
> to do any more than a first skim through, so I've now ordered it from
> my local bookseller who tells me that I have a few more weeks still
> to wait. One section that interested me greatly was the end game in
> regard to the National Freight Corporation - I'd read Peter
> Thompson's account in his memoirs some years ago and frequently
> referred to it in speeches, but never got round to finding out what
> had been the final washup. Meanwhile, I still don't know whether I
> will be able to make Bilbao, less for financial reasons than that I
> have recently taken on a fairly substantial short term consultancy on
> early childhood education and care for a government deparyment, that
> has to be completed by Christmas, so getting to the conference will
> depend on how the work is progressing. Best wishes, Race Mathews
dear race, thanks for both your e-mails. I shall certainly make a point of
visiting the GKC institute at Orange in New Jersey when I am next in
America. About the employee ownership end-game at NFC, I suppose the key
fact is that "a significant majority of NFC's employee shareholders, some
60%, voted in 1988 to authorise the directors to seek a flotation". Of
course, that isn't the VERY end of the story; and Sir Peter was rightly
incensed by what he saw as the subsequent betrayal - after his retirement -
by the successor top management of the "rank and file " employee
shareholders. That is all dealt with fairly fully in my book. Incidently I
had originally intended in my comments about Jobs of Our Own to bring up the
comparison (p226) between behaviour in Japanese and Mondragon businesses. Do
you know Ronald Dore's TAKING JAPAN SERIOUSLY with its striking sub-title- A
CONFUCIAN PERSPECTIVE ON LEADING ECONOMIC ISSUES. If not I can only
recommend it most strongly. He introduces most persuasively a distinction
between the COMPANY LAW MODEL of capitalist businesses and the Community
Model and argues that DE FACTO even if not DE JURE the latter is what you
find in Japan. For what it's worth I reviewed the book at some length in the
April-June 1988 issue of Political Quarterly, to which you may have
relatively easy access....I shall keep my fingers crossed and hope that your
other commitments will allow you to make the journey to Mondragon and Bilbao
in late Novemenber - and to stop off here either on the way or the way back.
I have two spare rooms so there would be no difficulty about the offer of a
bed. With renewed thanks and all the best from robert.