Mondragon’s Chinese subsidiaries: Coopitalist multinationals in practice

The Mondragon worker-owned and worker-governed cooperatives are an example of the struggle that some alternative work organizations face when dealing with the external pressures of competing in the global economy while at the same time endeavouring to retain their long-held values of workplace democracy. This article analyses the Mondragon cooperative-multinationals with regard to their subsidiaries in China at a time when the cooperatives are undergoing deep internal and external transformations. The study centres on the characteristics of governance and working conditions at the Mondragon subsidiaries in the Kunshan Industrial Park near Shanghai. The article asks whether, from the perspective of China and Chinese workers, there are any substantial differences between the Chinese subsidiaries of Mondragon and those of conventional multinationals. Overall, it concludes that while there are significant challenges inherent in extending the democratic and participative model of the parent cooperatives to their subsidiaries, there are also indications that if the cooperatives can muster the political will to act in accordance with their stated principles, they could potentially become a real if modest force for change in the labour relations of developing economies.