08/05/2026
Yes! Excited to be a part of midwifing cooperative food systems into being 💫
Spain just told its biggest companies to hand workers a seat at the table.
This new blueprint, backed by constitutional law, developed by an international panel of experts, was delivered to the government in February.
Here’s what it calls for:
-Firms with 50 to 1,000 employees give workers a third of board seats.
-Firms with over 1,000 employees give workers half.
-Worker share ownership becomes mandatory, starting at 2%.
-A sovereign wealth fund helps workers buy out owners when they retire, solving a succession crisis that’s quietly putting 600,000 jobs a year at risk.
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Spain has a fight on its hands and employers are already pushing back.
But here’s what matters: This is part of a growing trend that’s bigger than them, they’re not alone, and they don’t have to wait for this to become law.
Mondragon sure didn’t. The Basque cooperative network, started in 1956 with one technical college and one workshop, now employs 80,000 people across 100 cooperatives. Workers own and govern, extending democracy from the government all the way out into the economy, which is what we vote for not just once, but every day with our financial choices.
Did you know that when the 2008 financial crisis hit and corporations were shedding jobs by the millions, Mondragon redeployed its workers instead?
That’s resiliency in action, and soon enough the employers are going to catch on to this growing trend.
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Mondragon is the blueprint inspiring the Spanish government right now. And it’s very similar to the one behind Scotland’s Community Wealth Building Bill, which passed 103 to zero in February and became the world’s first national community wealth building law. [Read that story via the link in comments]
This is no longer fringe. The signs are everywhere now. In addition to Scotland and Spain:
-When Spirit Airlines collapsed, 36,000 people pledged $22 million in under 24 hours to buy it cooperatively. The site crashed from traffic.
-Mamdani just won the New York City Democratic primary on a platform of city-owned grocery stores
-The Entertainer, one of the UK’s biggest toy retailers, just chose to sell to its employees instead of private equity
-Employee ownership and social enterprise are growing rapidly
-2025 was the UN International Year of Co-operatives
This isn’t a movement building toward something, it’s already here.
And you’re already in it.
Every time you’ve chosen a local business over a chain, joined a credit union, shopped a cooperative or social purpose business, or just felt the wrongness of watching your rent go up while your pay stayed flat, you were already on this side of the line.
The demand that Spirit Airlines exposed in 24 hours, that Scotland turned into law, that Spain is now trying to write into its constitution, that demand came from people exactly like you.
It has always been there and this is always how we create fair economies that support all of us, not just the super rich. To become the new normal, it just needed proof that it could win.
And it’s winning.
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Jessica Friday is a wellbeing economist and culture strategist. With a community wealth building story that’s been cited in Scottish Parliament and millions of views on her content worldwide, she coordinates hundreds of movements helping us transition to a fair economy and better future for all.
Subscribe to her on Substack for updates. [Link in comments]
