These are difficult times for the Fagor appliance factory in Mondragon, in northern Spain. Sales have seized up, as at many other white-goods companies. Workers had four weeks' pay docked at Christmas. Some have been laid off. Now salaries are about to be cut by 8%. Time for Spain's mighty unions to call a strike? Not at Fagor-for here the decisions are taken by the workers themselves.rnFagor is a workers' co-operative, one of dozens that dot the valleys of Spain's hilly northern Basque country. Most belong to the world's biggest group of co-operatives, the Mondragon Corporation. It is Spain's seventh-largest industrial group, with interests ranging from supermarkets and finance to white goods and car parts. It accounts for 4% of gdp in the Basque country, a region of 2m people. All this has made Mondragon a model for co-operatives from California to Queensland. How will co-ops, with their ideals of equity and democracy, cope in the recession?
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