Publication date – 27 March 2023. Publisher, Oak Tree Press, operates from Cork, Ireland (city of rebels), and Brussels, Belgium. Thirty-eight contributors from six countries, three continents.
Editors: Christina A. Clamp & Michael A. Peck. Editors’ royalties minus production costs will go towards aligned social economy mission activists on a rolling one contributor, one vote basis, as proceeds permit.
Cover design: Kevin O’Brien – Worx Printing Cooperative (union coop).
Cover image: Coop-Cincy and the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative.
Copy editors: Megan Gianniny and Josh Wilson.
HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE – available in three formats (PDF, e-PUB, and printed/paperback):
- Globally – to purchase & ship all PDF, e-PUB & printed/paperback (except USA) formats visit SuccessStore.com
- USA – to purchase & ship a physical (paperback) book visit worxprinting.coop
HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE: A collective labor of earned merit, vision and determination by 38 contributors in six countries, three continents, proving how solidarity, innovation, and conviction forge sustaining local and global social economy practice on behalf of the greater common good. Seven of the chapter contributors include current or former Mondragon members. Both co-editors were affiliated with Mondragon, one as an international delegate for two decades and the other who did her doctoral thesis in the company of three of the five Ulgor (Mondragon’s first cooperative) co-founders.
HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE offers PDF & EPUB formats to pursue ecological and strategic roll-out goals (our hope that the book inspires future, unlimited, incoming ecosystem chapter communities across all borders, markets and socioeconomic silos as future contributors). Unexpected demand and the fact that UK-based readers can’t get the PDF and EPUB versions because of the Brexit-VAT scenario motivated the print version (paperback) option.
HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE is pleased to collaborate with the Preston Cooperative Education Center (PCEC) union coop, part of the Preston/UK Cooperative Development Network (PCDN), as well as with Coop Cincy’s “Coop-U”, collectively inspired by Mondragon. The PCDN-NewsSocial platform featuring The 1worker1vote/NewsSocial Bridge envisions a related social media sub-circle open to all present and future Humanity@Work&Life readers and contributors to participate by sharing individual and collective storytelling acknowledging practice “Odes to Joy”.
HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE intends to provide hope and inspiration by serving as a resource for those interested in developing worker cooperatives, as well as an introduction for those interested in virtuous cycle, “Solidarity Dividend” alternatives to shareholder primacy capitalism practices. It is also intended to peer over incoming vision horizons and around strategy corners, “showing, not telling” how Mondragon-inspired virtuous cycles transform “humanity at work” globally and locally.
The book was conceived over a three-year timeframe (2020-2023) in the middle of four lethal virus pandemics simultaneously threatening “humanity@work”: advancing extreme climate precarity, withering economic class inequalities including embedded racism, novel COVID-19 killing millions, and a global assault on democracy. Its twofold mission: first, to be a resource for those developing hybrid model worker cooperatives and social enterprises as structural and cultural antidotes to a rising, inclusive, and climate-respecting Stakeholders-as-Shareholders global economy; and second, to uplift and amplify critical new voices of those doing the work. The four concurrent global pandemics have shone a harsher light on inequalities in society and offer opportunities to develop hybrid worker ownership models that seed virtuous cycles.
HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE’s core belief is that there is no sustaining worker voice without worker power communicated and demonstrated through solidarity, democracy, equality of opportunity and shared equity and wealth outcomes. Its premise is that an ineluctable foundational policy for a fair and aspirational economy working for all demands inclusive, broadened, and deepened, stakeholder worker ownership undergirded by workplace democracy practices. Proven by Mondragon’s example, the book’s co-editors and many of its contributors believe single class equity governance is synonymous with solidarity. Every equity share guarantees the equal right to vote for change and provides the basis for power-paradigm-changing culture combining stakeholder community and individual civic mutualism, stability, and self-reliance to innovate, defend and facilitate more fulfilled lives and dignified retirements.
HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE’s core academic purpose is to make the case as to why Mondragon is a dynamic working and evolving model for those who see the need for replicable structural change in our economic institutions and in the proverbial “free market” economy across physical borders and cultural silos. The Mondragon case will be detailed and include both an overview of ecosystem cooperatives and discussion of global diffusion activities that the Mondragon cooperatives embrace locally and globally as well as those from other geographies inspired by close to 70+ years of Mondragon cooperative experiences. The book will include sections that examine how cooperatives inspired by the Mondragon cooperative ecosystem in the Basque region of Spain are emerging in different communities in the USA, Canada, Germany, the Republic of Korea, and the UK. The last section of the book is intended to provide grounded inspiration about how to develop worker cooperatives and ecosystems that scale and breathe freely in a world beset by culturally induced pandemics doing their utmost to subvert democracy, freedom, truth, and hope.
HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE’s publisher & co-editors will announce an envisioned, hybrid model stakeholder/shareholder structure in collaboration with founding contributors once the book is launched in all published formats, mid Q2 2023. Ideas & insights will be especially welcome.
-Chris & Michael – Co-editors, “HUMANITY@WORK&LIFE – Global Diffusion of the Mondragon Cooperative Ecosystem Experience” (MCE2)
On behalf of the sixfold global social economy enterprise bottomline: “People, Planet, Purpose, Profit, Participation & Prosperity”: @humanityworklife.com; @humanityworklife.global; @humanityworklife.org; @humanityworklife.world; @humanityworklife.earth