The worker cooperative movement in Spain

Abstract

Since the dawn of industrialization in Spain, there have been numerous attempts to resolve the problem of dissatisfaction or alienation of workers to their tasks. These attempts have been pointed out in several specific experiments and in more general approaches through social policy. The above experiments have led to the promotion of cooperatives. The extension of the cooperative phenomenon in Spain must be understood with in the development of the modem social market economy. We will attempt to understand it in its recent evolution, trying to see it in its historical and cultural antecedents, in the role which the state has redeemed in the promotion of cooperatives, in the influence of the education system, in the factors of interest in the promotion of this form of work organization, in the social and political atmosphere which colIaborated in its extension and finalIy in the position of the trade unions with respect to worker cooperatives. We wilI provide some up to date figures in relation to this scheme and about the recent evolution of work associated cooperatives in Spain and of those equivalent institutions which are the Sociedades Anonimas Laborales (Labour Limited Companies - SAL).