The firm closed on January 26, 2014, citing financial difficulties.[2]
History
Mondragon was co-founded by Winnipeg activists Paul Burrows and Sandra Drosdowech, and opened its doors on July 15, 1996 with an initial collective of ten members.[3]
Structure
Mondragon's internal structure, inspired by the participatory economic model, is part of a long tradition of workers' collectives. It aspired to complete non-hierarchy: there were to be no owners or managers other than the workers themselves. One of the co-founders of the workplace presented a paper at the World Social Forum in Brazil on the practical difficulties of applying parecon principles to a workplace in the midst of capitalism.[4] This paper was later published in the anthology Real Utopia: Participatory Society for the 21st Century (AK Press, 2008) under the title "Parecon and Workers' Self-Management: Reflections on Winnipeg's Mondragon Bookstore & Coffee House Collective."[5] Some commentators have also noted that regardless of the egalitarian workplace structure, in the final analysis, retail work is still largely menial and turn-over rates are comparable to more corporate counterparts.[6]
