The study “The resilience of the cooperative model”, produced by CECOP - CICOPA Europe identifies the mechanisms which reinforce the resilience of European cooperatives in industry and services to the crisis. There are many reasons to explain it. Firstly, the fact that worker-members, as co-owners of their businesses, share the responsibility and the management and put the strategies in place in the short and the long term; which give the priority to the safeguarding of their jobs and continuous innovation. Among these strategies we can name the temporary reduction of salaries, technological investment, adaptations for the market, use of financial reserves, etc.
The report also bases itself on an analysis of quantitative data, however principally in France and in Spain (the countries where the statistics on worker cooperatives and social cooperatives are the most reliable) and indicate that in these countries these enterprises have known a lower number of closures and of job losses than the average.
This study equally presents a few concrete examples all around Europe illustrating the strategies put in place by cooperatives to allow them to react more quickly and efficiently.
The study “The resilience of the cooperative model”, can be downloaded here
