Owning the Work · Chapter Three
Every Egg, One Basket
Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306
Chapter Three of Owning the Work: Employee Ownership, Profit Sharing and What the Evidence Shows.
Abstract
In November 2013 Fagor Electrodomésticos, the appliance maker that had helped found the Mondragón cooperative group in the Basque Country, declared bankruptcy. It had begun as Talleres Ulgor, whose first stone was laid in April 1956 and whose first bylaws were approved in 1959; by the time it failed it was a multinational with subsidiaries in France and Poland, competing in a global market for washing machines and refrigerators. For a movement that had used Mondragón as its proof for half a century, the failure was a hard morning. Ammanuel Santa Anna does not leave it out of his book. Writing about Mondragón's strengths, he stops himself in four words: "Mondragon is not utopia." He goes on to describe the bankruptcy as a failure "that tested the cooperative model severely and produced real suffering for the worker-owners involved," and then gives his reading of the response: "The crisis was metabolized by the community rather than externalized onto individuals."
Cite this chapter
Santa Anna, A. (2026). Every Egg, One Basket. In Owning the Work. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989567
@incollection{santaanna2026owning3,
author = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
title = {Every Egg, One Basket},
booktitle = {Owning the Work},
chapter = {3},
publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23989567},
url = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/owning-the-work/03-every-egg-one-basket/}
}
References
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- Chapter OneWho Holds a Sharedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989565
- Chapter TwoA Share in the Placedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989566
- Chapter ThreeEvery Egg, One Basketdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989567
- Chapter FourThreats From, Threats Todoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989568
- Chapter FiveA Bakery's Arithmeticdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989569
- Chapter SixFour Houses That Kept Their Purposedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989570
- Chapter SevenTwo Beginnings in 1956doi:10.5281/zenodo.23989571
- Chapter EightThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989572
- Chapter NineKnowing Whether It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989573
- Chapter TenThe Hard Conversationsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989574
- Chapter ElevenOne Person's Sharedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989576
- Chapter TwelveThe Roots Under the Standdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989014
- Chapter ThirteenWhat Moves Between the Rootsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989016
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The licence
Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.