This week Vernon interviews Michael Peck and Christina Clamp to discuss the 2nd Volume of “Humanity@Work&life-Global Diffusion of the Mondragon Cooperative Ecosystem Experience.”
Michael Peck co-founded 1worker1vote in 2014, alongside ten advisory board members, to build on the 2009 United Steelworkers/Mondragon Collaboration MOU and the 2012 Union-Coop Model. He currently serves as the organization’s Executive Director. In early 2015, 1worker1vote was incorporated as a New York 501(c)(3) by CUNY Law School’s Community Economic Development Clinic.
Drawing inspiration from Mondragon’s 70-year cooperative ecosystem, 1worker1vote is leading the “Good Trouble Capitalism” and “Generation Union” campaigns under its 2025 initiative. These efforts promote global Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) principles, community enterprise development, authentic sustainability metrics, predistributive financing, and cooperative-mutualist housing best practices. Central to its mission is advancing hybrid worker ownership and workplace democracy through union-coop models.
Current collaborations include:
- The Coalition for Affordable, Cooperative-Mutualist Housing (NY project)
- ASETT (Mondragon-inspired SSE think-and-do tank)
- UNRISD and ASETT on Sustainable Development Performance Indicators
- The Mutualist Society
- American Sustainable Business Network
- Coop Cincy
- NewsSocial Coop (UK)
- Worx Printing (union-coop)
- Blue-Green Alliance
- Humanity@Work&Life publications
Dr. Christina Clamp is heralded for her diverse work grounded in the values of civil rights, social justice and an inclusive economy. She is best known for her research on Mondragon, the world’s largest worker cooperative. The results of her deep interviews with Mondragon managers and founders continue to inform human resource strategies for worker co-ops worldwide. Her extensive list of publications includes, most recently, a collection of 30 essays highlighting the story of Mondragon and its ongoing influence in the U.S. UK, Korea and Germany, Humanity@ Work & Life, coedited with Michael Peck.
For more than 40 years Professor Clamp taught college courses on cooperatives and led a master’s program in community economic development at Southern New Hampshire University. As an activist professor, Chris expected her students to be engaged with community groups, particularly those that support existing and developing co-ops. Her work crosses sectors in cooperative development: from cutting-edge research on worker and shared-services cooperatives to training generations of cooperators to building and connecting cooperatives to broader movements for community economic development and the social solidarity economy, Chris is a steadfast champion of cooperatives.
Chris serves on the boards of the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF), The ICA Group, and The Fund for Jobs Worth Owning.
“Humanity@Work&life – Global Diffusion of the Mondragon Cooperative Ecosystem Experience 2nd Edition” , published by Oak Tree Press, frames a collective labor of earned merit, vision and determination by 36 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.