Rosa Carabel, CEO of the food distributor, wishes that “we are all in the corporation, but if they decide to leave it, it will continue”
The first executive of Eroski, Rosa Carabel, one of the fundamental pillars of the Mondragón group, has defended this Sunday the right of Orona and Ulma, which represent 50% of the profits of the industrial area of the corporation, to decide if their future should evolve leaving the cooperative framework that Iñigo Ucín currently presides over.
Carabel, who replaced Agustín Markaide at the helm of Eroski this summer, assured in an interview on Radio Euskadi that “we have to respect the decisions that Orona and Ulma can make because they are sovereign decisions.” The directive of the fifth Spanish supermarket chain has recalled that “just as we joined, we can freely decide that we leave the corporation” because each cooperative is “autonomous” and its business decisions are “power of its organs”.
The statements by the person who led Eroski’s debt reduction, more than 2,000 million in less than ten years, come in the same week that began with a letter in which Mondragón tried to explain the situation to all its cooperative members. In the statement he acknowledged that Orona and Ulma proposed to the group’s governing bodies an alternative governance proposal to guide the relationship of cooperatives with central services. The proposal was rejected in June without being able to be discussed at the annual congress held on November 15, as the letter explained, because it arrived out of time and form.
From Orona and Ulma, on the other hand, they interpreted this message as a measure of “pressure” and “interference” with the members of both groups. Both companies will vote on December 16 on a proposal that proposes a “new relational framework” with Mondragón and that involves more independence in decision-making and reinforcing the model of contributions to divisional funds (by areas of activity of the cooperatives ), to the detriment of those managed by central services. A line that already began in 2016, after the crisis at Fagor Electrodomésticos.
Bet on cooperativism
The words of the top Eroski leader are the first made by one of the Mondragón cooperatives since this process began. Until now, only the president of the corporation, Iñigo Ucín, had spoken, who pointed out that “it does not benefit anyone” the departure of both companies and Orona and Ulma themselves, who in practice are considering their departure from Mondragón. The two organizations are not just anyone and within the corporation they account for 50% of the profit of the industrial area with 172 million euros. Orona has 1,700 members and a turnover of more than 800 million. For its part, Ulma is made up of 9 cooperatives, employs 5,426 people with a turnover of 910 million euros and a profit of 75 million.
Carabel has reaffirmed its commitment to continue in Mondragón, clarifying that Eroski wants to continue being part of the corporation “to this day and wants to continue being so” in the future. «Eroski understands that the cooperatives that are in the corporation share the same values of cooperation and joint learning. Between all of us we have the capacity to enrich each other and we want the voice of cooperativism to be loud and clear”, he added. “What we want from the corporation is that we are all there, but if they decide to leave it, the corporation will continue.”