Mondragon: the salary ratio that puzzles economists

In late April 2026, the International Cooperative Alliance published a study on what Mondragon can teach the world. The Basque cooperative — 81 autonomous cooperatives, 70,000 workers, present in 53 countries — has existed since 1956. It has weathered crises, restructurings and disagreements.

What draws economists’ attention is a simple figure: the ratio between the lowest and highest salary is 1 to 9 at Mondragon. In a FTSE 100 company — the UK’s largest listed firms — that same ratio is 1 to 129.

In other words: at Mondragon, the top executive earns at most 9 times what the lowest-paid worker earns. In a large listed company, they earn 129 times as much.

This constraint has not prevented Mondragon from becoming Spain’s tenth largest industrial group. What it has created, however, is something rare: an organisation where the interests of managers and workers remain structurally aligned — and where difficult decisions, such as the mutualised pay cuts during the 2008 crisis, are made collectively.

It is an imperfect model, with its own limitations at scale. But at a time when income inequality is widening everywhere, it deserves to be taken seriously.

Further reading: Mondragon Corporation on the Atlas · Mondragon at 70: What the World’s Largest Worker Cooperative Actually Proves