Press room

The press conference, held at the MCC’s headquarters in Mondragón, was opened by Juan Mª Otaegui who stressed that the modern concepts of Sustainable Development and Corporate Social Responsibility linked to this type of reports “fit in very well with our culture and co-operative philosophy”.” The aim of this report”, he added, “is to reflect the social reality of our co-operative enterprises in a way comprehensible to the general public, following a methodology in line with the parameters of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which is accepted as an international point of reference today”.

He recalled that good government and business transparency, two of the most important values in these reports “are in our case the natural fruit of the operation of strongly democratic and participative governing bodies, which have the mechanisms necessary for the workers to play a leading role in the business project”. The MCC’s mission, he went on to point out, “helps us to direct our strategies towards the creation of stable, quality employment, the improvement of local living conditions and social progress, respect for the environment entailing the rational use of resources and respect for cultural roots and the social reality of the places where our companies are located”.

Jesús Catania endorsed with figures the principles and values behind the MCC’s activities, reflecting the competitive capacity of a sustainable business development model based on democratic, participative management. He highlighted the graphs that show constant growth in sales, investment and employment, with an increasing number of plants abroad. By the end of the year the Corporation will have 45 plants in 14 countries, as part of an internationalisation policy “mainly aimed at increasing market share in an increasingly more global market and accompanying our customers in their expansion abroad, without any migration of companies here”.

In this respect he declared that over the last decade 1993-2003 of strong industrial expansion abroad, “we created 11,200 new industrial jobs in Spain as a whole, of which 7,000 were in the Basque Autonomous Community and 925 in Navarra, whilst in our subsidiaries abroad industrial employment increased by 6,300 jobs”. In this regard, he recalled that, as far as the workers in our subsidiaries are concerned, the MCC aims to transfer the Co-operatives’ own participative philosophy, with the target of getting 30% of our employees abroad to participate in capital, management and profits by 2008”.

He stressed the specific nature of the system for distributing the wealth generated in the Co-operatives, in which a high percentage (53.3%) of the profits were earmarked in 2003 for capitalised results (of which 57% went to Reserve Funds and 43% to members’ returns) and 9.5% were channelled into commitments in solidarity with the community, which totalled 39 million euros last year. He also highlighted the importance of the mechanisms for co-operation between co-operatives created by the MCC and the key role of participation in capital and management as a central point in co-operative activity.

Txema Gisasola focused his contribution on employment policy and environmental management, stressing amongst other things that in 2003 80.4% of the co-operative workforce were members and 44% of members were women. He went on to say that training was of great strategic importance and that the equivalent of .8% of the total payroll was earmarked for training in 2003.
 
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