dept.kent.edu/oeoc/oeoclibrary/emiliaromagnalong.htm At the core of the Emilian Romagna success story is the regional government’s focus on support small businesses – employee-owned and co-op owned alike. ... ER population: 3.9 million vs. 3.8 million - 420,000 firms – one for every 9 men, women and children! More than half the population are co-op members. Coops -- including employee-owned businesses -- employ 10% of the workforce and generate, according to University of Bologna economist Stefano Zamagni, about 30% of the GDP in the region and up to 60% of the GDP in some cities like Imola. In Bologna itself, 15 of the 50 largest businesses are coops, and coops employ 25,000, or 10% of the labor force. Housing co-ops and consumer co-ops are so numerous that they hold down prices, and most privatized social services are provided by employee co-ops (including 60% of home health care services) .... “Emilia Romagna has 7% of the population of Italy,” says del Bono. “But we account for 9% of the Italian GDP, 12% of Italy’s exports, and 30% of Italy’s patents.” Unemployment is an enviable 3%. It wasn’t always this way. Emilia Romagna moved from among the poorest of Italy’s industrial regions in 1950 to the richest in 2005. Today it’s among the 10 richest of the European Union’s 122 regions. ... These service centers combine the economies of scale with the advantages and flexibility of small business. They have supported the so-called “flexible manufacturing” of the region in which small businesses in the same industry collaborate in joint bids for major contracts. The region is home to some very high value-added producers, including companies widely known in the United States like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, and Ducati, which use networks of small businesses to supply their inputs. The result is thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises, perhaps the densest concentrations of small businesses in the industrial world. ... The Italian cooperative movement had its origin in 1850s and flourished in Northern Italy before Mussolini came to power. Unlike most of the rest of Europe where consumer co-ops predominated, in Italy employee-owned co-ops played a major role. In1921, there were 3600 consumer co-ops and 2700 production co-ops in Emilia Romagna. But the co-ops fell on hard times about Mussolini’s fascists marched on Rome in 1922, and, beginning in 1926, Mussolini’s government systematically crushed them as independent organizations . With the restoration of democracy in Italy after World War II, parliament gave formal recognition to the role of cooperatives. Article 45 of the Italian Constitution (1947) states: “The Republic recognizes the social function of cooperation characterized by mutual aid and not private profit. The law promotes and favors the growth of these structures using the most appropriate means and guarantees that their character and purpose will be inspected accordingly.” The Basevi Law of 1947 -- Italy’s basic co-op law -- fleshed out this constitutional recognition. It provided co-ops with special tax treatment to encourage their self-capitalization by creating the concept of “indivisible reserves” for the benefit of all (i.e., future generations of employees and the community). Earnings could be contributed to indivisible reserves tax free (saving 40% in taxes), but if the co-op dissolved or sold, its reserves by law went to another cooperative or to a cooperative federation, rather than being distributed among the members. Members received their returns in annual interest payments on their membership fees and in patronage dividends. ... In the last fifteen years, co-ops of all sorts have doubled their importance in the Italian economy. Today 121 of the 1400 largest Italian firms are cooperatives or 9%, up from 4%, and employment have doubled from ½ million to 1 million. Employee-owned co-ops play a major role, especially in Emilia Romagna.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Aug 2013 15:59:35 +0000
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