Another step for American cooperatives

National Cooperative Bank - The world's largest industrial, worker-owned and run cooperative, Mondragon, has agreed through its cooperative bank, Laboral Kutxa, to partner and build cooperative businesses ithroughout America with the U.S. based National Cooperative Bank.

NCB's customers are cooperatives such as grocery wholesaler co-ops, food co-ops, purchasing co-ops, credit unions and housing co-ops. Headquartered in Washington, DC, NCB has offices in Alaska, California, New York, Ohio and Virginia.

Laboral Kutxa a cooperative bank fielding 450 branches with over 1,300,000 customers. Mondragon is the world's largest worker-owned industrial cooperative but also the top Basque region industrial group, ranked tenth in Spain with 80,000 personnel, a presence in 70 countries, and expanding operations across the U.S. and North America.

This agreement represents Mondragon's second precedent-setting U.S. collaboration during the past four years. The United Steelworkers, and Mondragon International agreed to develop a hybrid union co-op model that is currently used by multiple U.S. unions and underway in over ten U.S. cities with projects ranging from an organic sustainable farm to a commercial laundry to energy efficiency.

In the U.S. alone, member-owned organizations account for $3 trillion in assets, $500 billion in revenue, and more than one million jobs. The United States fields 29,000 cooperatives holding 350 million co-op memberships and consisting of 900 rural electric coops with 42 million clients in 47 states, two million farmer-members in 3000 farmer-owned cooperatives who provide over 250 thousand jobs and annual wages of $8 billion, 250 purchasing coops offering group buying and sharing to more than 50,000 independent businesses, 7500 credit unions providing financial services to nearly 90 million members, and circa 8000 housing coops providing one million homes. Mondragon's recent annual sales in North America have reached the $250 million level.