In 1979 Terry Mollner was one of the first Americans to visit the Mondragon Cooperatives in the Basque region of northern Spain. They are a social-political-economic system clearly a step in maturity beyond where other social democracies have evolved. Terry has written numerous articles and two books on the Mondragon Cooperatives and introduced them to hundreds of audiences around the world. TI created the first employee-owned cooperative in the USA modeled on Mondragon in the early 1980s and was best known then as a consultant to groups which are either creating employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) or employee-cooperatives. They are now the primary model used for worker owned cooperatives.
In the early 1980s Terry was asked by the White House to present his slide show and description of the Mondragon Cooperatives operations to leaders of President Ronald Reagan’s Administration and leaders of the Senate. On the way home from that presentation, after asking Terry questions until the early morning hours, Senator Russell Long of Louisiana informed his chief of staff that he was reassigned to move what came to be known as “Employee Stock Ownership Legislation” through Congress.
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