Weconomics: Italy script 1-15-16

Opening images and sound 

On screen:     Bologna, Italy
        province of Emilia-Romagna

Narration: Emilia-Romagna is a thriving province in the north of Italy.  

Narration: The capital Bologna is a center of commerce and manufacturing where living standards are among the highest in Europe.

Narration: And prosperity here is widely shared, because the region is special for another reason.  It has one of the highest concentrations of cooperatives in the industrial world

Vera Zamagni: Of the ten largest companies in Bologna, eight are cooperatives.  People own their own company and decide together how to run it. 

Simone Mazzochi:  We are applying real democracy.  Everyone who participates has the right to express their opinion and to vote. One person, one vote. 
One head, one vote.

TITLE – Weconomics: Italy

Paolo Bonaretti: Cooperatives in our region have developed in all sectors of production. Cooperation and mutuality are the essential basis of the wealth of Emilia-Romagna and they are a key element in promoting innovation. 

Narration: The largest supermarket chain in Italy is a network of more than a hundred local cooperatives that share the COOP brand.

Vera Zamagni:  I belong to two of these cooperatives.  The largest has over 1 million 200 thousand members.

Narration: Members of COOP not only save money when they shop, but they can also decide company policy.  COOP sells no genetically modified food and is  the leading vendor of organics.

Narration: Italian cooperatives began in the mid-1800s, and they developed in many sectors of the economy.   After World War 2 coops helped transform Emilia-Romagna from one of the poorest parts of Italy into one of the most prosperous.  In 1948 a new constitution gave coops special legal status as public interest institutions. 
    
Vera Zamagni:  They produce directly a social good for the community - not only for coop members. So there is an external mutualism, not only an internal mutualism.

Paolo Bonaretti:  Cooperatives are not the only kind of community collaboration.  We are the strongest region for mutual societies, which are groups of competitive businesses working cooperatively, and these are supported by public funds.

Narration: Unlike other businesses, cooperatives are permitted to join together in regional networks.  This helps them compete with large corporations while staying small enough to remain democratic.

Vera Zamagni: Cooperatives in construction have a national consortium to which 220 cooperatives in construction belong.  Some are pretty small, you know, a few hundred people. Some are a few thousand people, but all together it is larger than any of the private construction companies in Italy.

Narration: In recent decades the cooperative model has been applied more broadly – like in the provision of government services. 

Vera Zamagni: Education, health, elderly care, problems with handicapped people.  All sorts of these social problems were normally dealt by state bureaucracies, and state bureaucracies produced very high costs, and very low quality of the product because these bureaucrats didn’t have any intrinsic motivation to help the people.  

Narration: In the US, complaints about costly government services and declining quality have been seen as a reason to cut or privatize.  But Italy found a different solution. 
Italian social services are still funded by the government, which contracts with worker coops to provide them.

Narration: CADIAI is a coop of social workers, teachers, and health care professionals.

Lara Furieri:  It’s a cooperative made up mostly of women, a coop that has grown a lot over the years.  We maintain a strong collaboration with public authorities, working closely together as much as possible. This creates high quality services that respond well to the needs of our clients.

On screen: La Cicogna child care center CADIAI

Guiseppina Capizzi:  These kids just ate lunch and now they have free play before their nap. We use organic food, at least 70% of our food is organic.  The children are divided into groups, we do everything in small groups of kids. Seven kids for each teacher is the legal standard in our region.


Lara Furieri:  To work in a cooperative is a choice.  It means we believe in our own work as something more than just a business.  We have a passion for our work and a dedication to make things better.

On screen: Parco del Navile assisted living center CADIAI

Roberto Malaguti:   We have some elderly people who are here 24 hours a day, who live here with support from a complex work team that includes doctors as well as nurses who are here 24 hours a day.  Some residents are self-sufficient, living in their own apartments. 

We give them the keys. They can go wherever they want.

This apartment is set up for people with disabilities. Some disabled seniors need to use a wheelchair. They may be disabled, but people still want to live independently.

Paolo Bonaretti:  Social cooperatives are at the heart of services we provide to all sectors of society from children to elderly people and hospital care. They are set up to provide an optimum level of service at low cost, and above all very accessible.

Simone Mazzochi:  Social cooperatives are non-profit organizations in every way, which gives a competitive advantage over normal businesses, because the taxes are a bit lower.

Vera Zamagni: Multi-stakeholder board of directors for these social cooperatives. Not only say workers only or consumers only, or customers only, but a bit of everybody inside the board of directors so that each could express their own views of the kind of service that should be provided.
     
Simone Mazzochi:  This involves a substantial effort of mediation and negotiation to find the solution that is most fair to everyone.

Narration:  Another kind of social coop is comprised of people who in the past would only have been recipients of government services. 

Simone Mazzochi:  Our objective, our mission is to create work for disadvantaged people, social disadvantages - for example people getting out of prison, people who have abused   drugs or alcohol, or those with psychiatric issues.

Ecosphera has been focused for 20 years on maintaining green spaces, managing public ones like parks and trees, and also private ones such as gardens, a network of gardens.

We collect different kinds of refuse door to door.  57 or 58 percent – more than half of our members are disadvantaged.

Probably the most ingenious invention of the social cooperative is that we transform people with problems, transform them from a cost to a resource.  Because they work, produce, earn money, and then pay taxes.

Paolo Bonaretti:  What we need most is an economy that is inherently ecological, cities that produce energy and don’t just consume it, an economy where products use as little energy as possible, that use as little material as possible and that re-use materials.  What cooperatives have been doing is very appealing and is leading the way.

On screen: L’Apebianca, commercial center for sustainable living, Ecoliving social  cooperative

Simone Mazzochi:  L’Apebianca is a spinoff of Ecosphera.  Ecosphera has been concerned with ecology and the environment for 20 years. Now we’re thinking about how to structure ourselves for the next 20 years.  So we formed Ecoliving coop and created L’Apebiana as a commercial center where we sell local, organic, fair trade products.
 
Alice Cubeddu:  Here we have an area dedicated to the home where we have naturally sourced products like this ergonomic furniture, and some everyday things made from recycled materials. This is an iPad cover made from recycled clothing.

Simone Mazzochi:  We’re becoming something more than just a social service cooperative.  We’re engaged in conventional business - selling shoes, clothes, children’s games, hobbies – all with a social dimension.

Alice Cubeddu:   Anything that we sell at L’Apebianca has a story to tell.  We have a whole line of organic clothing.  Even the shoes are made with natural materials without chemicals and colored with natural dyes.  Next our food store which is La Biottega.

Mauro Marconi:  These are all our deli items.  Over there is the bread and other products we prepare. So you can take what you want.  The products we sell in La Biottega have to meet a few basic criteria.  First they have to be organic.  Second, they must be local – “kilometer zero” – or from a short distance away.  Nearly all of these products are from less than twenty or thirty kilometers away.

Sangiovese, no? [off screen voice]

Sangiovese yes, it’s our wine.  Local.

Alice Cubeddu:   Everything you find in the L’Apebianca Center is made by small businesses, small producers, because for us, aside from protecting the environment, it’s very important to respect the businesses and the people who keep them going – that is, the workers.
    

Paolo Bonaretti:  We’re overcoming the economic crisis of recent years.  And we believe the only way to relaunch our economy is based on innovation, and innovation is also an element that holds the community together.

Narration: Recent decades have brought persistent and growing economic inequality.  And the environment is changing in unprecedented ways.  In the face of these challenges coops offer stability, flexibility, and resilience.

Paolo Bonaretti:  For us an important driver of the economy is the creativity of the culture, creativity of the culture that is built into the business itself.
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Simone Mazzochi:  What’s beautiful is that when a decision is made, it belongs to everyone.   Everyone works hard, we take ownership, and that’s what’s marvelous in a social coop. It’s a process that is slow and tiring but very strong and solid – almost indestructible.

Vera Zamagni: What needs to be produced are consumer goods and services, particularly services, that lend themselves better to cooperation, because cooperation is based on that sense of understanding, of sympathy and so on. 
I do believe that the cooperative enterprise is superior. The needs of the members are the target, toward which the company should work. It is a concept which is much larger than profit maximization.


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