July 6, International Day of Cooperatives 'Cooperatives for Decent Work'
CEPES joins the International Day of Cooperatives and
highlights "decent work" that drives the cooperative model
• The president of CEPES recalls that "cooperatives stand out for their values of democracy, sustainability and commitment to the territory in which they are born, at the same time as they generate stable and quality jobs".
• The United Nations affirms that there are 3 million cooperatives worldwide that employ or are the main source of income for more than 279 million people (10% of the active population).
Madrid, July 6, 2019.- The Spanish Business Confederation of the Social Economy (CEPES) -for the celebration today of the International Day of Cooperatives, celebrated with the slogan "Cooperatives for Decent Work" -remember the contribution made by this business model worldwide in favor of stable and quality work.
The United Nations values that cooperatives, all over the world, "contribute to generating a healthy work environment", while confirming that cooperative jobs "tend to be more sustainable over time, show a smaller gap in the gains between the highest and lowest positions; and they are distributed more evenly between rural and urban areas. "
The president of CEPES, Juan Antonio Pedreño , stressed "the importance that the UN has decided to highlight and make visible the value that cooperatives make to create quality jobs, at the same time promoting economic growth that ensures a more equitable distribution of wealth".
"The Social Economy and cooperatives place people at the center of economic activity and the social object above capital. They are a business model based on criteria of democracy, decision-making, and solidarity, which reinvest the benefits to generate more employment, ensure sustainable development or provide services of interest to the community, "said Pedreño.
"Ultimately, as stressed by the United Nations, cooperatives promote quality jobs, indefinite and full-time, and show that it is possible to combine economic and social profitability," added the president of CEPES.
3 million cooperatives and 279 million jobs
A recent estimate from the United Nations revealed that there are 3 million cooperatives around the world that employ or are the main source of income for more than 279 million people, almost 10% of the total active population of humanity.
In Spain, as of December 31, 2018, there were 19,954 cooperatives that employ 322,880 people, according to the General Directorate of Autonomous Labor, the Social Economy and the CSR of the Ministry of Employment and Social Security, included in the ranking of CEPES .
International Day
The International Day of Cooperatives is an annual celebration of the cooperative movement that takes place every first Saturday in July since 1923. Beginning in 1995, the United Nations and the International Cooperative Alliance established the theme ofThis celebration is carried out through the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (COPAC), an association of multiple public and private institutions that defend and support self-sufficient and people-centered cooperative enterprises as leaders in sustainable development. The International Cooperative Alliance is one of its founding members.
The objective of this celebration is to increase the awareness of cooperatives. The event highlights the contributions of these to solve the main problems addressed by the United Nations and to strengthen and expand the alliances between the international cooperative movement and other actors,
