COREBA, a building and civil engineering cooperative in the Basque country

In 1983, the founder of a small Basque company which specialised in overhead electrical networks, decided to retire. The employees, despite an average age of twenty-eight, decided to follow the example of nearby Spanish cooperatives : although they had received their training 'on the job' and few of them were qualified, they managed to convince the founder to sell the company and make it into a SCOP (société coopérative ouvrière de production : a workers' cooperative). Today, the COREBA is a prosperous company which has nearly eighty cooperative members. It knew how to diversify its activities while at the same time keeping a very specific identity. Because of this, it has been unusual for employees to leave the company voluntarily despite low salaries in comparison with other sectors. As far as COREBA's president Alain Dubois is concerned, the three secrets for the success of the company are communication and openness within the company, motivation by giving employees more responsibility, and employees' attachment to the region which encourages them to invest in the development and success of the company.