MADRID — “The tableware brand that thousands of Spaniards grew up with is back on its feet.” That was one of the headlines about the conversion of France’s legendary Duralex tempered glass manufacturer into a worker cooperative (SCOP, in French). After years being run by managers who barely knew the French brand and who failed the company in terms of industrial and social maintenance, more than 140 of the company’s 226 workers decided to join the cooperative in July 2024.
From now on, they will be the ones determining the destiny of the company, founded in 1945. Today, Duralex is destined to grow and once again become the flagship of affordable and long-lasting products that have filled the cupboards of thousands of homes around the world for generations. The brown, grey and transparent plates and glasses — often no longer transparent after being washed countless times — will continue to be commercialized by the same brand that brought them to life.
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These past few years, the development of Duralex has been marked by a tortuous legal journey – including a trial. At the beginning of 2021, the firm was acquired by International Cookware. Later, it was integrated with the Pyrex factories in France under the name La Maison du Verre Français (LMVF). The financial results of these operations foreshadowed a difficult profitability in the horizon.
“For the following three years, Duralex was entirely controlled by a remote executive committee, made up of people from the International Cookware/LMFV group and not from Duralex. This is important,” remembers Vasco Da Silva, member of the company’s social committee and secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT) trade union.
In April 2024, the LMVF’s managing director placed Duralex under judicial administration. “The social committee, along with the three directors who belonged to Duralex, discussed the idea of creating a worker cooperative. And, after numerous discussions, it seemed to us like the best way to allow Duralex and its employees to finally decide their own future and to avoid finding themselves in the same situation,” Da Silva says.
Advantages of a cooperative
Today, Duralex only represents 1% of the global tableware market. Far from lowering their expectations, the workers consider that “there is enormous room for improvement.” With the right strategic and commercial decisions, “the company can grow,” Da Silva says. For now, the company will save 6.9 million euros in management fees paid to the executive committee in 2023, which represented almost 25% of total costs.
The cooperative opens a new chapter for Duralex and its employees. The only inconvenience Da Silva can see is that they will have to participate in the company’s organization, including general meetings.
Future decisions are now in the hands of Duralex workers.
“It means dedicating a bit of time, in addition to work, but it allows the workers to discuss the life of the company and vote on decisions,” he says, adding that “future strategic marketing and commercial decisions are also now in the hands of Duralex workers, who know their products and their brand.”
Aware of what Duralex tableware has meant to thousands of families around the world, Da Silva stresses that the project is to continue working as well as always, find new markets, reengage markets the brand already has, but also recover markets that have been lost and neglected by the previous managers in the last three years.
“We also plan on expanding our range with new products and new colors. If we manage to grow, even by 0.5%, that would represent 50% more than the current business volume,” he estimates.
Social class awareness
The factory’s new reality as a cooperative stems from an old, but not well developed, way of organizing a company. “Unfortunately, it is quite usual to see factories or companies closed or sold to other shareholders because they’re no longer sufficiently profitable for the shareholder, or cease to be so due to bad management decisions,” Da Silva explains.
The Duralex case conveys another message: “If the workers know their tools, their markets and their potential, why let it pass from the hands of one shareholder to the other, or let it die out instead of trying to fight for its survival and sustainability?” he says.
Furthermore, for Duralex employees, the feeling of belonging to the working class has been the thread leading them on the path to form a worker cooperative.
“This project at Duralex is as close to the heart of the working class as it is to those of the most qualified workers,” who also form part of the cooperative, says Da Silva. Self-management, beyond working for themselves, allows workers to “develop their skills, acquiring knowledge about how a company works, in terms of management, finances and social issues” on their own terms, he explains.
A symbol in Spain
In thousands of Spanish homes, the green and brown colors of Duralex plates and glasses have been part of the lives of different generations. This almost unbreakable tableware is a good reminder of a time when we didn’t buy new utensils after the slightest scratch — a trend is making a comeback.
So symbolism and sustainability both play a role in the creation of this worker cooperative: the strength of its products has met the resistance of a workforce that refused to go extinct due to the bad decisions taken by an alien management.
The fact that a brand like Duralex has been turned into a worker cooperative is a significant milestone
And the news has crossed borders. The fact that a brand like Duralex has been turned into a worker cooperative is a significant milestone for other factories and industries.
“That a company of such renown taking this step means exemplifying that the problems of large corporations can also be solved through the creation of a worker cooperative,” says Luis Miguel Jurado, president of the Spanish Confederation of Associated Worker Cooperatives (COCETA).
This could happen in Spain, for example. “It is common for a company not to have a generational takeover or for a commercial company, which seeks a powerful industrial benefit, not to find it. That is where these business forms usually appear,” he says. Jurado believes Madrid should implement measures to help companies going through this type of crisis become worker cooperatives, so that they are not lost and that the work can continue.
Legal framework
The last major advance in Spanish legislation in this regard came in September 2022. From that moment on, a judge can decide on the awarding of a firm to cooperative or labor companies that guarantee its continuity as a whole to a wide extent or, when it applies, the continuity of the productive unit and the jobs, as long as their offer does not differ by more than 15% from the higher.
Carmen Pastor, professor of Commercial Law at the University of Alicante, fought for years for this article 219 of the Bankruptcy Law to be adopted.
“Duralex is an opportunity to highlight a solution that is still rare in Spain”
“Duralex is an opportunity to highlight a solution that is still rare in Spain,” she says. While it already happened with the industrial reconversion of the 1980s in Spain, Pastor argues that the creation of worker cooperatives might be one of the best options to safeguard jobs today, as society is undergoing a technological reconversion.
From her point of view, this phenomenon is already occurring in Spain, but the lack of culture in this regard does it a disservice.
“Regulations also include the idea that the company must be preserved as an asset in itself. That is why it is possible that, in the event of an auction or bankruptcy, the solutions that will prevail are not only the most profitable for paying creditors, but also the ones with a viability plan for the productive unit and the jobs,” Pastor says.
In that sense, Pastor calls on Spain’s labor ministry to draw attention to the possibility of workers being the ones to run their own company in a horizontal and democratic way. “We’ve already fought for the legal regulations to include this. Now all that remains is for judge-appointed experts in business restructuring to be able to work with the cooperative confederations so that they take this option more into account.”
