FEVECTA pushes cooperativism in l'Alacantí

Worker cooperatives are the point here — not as an abstract “social economy” slogan, but as a concrete way to start companies that keep jobs and decision-making rooted locally. That is why FEVECTA’s move into l’Alacantí’s territorial employment pact matters. On May 6 in Mutxamel, the Valencian federation of worker cooperatives formally joined ACTEI l’Alacantí, the comarca’s employment and innovation alliance, in a signing event that also added the business-area entity EGM Riodel Mutxamel. ### What actually joined what? FEVECTA joined ACTEI l’Alacantí — the Pacto Territorial por el Empleo y la Innovación de l’Alacantí. ACTEI is not one town’s program. It is a comarca-wide structure tied to LABORA’s Avalem Territori framework, built to connect municipalities, employers, unions, and other local actors around employability and economic development. ### Why does FEVECTA matter here? FEVECTA is the main federation for worker cooperatives in the Valencian Community, so its role is pretty specific. It helps people create cooperatives, trains existing ones, and gives technical support to projects that want a worker-owned structure. In plain language — ACTEI is adding a specialist that knows how to turn “we should create jobs” into “here is a legal and practical way to build a company together.” ### Why do cooperatives fit a local jobs pact? Because a worker cooperative is usually born from a local need and tends to stay tied to the territory that created it. That is the pitch FEVECTA has been making in Alicante lately, including a separate April 21 agreement with ADLYPSE Alicante to promote cooperative enterprises inside local development policy. ### Why was Mutxamel the stage? Mutxamel is currently leading ACTEI. In February 2025, mayor Rafael García Berenguer was chosen to preside over the pact for the 2025-2026 term, which helps explain why the latest adhesion event happened there and why local officials framed it as part of a larger comarca strategy rather than a single-municipality announcement. Who else came in? EGM Riodel Mutxamel joined at the same event. That matters because it shows ACTEI widening on two fronts at once — one new partner from the cooperative world and one from the industrial and business-estate side. Basically, the pact is trying to build a thicker mesh between entrepreneurship support, employers, and municipal job policy. ### So what changes now? The immediate change is institutional, not dramatic. FEVECTA’s adhesion gives ACTEI another tool for training, advising, and channeling people toward cooperative business models. The catch is that these pacts only matter if they produce actual projects — new firms, hiring pipelines, or support services people can use. But adding a federation with hands-on cooperative know-how makes that outcome more plausible. ### Why should anyone outside l’Alacantí care? Because this is how local economic policy often works when it is serious — not one giant factory announcement, but a stack of smaller institutions linking towns, business groups, and specialist intermediaries. Cooperatives will not replace the whole labor market. But for small firms, self-employment groups, and community-rooted ventures, they give local governments one more way to turn development talk into durable jobs. ### Bottom line? FEVECTA joining ACTEI does not transform l’Alacantí overnight. What it does is make cooperativism part of the comarca’s official employment toolkit — and that is usually how these shifts start.