When the government forced all UK businesses over a certain size to publish their gender pay gap figures last year, many red-faced chief executives struggled to justify why the men they employed were earning so much more than the women.

Not so at the ethical wholesaler Suma, which says it is the largest equal-pay co-operative in Europe. First, because it doesn’t have a CEO. And second, because all of Suma’s 190 employees, or “members” , earn exactly the same: £15.60 an hour, equating to £33,000 for a 35-hour, five-day week, plus bonuses and shares. From the 26-year-old newbie to the 65-year-old who has been with Suma since its birth as a co-op in 1977, there are no exceptions.

In Suma’s home of Elland, a market town near Halifax in West Yorkshire, that salary can buy you a home (a three-bed apartment in a converted mill is currently on sale for £103,000), plus “a decent car, a good family life and a nice holiday”, according to Nathalie Spencer, 35, who has worked at Suma for 14 years.

Global pay gap will take 202 years to close, says World Economic Forum Read more

Her main job is in international sales – the business turned over £55m last year and exports 7,000 vegetarian products to 40 different countries – but like all Suma members, she multitasks, and can sometimes be seen driving a reach truck in the warehouse or loading up lorries.

“It sounds a bit random, but l like the team spirit involved in loading lorries, that sense of achievement at the end of each day, rather than leaving scattered notes on your desk and forgetting half of them,” she says.

Quick guide What is the Upside? Show Hide Ever wondered why you feel so gloomy about the world - even at a time when humanity has never been this healthy and prosperous? Could it be because news is almost always grim, focusing on confrontation, disaster, antagonism and blame? This series is an antidote, an attempt to show that there is plenty of hope, as our journalists scour the planet looking for pioneers, trailblazers, best practice, unsung heroes, ideas that work, ideas that might and innovations whose time might have come. Readers can recommend other projects, people and progress that we should report on by contacting us at theupside@theguardian.com

Sign up here for a weekly roundup from this series emailed to your inbox every Friday

When the Guardian visits, Paul Collins, the account manager for one of Suma’s national chain customers and the brand coordinator for Suma’s Ecoleaf household range, is serving up vegetarian pizza in the free staff canteen.

Jenny Carlyle, 33, who is in charge of hiring (and, only very occasionally, firing) in the personnel department, likes to go off and spend an afternoon in the deep freezer when she needs to clear her head.

“Sometimes it’s nice to put on the freezer suit and pick products at -20C,” she says, and anyway, it makes her better at her main job if she understands all aspects of the business. “Working in the freezer or warehouse might be looked down on at normal companies, but actually it is such an integral part of our business as a wholesaler that we all need to understand it, and so it makes sense that our warehouse workers are paid the same as everyone else.”

When she first heard of Suma, she assumed there must be a catch, but she soon realised the benefits of equal pay. “Being all paid the same is liberating,” she says. “I think I was probably overpaid when I started and now, 11 years on, with all my experience and all the courses I have done, I am probably being underpaid. But it evens out. Overall I have probably been paid more than if I had climbed the ladder at a normal business.

“It takes some of that career pressure off as well. One of the great things I love about Suma is that we all have times in our life when we can’t put 100% into our working life, and at Suma you can step back for a little bit when you need to and then step back up when you can and there is no penalty for that.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Isis Carrasco (right), a project manager, took a pay cut when she moved to Suma three years ago. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

Though the co-op is understanding if members need to take time out – whether to have a baby, move house, care for a relative or, like Carlyle, get a master’s degree – they are all expected to engage in big strategic issues of the business. New hires are warned: “You’re not just a worker, you’re an owner … you can’t just coast along, you need to take responsibility, taking part in the democracy and putting yourself forward to make things happen.”

Between 120 and 550 people apply each time Suma has a recruitment round, in which the co-op generally hires up to 12 members. Applicants are wildly varied, says Carlyle: “In one round we might have someone with 40 years’ experience in logistics and then someone in their early 20s straight out of university.”

Is pay equality possible when all the hard work at home is done by women? | Jean Hannah Edelstein Read more

Regardless of experience, newcomers are put on probation and spend their first three months working in the warehouse or driving – proving their ability to work safely, quickly and accurately in the less glamorous side of Suma’s operation. For a further six months, they work in a variety of departments and complete various targets. Only then, after an exhausting round of feedback, is there a vote from everyone at Suma to decide if they should be allowed to join as a member.

More than 90% make it through the process, says Carlyle, who at 23 found herself on Suma’s management committee, its version of a board. “That was an experience most 23-year-olds would never be able to have. It’s that mixture of freedom and opportunity as well as the flexibility to step back when you need to without losing your place that’s really wonderful, and that’s all enabled by equal pay,” she says.

Isis Carrasco, 47, a former charity manager, took a pay cut when she moved to Suma to become a project manager three years ago. “Equal pay is equal opportunities in terms of opening horizons and being able to do jobs that you would not be able to do unless you change your career,” says the cheerful Spaniard. “For example, I like DIY a lot and now I have the opportunity not just to project manage but also put shelves up. I am getting the opportunity to develop these sort of skills at work, skills you’d normally have to change career to learn.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Suma exports vegetarian products to 40 different countries. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Guardian

It can take a little time to adjust to co-op life, says Carlyle. “It can be stressful at first figuring out how it works where there’s no clear hierarchy for decision-making. At a normal company you might only need to have one conversation to get something done. Here you will have to have five or six, and sometimes the whole co-op votes. Sometime people come here thinking it is a real utopia, but people are flawed and they do make mistakes.”

One of Suma’s six founders, Jim Crabtree, still works a few days a week at the co-op. Carlyle says she sat next to him in the canteen once and asked whether he ever regretted the decision to turn the business into a member-owned co-operative. “It’s a £50m business now, so he would have a one-sixth share in that rather than a one in 190 share. He stopped eating and said: ‘Never.’ I feel really grateful to those six people who decided to share the company back when I wasn’t even born. It was a really generous thing they did and I am very, very proud to carry on their work.”

This article is part of a series on possible solutions to some of the world’s most stubborn problems. What else should we cover? Email us at theupside@theguardian.com

• This article was amended on 7 January 2019, to make it clear that Suma says it is the largest equal pay cooperative in Europe, and not one of the largest cooperatives in Europe.