A distraction from the election: The case for employee-owned companies

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-the-case-for-employee-owned-companies

“Ellerman has for years made an argument as startling as it is hard to refute: “the labor theory of property.” It’s that employees should own the firms they work for because of very simple logic: If they’re responsible for the consequences of their actions while on the job — committing a crime, say — how can it be that they’re not responsible for the positive things they do?”

@politics

  • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
    8·
    3 hours ago

    Worker cooperatives should be everywhere. I hope that governments start recognizing it and giving subsidies to co-ops instead of corporations.

    • J Lou@mastodon.socialOP
      10·
      3 hours ago

      Any company that receives government subsidies or is bailed out because it’s too big too fail or whatever the reason should be mandated to become a worker coop

      @politics

  • Makeitstop@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    4 hours ago

    Local employye owned grocery chain is consistently the best place to shop, didn’t inflate prices across the board like everyone else, and the workers actually get treated like human beings. It’s proof enough for me that this model should be far more common

  • Troy@lemmy.ca
    5·
    4 hours ago

    Personal anecdote. I run a small business with a business partner (co-owner) and we have no employees. We need an employee. I’m personally a huge fan of employee-owned companies.

    But from a hiring perspective, it is mind bogglingly risky for us to hire someone and just automatically stake them. Like, what if it’s the wrong person? How do we claw back control? Do we risk dilution sending the company in another direction?

    It’s just so much easier just to pay someone and not have to deal with the complexity. And therein lies the rub.

    • shackled@lemm.ee
      2·
      2 hours ago

      Staking should without a doubt be slowly vested not immediate at the start of hiring. The vesting period can be adjusted to the current owners risk level. As someone else mentioned below, the employee can be offered profit sharing until they are fully vested and own voting stake in the company.

    • sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world
      4·
      4 hours ago

      I worked at a place that rolled out employee ownership after they were like 250 people. If you can’t offer ownership right away, you can offer a decent profit share (requires some amount of financial transparency to help communicate the value to the employee).

    • J Lou@mastodon.socialOP
      2·
      3 hours ago

      It would definitely be easier in an economy where this was the only way of doing things.

      I am not a lawyer.

      Based on the underlying economic theory and ethical arguments for worker coops/employee-owned companies, what you could do in such a situation is make a separate legal entity for the worker coop, and then lease the assets of the current legal entity to the worker coop. You and your partner maintain exclusive ownership of the original legal entity

      @politics