381–390 of 472 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's true of conventional businesses too, though. It's not like banks hand out loans to anyone who walks in off the street with grandma's best bolognese recipe.
Even more money for the coop, though. Like, enough to not need other investors/banks.
What about the one person who actually can't afford to do that because they'd already budgeted assuming that money was coming in?
What about if you need to reduce headcount? Do you just all vote on who should be fired in effectively a popularity contest that will cause build up of resentment later on? Draw the shortest straw? In this case, an "owner" is probably best because they can all collectively "hate" the owner and bond together as staff.
What about if someone is secretly planning to leave in the next few months and wants their money now as salary rather than investing in long term projects for the company, etc... They might destabilise the long-term success of the company if they vote not to invest, but be unmotivated and work poorly if they know some of "their money" was invested and they're never going to see it.
There seem to be so many edge cases where the traditional hierarchy structure seems like the best viable solution. There are some examples of co-operatives in the UK, the most famous is John Lewis. I think they work around it by just running mostly like a normal business, paying fairly normal salaries for different roles, but then bonuses for profit sharing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
also Hell's Kitchen (since 2020), downtown MPLS https://www.hellskitcheninc.com/#about-us-employee-owned-sec...
"All dine-in checks include a 15% service charge, and all to-go, delivery and curbside pick-up orders include a 20% service charge. 100% of these charges are distributed to our employees in order to keep compensation as fair as possible to everyone" I guess this is mentioned on the page to signal that menu price is the final, no need to tip? US' tipping culture is so strange. Normally you don't need to mention anythi…
Not true; tipping is everywhere, however it's more that it's appreciated instead of expected elsewhere, see https://www.johnlewisfinance.com/currency/tipping-culture-ti...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> At most places I've been involved in the workers are more careful with money because they are standing together and want the business to succeed. This doesn't contradict anything GP said. Worker owners are careful with company money because they have to be, due to being invested into it. That's a responsibility that not everyone wants, especially when an organization approaches the scale of tragedy of the commons.…
> This is only true when you're defining success as a binary "does this company still exist." Worker-owned companies are significantly less likely to expand Why would that be a criteria of “success”, though? A worker owned business capable of supporting all its employees and maintaining itself long term is definitionally a success.
The pizza restaurant (gourmet pizza, not crap) around the corner where I live is workers owned. The previous owner went bankrupt and left his employees hanging out to dry, so they took ownership of the place. Not sure about the legal situation (e.g. whether they bought the restaurant from the owner or what) but it's been workers owned for the past few years and doing well, judging by how full it always is. I eat and…
In this example, someone else had to get it off the ground. The sibling commenter's example of Zachary's is similarly the product of entrepreneurs who got it started https://zacharys.com/about-us/our-story/
https://jrwiener.com/cooperatives-and-founder-incentives/
The idea is that cooperatives don't have to treat everyone exactly the same. You can have different "classes" of members. You can have ordinary worker members, but also "founder" members. For example, for an agreed number of years "founder" members can get to elect a certain amount of board seats and get a higher share of profits.
Sure, it moves away from "one-person one-vote" democracy and full equality, but only for a temporary period, and it still gives ordinary workers a much greater say in their workplace than they get in standard companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is only true when you're defining success as a binary "does this company still exist." Worker-owned companies are significantly less likely to expand Why would that be a criteria of “success”, though? A worker owned business capable of supporting all its employees and maintaining itself long term is definitionally a success.
Absolutely agree. Why does everything need to scale up forever? Resources are finite.
This seems fine during the good times, but I can imagine a big problem of having a no-hierarchy worker-owned operation is what happens when the market shrinks and you can't afford to pay everyone the promised minimum salary. Do you all just collectively agree to take less money? What about the one person who actually can't afford to do that because they'd already budgeted assuming that money was coming in? What about…
"Insiders claim that some years’ borrowings were ramped up in order to avoid having to think the unthinkable and cut the hallowed John Lewis staff bonus, as profits failed to keep up with the pace of store openings."
It only takes a few years of mismanagement for a partner owned company like Waitrose to borrow too much and step on the landmine of unserviceable debt. The company is then has to be sold and metastasises into a normal company. Obviously the most unjust thing in that story is that upper management probably not only get paid too much while causing the situation but likely negotiate a personally beneficial settlement for themselves as the ship burns and sinks.
0 - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/12/john-lewis-r... 1 - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/11/can-dame-sha...
(Apologies for linking to that website)
This is a really fascinating idea. At its heart, it’s a charity in which the person risking their capital assumes all the risks, while gifting the potential rewards. Big kudos to the beautiful, big-souled gentleman who put it together.
Why would worker ownership be a charity and why would owners not be sharing the profits regardless of whether they also work there?
This seems fine during the good times, but I can imagine a big problem of having a no-hierarchy worker-owned operation is what happens when the market shrinks and you can't afford to pay everyone the promised minimum salary. Do you all just collectively agree to take less money? What about the one person who actually can't afford to do that because they'd already budgeted assuming that money was coming in? What about…
> the Erreka Group averted layoffs by temporarily trimming wages by 5 percent. It continued to pay workers stuck at home in exchange for the promise that they would make up some of their hours when better days returned.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210103102831/https://www.nytim...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because the name says worker co-op doesn't mean every employee has to be vested. In the Netherlands a coop is an acutal legal structure that businesses may adopt. It will surprise you to hear that we even a big bank which is: A co-op. The core characteristic of a co-op isn't that the workers all have shares. It's that they have members and that the members instead of the shareholders may receive payouts based on…
It will surprise you to hear that we even a big bank which is: A co-op. There are lots of those types of co-op banks in the US, as well as other large businesses run as the type of co-op you're talking about. That is however a competently different thing than what is being discussed here.