41–50 of 83 posts
The Basque Mondragon Corporation [0] is actually very impressive: It is the seventh-largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2012, it employed 80,321 people in 289 companies and organizations in four areas of activity: finance, industry, retail and knowledge. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
>Meanwhile, credit unions — another form of cooperative — face stringent regulations on business lending. This was thrown as an aside, but I'm wondering what they exactly mean by that. What are these regulations? Are they government imposed or member imposed? What exactly do the regulations say? I wish the article didn't just throw out "there's regulations" without explaining what said regulations are and how they ef…
>Meanwhile, credit unions — another form of cooperative — face stringent regulations on business lending. This was thrown as an aside, but I'm wondering what they exactly mean by that. What are these regulations? Are they government imposed or member imposed? What exactly do the regulations say? I wish the article didn't just throw out "there's regulations" without explaining what said regulations are and how they ef…
Due to their community charters and nonprofit statuses, CUs have regulatory and statutory limits to the amount of business loans they can hand out (12% of total loan portfolio, with loans up to $50,000 or SBA-backed loans not counting against the cap). Bankers and smaller credit unions argue, I believe reasonably, that increasing commercial portfolios by CUs would create an unfair playing field (the bankers' argument) and increase CU accountholders' risks (the smaller CUs, which generally aren't going for large commercial portfolios and see this as a way for the largest CUs to reduce the smaller competition).
Lending restrictions on CUs work well -- post-2008, credit unions were considerably more stable than commercial banks, with the exception of CUs that took on outsized commercial portfolios. For example, Texans Credit Union had a waiver that allowed up to 20% of its portfolio to be commercial (and then bought a subsidiary that had billions of dollars in CRE loans that didn't count towards its cap). Even before the crash, its bad debt ate up a majority of its equity, and consumed the rest in the 2008 meltdown. As a result, the board and executive leadership were summarily canned in 2011, after three years of steady deterioration, and the NCUA took over running the institution.
I don't know how it works in other countries, but I can give some more detailed info about the requirements in France, if anyone's interested :
- A partner can own 50% max. of the company.
- Whether you own 1% or 50%, every partner has the same voting power.
- You can have a maximum of 1/3 non-employed partners, and the combined non-employed partners cannot own a majority of shares (49% max). This assures that the "power" stays within the people that actually work in the company.
- This also means that 2/3 of the partners must be employed with a contract and a salary. This can be quite difficult when you build the company as you must, technically, start paying yourself and your partner (since you must be 2 partners minimum) on day 1.
- You need a minimum of 2 partners, but can also have as many employees as you want. This means you can technically be a co-op even if your company has 2 partners and 1000 employees.
- There are rules as to how you distribute your benefits : a maximum of 33% can be distributed as dividends to the partners, a minimum of 16% must be kept in the company for investment (reserves), and a minimum of 33% has to be distributed amongst all employees (following a calculation the employees can decide upon, like according to time worked, salaries, how long one's been in the company, or a custom calculation...). This tends to lead to high employee motivation and better ensure long-term health.
- Co-operatives have a few tax deductions that other companies don't. If you don't distribute any dividends and distribute it all to your employees + keep some for investments, and follow a certain number of other rules, you can practically be exempted of taxes on the company's benefits.
- On the other hand, you must go through a bunch of red tape to prove every year that you follow the rules of a co-operative, which costs time and a bit of money.
We built the company 2 years ago, and right now we're only 3 partner/employees so our day-to-day life is basically the same as any other similar-sized company, but we liked the philosophy, and it has actually been an interesting marketing feature.
Answer: the boss isn't for the employee, the boss is for the people who are spending the money on employees they don't trust. Putting in a boss is the first of many measures to protect capital. Most of these measures are very flawed.
But even in a cooperative scenario, protecting capital is still a concern because an employee of a cooperative can also fuck off rather than working, thereby squandering jointly-owned capital. Big difference, not really.
Only if you have ways of doing business without requiring any capital, or where the worker puts their own capital on the line, is it going to stop being a need
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except in communism it'd be the community (or, commune) that'd own the business. Since this is worker-owned, it's closer to syndicalism than communism (or socialism).
Lovely bit of history... the anarcho-syndicalists were the third element of the Spanish Civil War. And if there's one thing the fascists and communists could agree on, it was that both hated the anarchists more than they hated each other. Unfortunately, when you organize at the level of a farm or a factory, you're no match for an enemy that can throw 1000 troops at you in order to crush you. Noam Chomsky's history of…
I, for one, need a boss. I don't necessarily need that person to tell me what to do, but I do need someone to remind me that the things that I do, whatever they may be, should be in the best interests of our company and its revenue stream. And I need someone to give me positive and negative feedback on my work, so I can improve my own productivity. What I really don't need is owners that are not personally involved i…
Without someone to have all the ideas, how could I build anything? It's a question for the ages Answer: the boss isn't for the employee, the boss is for the people who are spending the money on employees they don't trust. Putting in a boss is the first of many measures to protect capital. Most of these measures are very flawed. But even in a cooperative scenario, protecting capital is still a concern because an emplo…
So another symptom of the alienation of labor and capital? Stupid capitalism.
Without someone to have all the ideas, how could I build anything? It's a question for the ages Answer: the boss isn't for the employee, the boss is for the people who are spending the money on employees they don't trust. Putting in a boss is the first of many measures to protect capital. Most of these measures are very flawed. But even in a cooperative scenario, protecting capital is still a concern because an emplo…
* Sitting in on meetings of things that might be, and calling me in when he feels my input would be useful
* Being a first point of contact for the "customer" when they want to find something out but don't want to poke dev directly (they do poke me directly on occasion when they know it's appropriate)
* Being a first point of contact when I need some information (Who should I talk to to get more information about X? Can you schedule a meeting with the folks from Y so that we can discuss the technical details of something? etc)
He's there because he knows enough about my work and the work of everyone else we interact with that he can handle the management of non-technical details. I, for one, am very thankful that he is there.
Honestly, it runs similar to the argument for an Administrative Assistant. Sure, I could schedule my own trips, and order my own , and such. But having someone there that does such things on a regular basis is a huge benefit. The AA(s) at every company I've worked for have always been someone I am very thankful to have, even if we could get by without them. It's all about efficiency.