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When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

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Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#21

Post by throwaway902i »

ageek123 wrote: post #11
throwaway902i wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't Marxism. One of the most well-known advocates of employee-owned companies, Noam Chomsky, is anarchist, not Marxist. Marxism is primarily about controlling political power to achieve economic goals. What the article talks about works without (much) political power.

I hate to break the news to you but Chomsky is a Marxist.

Wrong. Check Wikipedia or any of his writings. He is clearly not Marxist. Anarchism is fundamentally incompatible with Marxism, because it lies on the other side of the vertical axis in the political compass (politicalcompass.org). 'He later described his discovery of anarchism as a "lucky accident", allowing him to become critical of other radical left-wing ideologies, namely Marxism-Leninism.'

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#22

Post by bobcostas55 »

Certhas wrote: post #9
ExpiredLink wrote: post #7

Coop models may work if decision-making structures are defined clearly and 'economically'. >> expand the coop model by associating it more closely with unions. A receipt for disaster. Some European states had this models in the past and completely abandoned them.

Care to elaborate? Unions function differently in different EU states: In the UK they were pretty much killed, in France they act as antagonists to the business side, in Germany they act more collaboratively with the business side. In the latter case in Germany every large enough commpany has to have a democratically elected workers council, that gets a seat on the board. While not the same as co-ownership, this demo…

They also destroy capital, German firms (on average) have a marginal Tobin's q of less than 1.

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#23

Post by grumanin »

ageek123 wrote: post #11
throwaway902i wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't Marxism. One of the most well-known advocates of employee-owned companies, Noam Chomsky, is anarchist, not Marxist. Marxism is primarily about controlling political power to achieve economic goals. What the article talks about works without (much) political power.

I hate to break the news to you but Chomsky is a Marxist.

What's your argument/evidence for that claim? Chomsky has self explicitly said numerous times that he's not a Marxist and prominent Marxists don't consider him to be one of them...

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#24

Post by Certhas »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #22
Certhas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate? Unions function differently in different EU states: In the UK they were pretty much killed, in France they act as antagonists to the business side, in Germany they act more collaboratively with the business side. In the latter case in Germany every large enough commpany has to have a democratically elected workers council, that gets a seat on the board. While not the same as co-ownership, this demo…

They also destroy capital, German firms (on average) have a marginal Tobin's q of less than 1.

So? Given that the German economy seems to be doing rather fine this just seems to indicate that this is a useless index then.

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#25

Post by TeMPOraL »

jackweirdy wrote: post #3

How hard must they have tried to write that without using the word Marxism!?

And thanks to them for that. Because the moment someone uses a political label like that the whole discussion usually goes haywire. I wish people would stop labeling everything by random political ideologies.

It makes exactly as much sense as saying: "classes are bad because they are Javish, and we all know how Java is bad because it asks you to provide megabytes of XML just to print 'Hello World'". This is what I hear when someone says "hey, this is marxist/communist/liberal/whatever speech".

Seriously, labeling like that is a cognitive equivalent of drunk driving - probably fun, but sheer idiocy.

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#26

Post by up_and_up »

KonoHito wrote: post #10

It sounds like an attractive concept... but I'm not sure about its long term viability. The larger a business grows, the more people become involved in the cooperative, and the harder it becomes to gain consensus or propose more risky but sometimes critical actions for the business. Layoffs are most probably off the table, while things like employee benefits will probably become disproportionately popular and hard to…

> I've heard some groceries in US converted to co-op model though. Wonder how they are doing now.

One example is Woodman's in the upper midwest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodman's_Markets

They have 15 locations and over 1 billion in annual revenue.

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#27

Post by tomrod »

nraynaud wrote: post #16

I think the article does a poor job of explaining why factories are generally not coop. When you have 1 employee = 1 vote, you can't sell (a significant amount of) capital to external entities. This leaves you with borrowing money, for which you can't use a significant amount of capital as a collateral. That leaves the coops mostly to sectors that are not capital intensive (mostly service and retail). There is a bit…

Your analysis seems spot on to me.

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#28

Post by up_and_up »

Here is a list of the largest majority employee-owned companies in the USA: http://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100.

That is companies that are >50% employee owned.

Companies marked with an asterisk are 100% employee-owned.

The biggest 100% employee-owned company is Lifetouch Photography in MN with 25,000 employees.

But Co-ops and employee owned companies are not the same thing.

I have worked for several small co-ops that used consensus decision making. While it is true that everyone has an equal voice the tendency is to listen more to people with more experience or expertise in the particular area being discussed. Also, there is a lot of delegation that happens where subgroups are formed so not everyone is deciding what type of toilet paper to buy or how exactly we should implement some minor detail. That being said sometimes random people come up with the best ideas, so it was helpful to have them involved.

I found consensus decision making to be a lengthy process but a rewarding one.

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#29

Post by walshemj »

nraynaud wrote: post #16

I think the article does a poor job of explaining why factories are generally not coop. When you have 1 employee = 1 vote, you can't sell (a significant amount of) capital to external entities. This leaves you with borrowing money, for which you can't use a significant amount of capital as a collateral. That leaves the coops mostly to sectors that are not capital intensive (mostly service and retail). There is a bit…

Well you can how poptel did it was sell some equity in the company.

coop structures can be complex Normally the coop owns the company that employs the members - as long as the members have 50%+1 of the votes they control the company.

Re: When Workers Own Their Companies, Everyone Wins

#30

Post by [deleted] »

nraynaud wrote: post #16

I think the article does a poor job of explaining why factories are generally not coop. When you have 1 employee = 1 vote, you can't sell (a significant amount of) capital to external entities. This leaves you with borrowing money, for which you can't use a significant amount of capital as a collateral. That leaves the coops mostly to sectors that are not capital intensive (mostly service and retail). There is a bit…

[deleted]
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