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Every company should be owned by its employees

elysian.press

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Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#151

Post by eru »

djokkataja wrote: post #107

Are there any companies that are hybrids of this, where they have some fixed structure in terms of voting power that's, say, 60% employee-owned, and 40% which is publicly traded and has a board? So the employee-owned side of things maintains the primacy of their skin in the game because the 60% control that they have is not something which can be amended, but they can also receive outside investment to some degree? A…

German companies come pretty close. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

Also see how many cooperatives are run.

You can definitely make these kinds of things work and eg worker cooperatives are generally legal to set up around the world, but they don't necessarily work any better than vanilla companies (and that includes not necessarily being better for the employees).

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#152

Post by vsuperpower2021 »

Aissen wrote: post #118
dash2 wrote: post #94

Employee stock options are not a new idea, obviously. If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a good business plan. The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Your barista at Starbucks is not going to…

> Your barista at Starbucks is not going to increase the stock price no matter how well he fills your order But 400k barista all doing it well might.

This is not tenable. 400k people aren't going to all individually work extra hard for starbucks if their own work doesn't individually benefit them.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#153

Post by itake »

openrisk wrote: post #136

Ownership is such an empowering concept it is a bit of puzzle why there aren't larger numbers of employeed-owned companies. There is definitely a historical / cultural aspect to this: Exhibit 1: In agricultural societies land ownership was highly concentrated for the longest time (feudal society) before there were land reform movements [1]. Exhibit 2: Owner-occupancy is celebrated in many cultures but less so in othe…

The problem with employee wholely owned organizations is the employees at the primary location aren’t typically incentived to grow the business beyond their area.

The primary location would need to set aside profits to fund new locations and their money would go towards new employees.

Most employees, especially ones living pay check to pay check would much rather take the check than use that money to pay someone else.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#154

Post by jrnx »

dash2 wrote: post #94

Employee stock options are not a new idea, obviously. If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a good business plan. The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Your barista at Starbucks is not going to…

> (a) they find it hard to raise capital (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit

at the end a company needs to be financially successful and for this it needs to provide competitive products and services. Otherwise, they'll just be replaced.

There of course may be a chance they'll get replaced by another employee owned company, but the odds of a free-capital owned company replacing them are probably bigger as they have more freedom to make the right decisions to become successful.

Also imagine your pension would just depend on the odds of the company you have been working for a live long, because you just cannot invest into other companies because they are only owned by employees.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#155

Post by eru »

dools wrote: post #68

Worker co-ops and ESOPs are already available as business structures. If they’re better, they will be more common, it’s as simple as that. Mandating employee ownership is ridiculous. In terms of policy I think a cap on revenue per employee for a privately held company and a cap on individual ownership is a better solution to reducing income inequality. That and eliminating involuntary unemployment so that companies h…

> That and eliminating involuntary unemployment so that companies have to compete with a guaranteed job that is not exploitative.

You don't need to have job guarantees for that. A strong economy in general helps for this, and a basic income would also help.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#157

Post by eru »

hgyjnbdet wrote: post #20

I suppose a side effect might be employee loyality, which might be a good thing. And the wealth disparity we have now is obscene. But all this is predicated on the company doing well, where's the story about the companies set up like this that struggle or fail? Are the employees worse off than those in a traditional company?

Wealth disparity is a function of overall worker comp, but it doesn't matter whether you force companies to pay part of that comp in shares instead of cash.

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#158

Post by devnonymous »

stavros wrote: post #122
dash2 wrote: post #94

Employee stock options are not a new idea, obviously. If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a good business plan. The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Your barista at Starbucks is not going to…

Then maybe "taking over the market" is a bad metric, and we should be optimizing for making a company that makes the workers' lives better. The US cultural bias is showing here, as it's assumed that profit is above all else, and a company that forgoes profit to make workers happier must thus be less good. The vast majority of people in companies are workers. Let's stop optimizing for owner wealth and start optimizing…

Yep! ..and when workers are owners, optimizing either ways works !

Re: Every company should be owned by its employees

#160

Post by Guthur »

shswkna wrote: post #121
Guthur wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What capital risks? Private equity many times purchases a company, loads it up with debt, strips it off assets, pay themselves fat dividends and then walks away when it all falls apart.

That is the “popularised” and one-sided view of reality I was referring to. A full set of experiences will give you a more nuanced view.

That is a reality in can point to many examples. From Thames water to Sara Lee in Australia.
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