How do coops structure comp? That's what I'm most curious about. When you leave do you retain a profits interest?
When you leave, you take the value of your investment with you, whether it has gone up or down in value while you worked there.
Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
461–470 of 472 posts
Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#462Wouldn't a family-owned business also qualify?
Only until they hire an employee with no buy in or profit sharing.
Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#463https://www.letempsdescerisescoop.com/ It works since at least 1976.
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Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#464tangential, but what happens to worker-owner who leaves. Does he have to sell his share in business? When you employ a new worked does he have to buy part of the business to start working?
Yes, an owner/worker who leaves get their share back, whether it has increased or decreased in value. A new worker has to buy in. I watched a documentary on YT about Mondragon and a new employee talked about how he saved up the money so he could afford the shares to get a position at Mondragon.
Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#465Isn't that literally what family restaurants are?
Family restaurants almost always come with a lot of built in hierarchy, even beyond the owner structure. Non-family members always rank below family members and the internal family hierarchy tends to become the restaurant hierarchy, almost regardless of what the formal ownership and leadership structure on paper is. 4 waiters and 2 line chefs will never be able to vote down 'mom' no matter what the paperwork says.
Worker cooperatives still have some kind of hierarchical structure because each owner has a different job, but major business decisions are still democratically voted on by every owner.
Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#466Reads like a convoluted business which has rolled into a near scam. $1,000 to own a part of the business. That business doesn't generate profits... Are they surviving because people inject $1,000 of their money to the business?
Mondragon started in 1956 and currently has over 81,000 owners. It's not a scam.
Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree - although in the model described in the article there isn’t a leadership element so I struggle to see how this would work long term. It says any decision needs a 100% vote from all owners on a discord server.
The largest worker cooperative in the world, Mondragon, hires someone to head the company. Big decisions are democratic but decisions on how to execute the big decisions are left to the executive.
Yes, I just mean that’s not the method described in the article.
Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really know how to state it more clearly. The appeal of a worker-owned coop is the fact that the workers in aggregate have complete control. Relinquishing 20% of that by default, and one might surmise 25% due to the installed president, runs contrary to the purpose of a worker-owned cooperative. And that's where things are unclear. That 25% can mean a lot of things. Is it simple tribute, or rent-seeking, whic…
A lot of this information is quite simply non-public, but again it's besides the point. We're talking about employee ownership as a business model at a high level, and you're complaining that the specific terms (which you have no knowledge of) may or may not be generous enough. I can't disclose non-public information, but what I can say is that if I didn't feel great about working somewhere, I wouldn't work there ver…
Yeah, and it's precisely that kind of opaque behavior that makes me question the whole proposition.
Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#469This model really should be expanded to just about everything. Revenue per employee ratio at Apple is $2.4 million a person or so. If that company were to shift from the present shareholder model to a cooperative model, its not hard to imagine labor seeing some substantial gains. Having more money in the part of the economy that actually circulates more of their income would probably bring on wider economic benefits…
WRONG - it should be voluntarily expanded to everything. One dealbreaker for me and far-left thinking is the required authoritarianism of implementing their ideas in society. If your ideas are so good, go start something yourself, and see if it catches on. If people still want to work for Apple, there must be a reason, despite the lopsided revenue distribution.
You can do it but part of the issue is that the market effectively silences you to begin with. Its like you are at a thermodynamic disadvantage when you are a coop bootstrapping the company with your own owned means of production, versus one that is able to sell itself off to speculative investors for capital to "growth hack" as they say. The experiment of seeing if it catches on would therefore always fail even if the idea was actually better for most people. I'm not imposing on anything, I'm just highlighting how logically it makes a lot of sense to spread wealth around, and yet the very nature of capitalism perpetuates it to the exclusivity of all else, collectively shared vs individually held benefits be damned. I can see why Marx thought the only path forward from capitalism to a collectivism would take a revolution. Greed is sadly more competitive in a free market business environment where natural wealth is divvied up into private ownership.
Re: Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
#470Indian coffee house is a worker owned restaurant chain in India. It has been operating for last 65 years.
I visited the one in Thiruvananthapuram, did not knew the history behind it till the below wiki link.
Honestly, I won't recommend. The quality is sub par.