Worker Co-Ops, how workers take back this country

[Byron Carter]

Now that socialism is hip, it's interesting to see just how koo-koo these liberals get.

I love this little tour of the rabbit hole.

 

[VivaRevolution]

What about the 90% or so of workers who are employed by private small businesses? Should your law force their employer to share ownership?

No, not at all. I most certainly do not want to take a business from someone that they built.

I don't even want to take privately owned corporations, never mind small business.

 

[Snackbar]

No, not at all. I most certainly do not want to take a business from someone that they built.

I don't even want to take privately owned corporations, never mind small business.

But with less than 1% of employer firms in the US listed on major exchanges, you would not be combating the flaws of capitalism unless you went after private corporations as well.

Most publicly traded companies I deal with have employee share plans. Matched contributions share for share, and yet the vast majority of people turn down this free money. If people cannot even be enticed into share ownership with free money, why in gods green earth would any board want to see voting privileges put into the hands of those same people?

 

[VivaRevolution]

But with less than 1% of employer firms in the US listed on major exchanges, you would not be combating the flaws of capitalism unless you went after private corporations as well.

Most publicly traded companies I deal with have employee share plans. Matched contributions share for share, and yet the vast majority of people turn down this free money. If people cannot even be enticed into share ownership with free money, why in gods green earth would any board want to see voting privileges put into the hands of those same people?

What % of GDP do publicly traded corporations make up?

I think that is a far more important question than what % of businesses public corporations make up.

I work at boeing, the largest exporter in the US. If the 125,000 boeing employees were apart of a profit sharing system, it would transform my local economy.

Boeing is also being ran into the ground by bean counters, like much of the corporate world. A focus on quarterly profit reports, at the expense of the long term viability of the business is common place in corporate America today.

A trained monkey, could honestly do better than the people that made the decisions for the 787.

I promise you that the people that do the work, and have the floor knowledge, are just as qualified to make decisisions, than a guy that can read metrics.

 

[VivaRevolution]

......

 

[no fat chicks]

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If it's a rational discussion about how we could get our economy back on track instead of click bait about Islam it's not getting attention

 

[7437]

......

Have you consodered calling someone a cuck in the title?

Seriously though. Requiring a matching stock program like someone above mentioned would be better than forcing the company to sell everything. Ive never been at a company who offers something like that though.

 

[VivaRevolution]

Bump

 

[Prutfis]

Get your unions working again. Seems much easier. To bad that shitstain Reagan shit all over them.

 

[JDragon]

Because Germany has been mentioned:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy

https://www.german-way.com/german-workers-councils-demystified/

 

[Pelosi2020]

Is this where the people seize the means of production?

 

[nefti]

I promise you that the people that do the work, and have the floor knowledge, are just as qualified to make decisisions, than a guy that can read metrics.

If that person had the talent and was educated in finance, economics, and accounting for 4-8 years then yes. It's like saying a "bean counter" could be a architect/ engineer/ airline mechanic straight out of the office. Btw isn't most of the "work" automated and heading towards full automation anyway?

 

[Islam Imamate]

Two things-

1) Unions in the US are especially hierarchical and un-democratic. Average members have little say so the higher ups make all decisions. Anecdotal evidence: I "like" two different SEIU pages on FB. They're a huge union and they recently endorsed Hillary. Well, in every single post they've made supporting her, there is huge outrage in the comments section because most preferred Bernie. This happens every single day in every post.

My feeling is that if they would have held internal elections to see who to support, Bernie would have come out ahead and there'd be less outrage. But the SEIU isn't very democratic so that's a no-go. Many unions in other parts of the world are much more democratic and representative of their members' views.

2) Unions are still part of the capitalist system where they simply rent their labor to the owners so they may or may not be terribly concerned with the fate of their company. By comparison, in a co-op, the workers ARE the owners so they're much more likely to be concerned with their company's success.

Mondragon is probably the best example of modern, large-scale co-ops today:

Mondragon: Spain's giant co-operative where times are hard but few go bust

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/07/mondragon-spains-giant-cooperative

Interesting points and neat article. I think I had read or heard about Mondragon before but honestly I knew little about it. Very interesting model. @Jack V Savage pointed me to the Meidnar model which is also an interesting model for worker ownership

A proposal was discussed in the LO congress of 1971, the Löntagarfonderna,[1] that called for requiring all companies above a certain size to issue new stock shares to workers in order to redistribute the wealth created by the company, this proposal was based on four measures:[2]

• All companies above 50 employees were to issue each year stock amounting to 20% of the year profits
• This stock -and the profits entitled- would belong to the local unions as long as they did not surpass 20% of the company stock
• New stock could not be sold and will be included as an asset of the workers fund
• The stock dividends will be reinvested in stock of the same company or used for employees training

This part of the model was never fully implemented because of changes in the Swedish government and the frontal opposition of the employers.

All this stuff sounds very radical and far left to many Americans though so I wonder if something like this is even feasible on a wide scale in the US.

 

[lecter]

First we need the old people to die off. They keep setting America back with their ancient beliefs.

Took exactly 5 responses until a socialist Bernie supporter goes full maniac and wants political opponents to die, what a surprise
But at least those evil cooperation + billiohnahhreees and millionaaaahreees are kept in check

 

[lecter]

I believe that worker co-ops are the solution to the fundamental flaw of communism and socialism. This flaw is in creating a centralized authority, that would be corrupted, and infaltrated.

giving the workers of every publicly traded corporation, the right

So who's enforcing that right?

 

[nefti]

Interesting points and neat article. I think I had read or heard about Mondragon before but honestly I knew little about it. Very interesting model. @Jack V Savage pointed me to the Meidnar model which is also an interesting model for worker ownership

All this stuff sounds very radical and far left to many Americans though so I wonder if something like this is even feasible on a wide scale in the US.

No one is stopping anyone from creating a company with these conditions. So go prove others wrong, create a company like this and dominate the market. If it works other firms will follow.

 

[HockeyBjj]

What you describe as a worker co-op sounds like it would be replaced by a mafia like form of control within a decade

 

[Possum Jenkins]

Interesting points and neat article. I think I had read or heard about Mondragon before but honestly I knew little about it. Very interesting model. @Jack V Savage pointed me to the Meidnar model which is also an interesting model for worker ownership

All this stuff sounds very radical and far left to many Americans though so I wonder if something like this is even feasible on a wide scale in the US.

Yeah, probably not.

The US is still way behind on this sort of thing. Then again, 1950s-70s Sweden had probably the most leftist state capitalist system in history. To compare it to the US is a bit unfair.

This sort of thing goes in cycles and there's actually a bit of an upswing in the US compared to, say, the 1990s and early 2000s when labor was really dead. The nationwide campaigns to raise the minimum wage have been fueled by unions. And they've already gotten plenty of results with lots of cities and states agreeing on raises.

Worker ownership, however, is really intimidating. Lots of people are devoted to being cogs in the machine and insist on having masters.

 

[Possum Jenkins]

If that person had the talent and was educated in finance, economics, and accounting for 4-8 years then yes. It's like saying a "bean counter" could be a architect/ engineer/ airline mechanic straight out of the office. Btw isn't most of the "work" automated and heading towards full automation anyway?

It's not an either/or situation. In a co-op, you don't have a lifelong janitor doing the accounting. There's certainly specialization and training.

There's just no hierarchy. So the finance department doesn't get to tell the CEO about the latest reports and then the CEO makes a decision for the whole company based on that. The finance department reports to some sort of committee where all departments (including the janitors and food service guys) have equal vote and representation. They make their decisions based on this shared decision.

 

[Pwent]

Co ops are fine as long as they communally come up with the capital to start the business and share in the risks

It's just dumb when someone comes up with the capital, ideas and bears the risk to start a company then he hires people who think they should own the thing they didn't build