Employee-owned companies

[C0ckney]

Depends :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish...ative_movement

i remember reading some years ago an essay from the early 1920s that compared the situation in danish agriculture (it put this down to different ways of working resulting from different forms of land ownership) very favourably with the situation in the UK post world war 1.

[BlackCat]

i remember reading some years ago an essay from the early 1920s that compared the situation in danish agriculture (it put this down to different ways of working resulting from different forms of land ownership) very favourably with the situation in the UK post world war 1.

Unfortunatedly, it ended up in danish crown

[C0ckney]

I probably should have foreseen this outcome for the thread, given the topic. My experience with grocery work is limited to six horrible months with Safeway, where management and labor each viewed the other with a barely concealed attitude of "how can I most efficiently exploit this situation?" It seems just possible that perhaps if benefits and such were available, the grocery could attract better people and keep them from the ****-this-place mentality, at least for a little while.

well sorry for going all "down with capitalism" in your thread (but, seriously, down with capitalism!), but this is basically the point. the current power relationships dictate that people will think and act like that. only by changing the power relationships can people's motivations be changed.

[-Jrabbit]

Publix is pinko socialism. The Bernie Sanders of grocery stores.

[Fake Boris]

A small group of people will find it easier to resolve issues.
The more people involved the harder it becomes.

The best way to scale a cooperative structure is through random draws.

Say every coffee shop is horizontally managed and there are 100 of them in the country. You randomly select 2 employees of every shop to participate in the monthly assembly.

[Fake Boris]

Cockney has faith in "the people". But, why would one think that a new hire's opinions about how a business should be run are just as valid as the founder's?

You underestimate people's ability to STFU unless they have something to say.

Like Cockney said, changing power relations is key. In a top-down structure peons can afford to ramble on because they know ultimately their ranting has no bearing on decisions.

In a true cooperative structure, your opinion could very well become effective in the real world. This is a strong incentive for people to think their opinions through.

[Elok]

well sorry for going all "down with capitalism" in your thread (but, seriously, down with capitalism!), but this is basically the point. the current power relationships dictate that people will think and act like that. only by changing the power relationships can people's motivations be changed.

My answer to that would depend on what you're proposing to take its place. I'm of the opinion that, however you shuffle the cards, there will always be some gap between the interests of the group and the interests of the individual. Also, while I personally prefer my experiences with idiotic and inefficient state bureaucracies to my experiences with marginally competent and generally exploitative retail bosses, I'm loath to force that choice on others.

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.

[pchang]

The best way to scale a cooperative structure is through random draws.

Say every coffee shop is horizontally managed and there are 100 of them in the country. You randomly select 2 employees of every shop to participate in the monthly assembly.

I think this model has proven superior: http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.u...overnance.html

[kentonio]

Valve has an interesting company set-up without management at all, but I would expect that this cannot get very large, and even being mid-sized as they are, it is a surprise that they are managing to continue this way.

The Valve examplesetup is apparently not nearly as managerless and structureless as they like to make out from some peoples accounts. A lot of information came out when Jeri Ellsworth got fired.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/v...school/0115316

[ricketyclik]

Such enterprises probably need regular management structure where the management makes the decisions and gets bigger parts of the pie, while collectively everyone still gets to share.

I agree with having a management structure, but why a bigger part of the pie for them?

[BlackCat]

Do you know hard it is sitting down and flipping a coin to descide whom to fire ? It's very stressful and need compensation

[C0ckney]

My answer to that would depend on what you're proposing to take its place. I'm of the opinion that, however you shuffle the cards, there will always be some gap between the interests of the group and the interests of the individual. Also, while I personally prefer my experiences with idiotic and inefficient state bureaucracies to my experiences with marginally competent and generally exploitative retail bosses, I'm loath to force that choice on others.

as you say, there will always be some divergence between the individual and the group. however, the interests of workers will always align with each other in a work context.

what i propose is democratic worker control. of course i don't think that there is one solution that can be applied to every situation. the kind of set-up that works for a coffee shop probably won't work for a car plant, and people will need to find what works in different contexts. i think that the initial focus should be on the of service industries that have been talked about; others have mentioned tech companies as examples. the only role for the state that i see is in providing the legal framework to make this happen, and not resisting attempts by workers to take control of their workplaces.

[rah]

While I've always liked the concept of governing through representation by random selection, I always get tripped up when it comes to the concept of minimum requirements to be eligible for selection.

Do you want that person with an extremely low IQ to be making decisions?
Or do you believe that their participation is necessary for true representation?

[kentonio]

Maybe a benevolent dictator role would work, who can appoint anyone he wants to help him, but who can be kicked out of the CEO spot at any time by a majority vote of members.