Stuff like this is why I think giving employees stock is a horrible way of doing employee ownership. Stocks are not equitable.

Instead of personal stock ownership the business should be owned collectively through a democratic association where every employee had a right to participate and vote at the general assembly, either by the "one man, one vote" or the "one hour of labour, one vote" principle.

that’s funny, i worked for a company that was majority employee owned and this was the case. nearly all of the stock was owned by a handful of middle managers and that ownership was not extended to “regular” employees.

This is similar to what I experienced in an ESOP. The CEO was a giant asshole and no one could apparently do anything about it because he and his key supporters apparently owned enough shares to not give a shit about the rest of the company. It was pretty far from anything resembling a workplace democracy.