Unfortunately a lot of companies who fall into this category call themselves “employee-owned” and then it’s like employees own 2% of the company. I don’t think there’s much regulation around naming
Edit: just read the article — said that there are 8000 100% employee-owned companies in the US. That is really cool!
That is also true. But I think that capitalism will try to commodify and co-opt anything, anyway. So, I don't want to let that be a deterrent. Even if capitalism siphons off some of the effectiveness, I think it's still a net win. The question then would be what potential harm/side-effect might happen that I'm not seeing, and is the benefit still worth it.
I agree to a certain extent, but in this instance employee entrance is an action that is directly anti-capitalist—at least at the scale of the individual plant. Of course, stores down the road and what not might try to capitalize on the profitability and jack up prices. I see the two ways this could go wrong is that 1) it becomes another luxury item and virtue-through-consumption things for 'progressive' PMC type-people which will make it seem elitist and gimmiky to the average person or 2) that the 'employee-owners' are restricted to a cadre of management, or it is otherwise difficult to become an employee-owner which will lead to exploitation of new employees. The first is still potentially helpful in that it will make new coops more competitive since they will benefit from the coop price premium, and the second basically reproduces the class structure of a medieval guild or petty-bourgeois business with the master artisans/PB owning the means of production and producing commodities while still exploiting their underlings. Not great but still better than the status quo.
Sorry for giving such a long answer, I ended up having a lot of fun thinking through this and got carried away haha!
I used to work for a large (10k+ employees) employee-owned company. It went from being privately owned by a family, to it being sold it to employees in the 70s.
For this company, it just meant that you could buy company stock. I’m pretty sure the entirety of the stock was owned by employees and maybe retirees. But employees didn’t have a noticeable say in how our office was managed or how they worked.
It was in a pretty dangerous industry (top 10 or 15 jobs for worker fatalities per capita) and it was a big problem that wages plateaued around $20/hr even though people were legit risking their lives for the company every day. Field workers didn’t get the same holidays corporate office workers got, stuff like that.
And even the stock thing seemed a little underwhelming. The boomers that got in at the ground floor of investing were retiring nicely, but there was a lot of talk that the stock didn’t seem like it was gonna make possible the same kind of decent retirement for people who started after, say, the 2000s (my manager explained the stock thing to me and I swear to god he used the phrase “kinda like a pyramid scheme honestly” lol)
One thing I will say though is that it was very much “old school” in that the vast majority, if not all, of the higher-ups in the company started as pissant workers decades ago. Like my old manager had just been promoted to regional something-or-other, and he started as your average worker. Of course, his dad worked at the company, and I think there was a lot of nepotism/people who did get promoted often had parents that also worked for the company.
I’m honestly not sure if the position upward-mobility (which is of course limited to a small number of workers) was due to the employee-ownership, or if the company was just kind of a holdover from an earlier time
Do you have any idea how stock retains value in an employee-owned situation like that? Seems like it needs buyers to work as a commodity-hence the pyramid scheme warning I guess lol. Thanks for sharing your experience! Really clarifying my understanding of coops and their potential limitations. (I realize calling these kind of very capitalist ESOPs coops is contentious)
So, from what I understand, an outside company comes and “values” the stock twice a year. It’s definitely based on “market fundamentals” like revenue, profit, comparisons to similar companies, etc. I don’t know a whole lot more than that, sadly. It started off at like 0.21$ in the 70s and it’s around $23 or something now.
I definitely know employees are able to buy stock once they hit 6 months employment or something like that. I think—but I’m not sure—that the company buys the stock back when you quit/retire (and you would have to reinvest in normal stock shit to not pay taxes then and there). I quit a few weeks ago with like 40 shares or something, I imagine they’ll take them and compensate me sometime soon if I’m right.
I think that’s what makes it literally like a pyramid scheme, in that new stock purchases fund the buybacks of retirees’ etc shares.
So it’s maybe not so much a commodity as a store of value or something (idk not super Marx-smart unfortunately). Or maybe company scripp!
love it! appreciate the thoughtful input. these sorts of discussions are exactly what hexbear is all about, along with shitposting, doomposting, and dunking.
Unfortunately a lot of companies who fall into this category call themselves “employee-owned” and then it’s like employees own 2% of the company. I don’t think there’s much regulation around naming
Edit: just read the article — said that there are 8000 100% employee-owned companies in the US. That is really cool!
That is also true. But I think that capitalism will try to commodify and co-opt anything, anyway. So, I don't want to let that be a deterrent. Even if capitalism siphons off some of the effectiveness, I think it's still a net win. The question then would be what potential harm/side-effect might happen that I'm not seeing, and is the benefit still worth it.
I agree to a certain extent, but in this instance employee entrance is an action that is directly anti-capitalist—at least at the scale of the individual plant. Of course, stores down the road and what not might try to capitalize on the profitability and jack up prices. I see the two ways this could go wrong is that 1) it becomes another luxury item and virtue-through-consumption things for 'progressive' PMC type-people which will make it seem elitist and gimmiky to the average person or 2) that the 'employee-owners' are restricted to a cadre of management, or it is otherwise difficult to become an employee-owner which will lead to exploitation of new employees. The first is still potentially helpful in that it will make new coops more competitive since they will benefit from the coop price premium, and the second basically reproduces the class structure of a medieval guild or petty-bourgeois business with the master artisans/PB owning the means of production and producing commodities while still exploiting their underlings. Not great but still better than the status quo.
Sorry for giving such a long answer, I ended up having a lot of fun thinking through this and got carried away haha!
I used to work for a large (10k+ employees) employee-owned company. It went from being privately owned by a family, to it being sold it to employees in the 70s.
For this company, it just meant that you could buy company stock. I’m pretty sure the entirety of the stock was owned by employees and maybe retirees. But employees didn’t have a noticeable say in how our office was managed or how they worked.
It was in a pretty dangerous industry (top 10 or 15 jobs for worker fatalities per capita) and it was a big problem that wages plateaued around $20/hr even though people were legit risking their lives for the company every day. Field workers didn’t get the same holidays corporate office workers got, stuff like that.
And even the stock thing seemed a little underwhelming. The boomers that got in at the ground floor of investing were retiring nicely, but there was a lot of talk that the stock didn’t seem like it was gonna make possible the same kind of decent retirement for people who started after, say, the 2000s (my manager explained the stock thing to me and I swear to god he used the phrase “kinda like a pyramid scheme honestly” lol)
One thing I will say though is that it was very much “old school” in that the vast majority, if not all, of the higher-ups in the company started as pissant workers decades ago. Like my old manager had just been promoted to regional something-or-other, and he started as your average worker. Of course, his dad worked at the company, and I think there was a lot of nepotism/people who did get promoted often had parents that also worked for the company.
I’m honestly not sure if the position upward-mobility (which is of course limited to a small number of workers) was due to the employee-ownership, or if the company was just kind of a holdover from an earlier time
Do you have any idea how stock retains value in an employee-owned situation like that? Seems like it needs buyers to work as a commodity-hence the pyramid scheme warning I guess lol. Thanks for sharing your experience! Really clarifying my understanding of coops and their potential limitations. (I realize calling these kind of very capitalist ESOPs coops is contentious)
So, from what I understand, an outside company comes and “values” the stock twice a year. It’s definitely based on “market fundamentals” like revenue, profit, comparisons to similar companies, etc. I don’t know a whole lot more than that, sadly. It started off at like 0.21$ in the 70s and it’s around $23 or something now.
I definitely know employees are able to buy stock once they hit 6 months employment or something like that. I think—but I’m not sure—that the company buys the stock back when you quit/retire (and you would have to reinvest in normal stock shit to not pay taxes then and there). I quit a few weeks ago with like 40 shares or something, I imagine they’ll take them and compensate me sometime soon if I’m right.
I think that’s what makes it literally like a pyramid scheme, in that new stock purchases fund the buybacks of retirees’ etc shares.
So it’s maybe not so much a commodity as a store of value or something (idk not super Marx-smart unfortunately). Or maybe company scripp!
love it! appreciate the thoughtful input. these sorts of discussions are exactly what hexbear is all about, along with shitposting, doomposting, and dunking.
Thanks! I kept scrolling and @DodecaWeasel seems to have exactly experienced my second guess. I am going to feel smart for the rest of the night.
How many of those are like 2 plumber or 3 consultant outfits. It’s a nice statistic to point out but I feel like a lot of them are gonna be like that.