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!
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!