Even when I was living in a very liberal area, there were only a small handful of stores that advertised as worker co-ops. It’s funny too because those co-op stores were all incredibly popular and successful, so I don’t understand why they are so comparatively rare? The organizational structure seems simple to maintain, and has a high incentive for regular workers to go above and beyond since they directly benefit from the business being successful, so what’s the deal? I am speaking from a US centric view, so maybe things are different in Europe, but even with my limited knowledge I feel like they are relatively unpopular there too, but maybe not? I dunno.
They’re tricky. While they can be extremely healthy and successful, with extremely high employee morale, they can also be cumbersome and bureaucratic, as that’s the power structure that replaces the traditional hierarchy. So, very much a pros and cons thing, they’re not just exclusively more fun and amazing to work at.
When it works its great though.
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Any given co-op into the hundreds of people or more is going to have noticeably more. There is just literally a greater number of people involved in almost every phase of decision-making. This cannot be made quickly.
Just because corporations are cumbersome does not mean they are going to be just as bad as co-ops in this regard. And just because we like co-ops does not mean we should not try to be somewhat objective about them. They are certainly not simply across-the-board superior in every way, that’s just fantasy. Except at small scales, then the cumbersomeness doesn’t really come into play.
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That’s not the same. Shareholders are not involved in the operation of the business. They simply vote every once in awhile, if they feel like it, for a board of directors. They are not involved in decisionmaking beyond this, nor do they operate a business.
There’s a difference between shilling and being a grown-up that has experience working in the industry.
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Yeah, you’re just spraying bs now, unless you want to do some of that education you’re talking about.
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No I never said that. I said there are far more people involved at every phase of decisionmaking. That is a different thing from what you are claiming I believe, is it not?
So, what are these shareholder structures you were talking about where large numbers of shareholders are involved in the regular operation of a business?
They’re making a very real and valid point. I’m part of a worker coop with over 100 members and I love it, i couldn’t work in a traditional business now. But it is SO much slower when comparing it to previously working in a corporate environment where, as a manager, I could make quick decisions everyday and get people to carry them out. In my current role, if I want to do something slightly differently there might be multiple meetings and different levels of decision making that have to happen, and it could take weeks or months.
I prefer this method, and what I like about it is that i can use the same processes to change policies on a higher level that I would never have been given access to as a corporate manager. But to suggest a corporate environment is slower or at least on a par shows you haven’t tried to make a policy change in a coop 😆 Some days it feels like my job is just meetings.
Curiously, the internal economy of a typical “capitalist” corporation is strictly dictatorial, even to the point of Führerprinzip: every sub-unit of the corporation has a manager in charge of it, who has dictatorial control of that part of the company, and is only responsible to their own manager.
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If you’re doing that you probably already have a worker-owned cooperative.
The most efficient organizations are the least free. Consider the army for example. Probably nobody knows how to organize and execute large projects faster, yet each member is essentially enslaved until his contracted service term is up.