The overarching goal of communism is for laborers to own the means of production instead of an owning/capitalist class. Employee owned businesses are the realization of communism within a capitalist society.
It seems to me that most communist organizations in capitalist societies focus on reform through government policies. I have not heard of organizations focusing on making this change by leveraging the capitalist framework. Working to create many employee owned businesses would be a tangible way to achieve this on a small but growing scale. If successful employee owned businesses are formed and accumulate capital they should be able to perpetuate employee ownership through direct acquisition or providing venture capital with employee ownership requirements.
So my main questions are:
- Are organizations focusing on this and I just don’t know about it?
- If not, what obstacles are there that would hinder this approach to increasing the share labor collective ownership?
Everyone here seems to be talking about co-ops… And I’m really confused by the conversation in this thread, alas,
I worked for some years for a manufacturing company that was 100% employee owned. We were a multinational manufacturer for: wire and cable, aerospace, and medical. The company began around 1972, started the EO process in the early 90’s becoming 100% employee owned by 2000.
The [National Center for Employee Ownership] (nceo.org) is a good resource for businesses looking at employee ownership. The most common ESOPs are manufacturing companies in the states last I heard at one of the nceo conferences.
The obstacles that I see, is that most companies have Investors. Obviously we all know what the investors want as they own the stock. It takes a generous leadership/company founder to sell their stock to the company for employee ownership. It’s a long process with lawyers and other legal hurdles. Not impossible, but finding generosity in the white collar business class, especially today, is not common it seems. You must have initial generosity and care for your employees from the initial owners. They decide to go employee owned or not. They either see the investment EO is, or they keep greedy.
The founder of the EO I worked for sold his last stock to the company for the same price he sold his first stock (which in the ten-ish years it took to get to 100% EO, raised considerably).
Profit sharing is dope. Basically we all got an extra large paycheck every quarter. This company I worked for paid $3-$4 more per hour to start than any other manufacturing company in the area, and bennies began the day you were hired. They literally held financial literacy classes for all employees, to better understand our financial reports, as the company was super transparent. They believed that the best ideas come from the ones running the machines, and the founder often could be found sweeping floors of his shops to better know his employees and their struggles. In 2019, the company stock was valued at over $6K a share.
The original owner passed away, then covid hit, (I left) then the leadership changed to new people who never met the founder. It’s gone down hill since. Im to be paid out this year, and the stock is half was it was when I left. I still carry a card with the original founders mission and values listed for the company. That card is no longer what they follow. It’s been sad to see.
However, I still believe Employee Ownership is a solid pathway to restoring the middle class.
Folks who began in the 90s were retiring after 25 years with the company with $1-$2 million dollars in their esop accounts alone. I know what a Roth IRA is, what it means to diversify, and what dividends are all because of this company’s financial literacy classes.
It also is possible a company becomes too big to support the EO model. This company was hitting that point around the time I left, they told us “we’re hiring lawyers to make sure that it doesn’t happen”, but as I’ve watched the stock price drop year over year, yeah bet-
Wait, how does it have a public stock price if it’s employee owned?
Multiple types of stock. One would be limited to employees, another would be open for purchase by anyone.
The key is in how the various stock types are structured. If control can be monopolized by a non-employee stock type, is the business truly employee owned? I would posit not.