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The same is true for any business or corporation. The real key factor here is that coops at least open up the possibility of workers sharing in the profits gene

The same is true for any business or corporation. The real key factor here is that coops at least open up the possibility of workers sharing in the profits generated by their labor. A traditional capitalist corporate structure incentivizes the complete opposite: pay workers as low as you can get away with, so you can personally pocket more profits. Furthermore, in a corporate structure, those at the bottom of the rung have absolutely zero say in what upper management does.

ucaetano 9y ago
> The same is true for any business or corporation. No, coops here survive because of government protection against competition. > The real key factor here is that coops at least open up the possibility of workers sharing in the profits generated by their labor. No, they don't. A coop can be of owners, as it is frequently the case in Italy. A coop of small farms, each employing a dozen people, doesn't necessarily bring any benefit to those employees, only to the owners. And it leaves them vulnerable to competition from outside, which then require even more government protection, hindering trade and economic development.
- wahern 9y ago
  Corporations can capture government just as much as coops. It depends which is relatively more effective at swaying policy, money or votes. In the U.S. contemporary social and political dynamics make money much more important as voters currently suck at tracking the relationship between their desired outcomes and actual policy. But at other times votes were more important. It depends on the dynamics in Italy. (Or maybe it just depends on the labor system--it's maybe not a coincidence that votes were more powerful in the U.S. when unions were big, and money more powerful when business interests dominated policy. In that sense, you can expect corporations or coops to slowly capture government, regardless.) Though some of the Italian statistics were ambiguous as to whether they included non-worker-owned coops (perhaps even deceptively so!), the main thrust of the article was clearly about worker-owned coops While cooperatives in the United States claim about 130 million memberships, these are by and large within consumer and producer-owned co-ops, not cooperative workplaces. Only around 7,000 people nationwide are part of worker co-ops.
- fallingfrog 9y ago
  If the workers and the owners are different people, then is it still a coop?
  - hueving 9y ago
    Yes, your view of a co-op is too narrow: http://ncba.coop/what-is-a-coop http://ncba.coop/what-is-a-coop
    - fallingfrog 9y ago
      Ok but one of the 7 cooperative principles in that link is "democratic member control", which is exactly what I'm referring to. If you're going to say, oh well not every employee is a "member", well, I don't think you can make the claim that because Coca Cola has employees that might be stockholders, that that makes it a coop.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        Any company has democratic member control, but the "members" are the shareholders. Coops aren't any different.
      - hueving 9y ago
        No it's not what you are referring to. The mistake you are making is thinking employees == members.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Yes a producer coop may well employ non members - though in theory a worker coop doesn't John Lewis in th Uk is looked down on by the rest of the worker coops fro employing non members as cleaners
- walshemj 9y ago
  All coops are made up of owners its what a coop is. Your talking a producer coop which a lot of the US ones are including one that supplies KFC.
adventured 9y ago
> A traditional capitalist corporate structure incentivizes the complete opposite: pay workers as low as you can get away with, so you can personally pocket more profits That's incorrect. The Capitalist structure enables multiple avenues of labor competition, one of which is to pay more than the next company to get the workers you need, and to pay workers more, ie take better care of them, to keep them happy. These approaches are extraordinarily common. That so many businesses offer health insurance benefits - such that half of all Americans get their health insurance from their employer - wasn't always a legal requirement (and in many cases still isn't). That happened out of labor competition. It's no different than numerous other competitive benefits that companies choose to offer. Google, Microsoft, Netflix, et al. often pay programmers extraordinary salaries to attract the best. The competition between companies has driven salaries to the moon. See: AI talent. The SAS Institute, as one example model, has been doing profit sharing for four decades, and it has proven to be a wildly successful Capitalist approach. Walmart has used the over-paying approach for decades. By intentionally paying more than they absolutely have to based on state / federal minimum wage requirements, to lure labor away from smaller businesses that can't match what Walmart can pay. Walmart has had a voracious appetite for labor over the last 30 years, the sole means to keep 2.x million people on the payrolls, is to out-compete on pay. Speaking from experience of having seen it up close across multiple decades, if the federal minimum wage is $7.25 and you pay even just $9.25 or $10.50 instead, you will attract considerably superior employees versus if you pay the minimum. And the quality gap between those two types of employee, is surprisingly vast. Even if you're running a very thin margin business with minimum ability to pay high wages, a convenience store for example, paying a few dollars more per hour is well worth it because it produces a big leap in the quality of employees you can hire.
- dharma1 9y ago
  "That so many businesses offer health insurance benefits - such that half of all Americans get their health insurance from their employer" I find it a rather sad state of affairs that you need private health insurance in the first place. While I agree with you that competition for some skills that are in high demand tends to push wages up significantly for those who are lucky enough to possess such skills, for majority of jobs where there is ample supply of workers, companies certainly favour distributing profits to management, dividends and financial engineering like share buybacks rather than spending it on the workers. In an employee owned organisation you would assume the worker/owners would get higher compensation, but it seems like their governance is also often corrupted and in reality they can be worse places to work at. It is interesting to see if governance models using technology (like blockchain based equity and voting, like http://aragon.one http://aragon.one) for organisations prove to be more resistant to corruption and can usher new ways of organising ownership and work.

ucaetano 9y ago

> The same is true for any business or corporation. No, coops here survive because of government protection against competition. > The real key factor here is that coops at least open up the possibility of workers sharing in the profits generated by their labor. No, they don't. A coop can be of owners, as it is frequently the case in Italy. A coop of small farms, each employing a dozen people, doesn't necessarily bring any benefit to those employees, only to the owners. And it leaves them vulnerable to competition from outside, which then require even more government protection, hindering trade and economic development.

wahern 9y ago
Corporations can capture government just as much as coops. It depends which is relatively more effective at swaying policy, money or votes. In the U.S. contemporary social and political dynamics make money much more important as voters currently suck at tracking the relationship between their desired outcomes and actual policy. But at other times votes were more important. It depends on the dynamics in Italy. (Or maybe it just depends on the labor system--it's maybe not a coincidence that votes were more powerful in the U.S. when unions were big, and money more powerful when business interests dominated policy. In that sense, you can expect corporations or coops to slowly capture government, regardless.) Though some of the Italian statistics were ambiguous as to whether they included non-worker-owned coops (perhaps even deceptively so!), the main thrust of the article was clearly about worker-owned coops While cooperatives in the United States claim about 130 million memberships, these are by and large within consumer and producer-owned co-ops, not cooperative workplaces. Only around 7,000 people nationwide are part of worker co-ops.
fallingfrog 9y ago
If the workers and the owners are different people, then is it still a coop?
- hueving 9y ago
  Yes, your view of a co-op is too narrow: http://ncba.coop/what-is-a-coop http://ncba.coop/what-is-a-coop
  - fallingfrog 9y ago
    Ok but one of the 7 cooperative principles in that link is "democratic member control", which is exactly what I'm referring to. If you're going to say, oh well not every employee is a "member", well, I don't think you can make the claim that because Coca Cola has employees that might be stockholders, that that makes it a coop.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      Any company has democratic member control, but the "members" are the shareholders. Coops aren't any different.
    - hueving 9y ago
      No it's not what you are referring to. The mistake you are making is thinking employees == members.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Yes a producer coop may well employ non members - though in theory a worker coop doesn't John Lewis in th Uk is looked down on by the rest of the worker coops fro employing non members as cleaners
walshemj 9y ago
All coops are made up of owners its what a coop is. Your talking a producer coop which a lot of the US ones are including one that supplies KFC.

adventured 9y ago

> A traditional capitalist corporate structure incentivizes the complete opposite: pay workers as low as you can get away with, so you can personally pocket more profits That's incorrect. The Capitalist structure enables multiple avenues of labor competition, one of which is to pay more than the next company to get the workers you need, and to pay workers more, ie take better care of them, to keep them happy. These approaches are extraordinarily common. That so many businesses offer health insurance benefits - such that half of all Americans get their health insurance from their employer - wasn't always a legal requirement (and in many cases still isn't). That happened out of labor competition. It's no different than numerous other competitive benefits that companies choose to offer. Google, Microsoft, Netflix, et al. often pay programmers extraordinary salaries to attract the best. The competition between companies has driven salaries to the moon. See: AI talent. The SAS Institute, as one example model, has been doing profit sharing for four decades, and it has proven to be a wildly successful Capitalist approach. Walmart has used the over-paying approach for decades. By intentionally paying more than they absolutely have to based on state / federal minimum wage requirements, to lure labor away from smaller businesses that can't match what Walmart can pay. Walmart has had a voracious appetite for labor over the last 30 years, the sole means to keep 2.x million people on the payrolls, is to out-compete on pay. Speaking from experience of having seen it up close across multiple decades, if the federal minimum wage is $7.25 and you pay even just $9.25 or $10.50 instead, you will attract considerably superior employees versus if you pay the minimum. And the quality gap between those two types of employee, is surprisingly vast. Even if you're running a very thin margin business with minimum ability to pay high wages, a convenience store for example, paying a few dollars more per hour is well worth it because it produces a big leap in the quality of employees you can hire.

dharma1 9y ago
"That so many businesses offer health insurance benefits - such that half of all Americans get their health insurance from their employer" I find it a rather sad state of affairs that you need private health insurance in the first place. While I agree with you that competition for some skills that are in high demand tends to push wages up significantly for those who are lucky enough to possess such skills, for majority of jobs where there is ample supply of workers, companies certainly favour distributing profits to management, dividends and financial engineering like share buybacks rather than spending it on the workers. In an employee owned organisation you would assume the worker/owners would get higher compensation, but it seems like their governance is also often corrupted and in reality they can be worse places to work at. It is interesting to see if governance models using technology (like blockchain based equity and voting, like http://aragon.one http://aragon.one) for organisations prove to be more resistant to corruption and can usher new ways of organising ownership and work.