And the difference between that salary and the company's revenues (the value the workers created) is the profits. Which the shares represent a right to. Can w

And the difference between that salary and the company's revenues (the value the workers created) is the profits. Which the shares represent a right to. Can we at least agree that - whether voluntary or not - the share literally represent the excess value taken from workers? Cause that's what I was saying in response to the question. Those shares represent the value taken from workers. As to it being voluntary, it's not. There's a massive power differential in the negotiations. That's what unions were meant to help solve, but unions can't really solve that power differential (they were never strong enough) and they've got their own problems of corruption and power. The idea behind a worker cooperative based system isn't that workers take stock as payment instead of cash. They still get a cash salary. They also get ownership of company and a right to decide what happens to the profits. There are several approaches to how you design that system. In one you do away with the concept of stock (ownership shares) altogether - it's a one person one vote system. In another you keep the concept of ownership shares and workers earn shares in proportion to their time at the company. Maybe you keep an aspect of negotiation and the shares they earn are tied to their negotiated salary. But you no longer allow outside investors to purchase ownership of the company. Or founders to maintain a controlling share long past the point where their contributions have been matched or outweighed by the rest of the company's employees. In this system we recognize that companies, like countries, are communities that should be run democratically by the people involved in them for the people involved in them.