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I work for a business owned in whole by its employees. Its goal is to pay its employees a good salary and generally act in the interest of the employees in addi
by Freak_NL 3y ago
I work for a business owned in whole by its employees. Its goal is to pay its employees a good salary and generally act in the interest of the employees in addition to providing its core services to its customers. There is no pay out of any profits (by design), but it's a commercial enterprise (i.e., a business) nonetheless.
- Frummy 3y agoSo the employees profit
- sirsinsalot 3y agoHey now let's not being technical correctness in to this!
- DangitBobby 3y agoPeanut gallery comments really don't add anything to the conversation. Unless this isn't sarcasm and your point is that being technically correct is practically worthless.
- sirsinsalot 3y agoMy point was that when commenting correctness by technicalities people often leave themselves open to dismissal in favour of more emotive arguments. A "How dare you be technically correct!" variation is both an expression of mob-correctness trumping technical correctness _and_ an acknowledgement of being technically correct. A sort of, you're right, I support you, but the crowd might not. Read shit how you like tho
- Freak_NL 3y agoNot more than in any other company, with the exception that the company puts its employees needs first (but this is not exclusive to companies like mine).
- lsaferite 3y agoEven non-profits provide a 'profit' to employees in the form of a salary. It's not like they all work for free.
- rhombocombus 3y agoNo, the employees are compensated for the time they spend working. My salary is not a profit, it’s an exchange of services for goods. My stock dividends ARE profits, excess revenue disbursed by the company to its shareholders.
- Frummy 3y agoMy comment applies to a business owned in whole by its employees, as in the comment I replied to.
- tsimionescu 3y agoPerhaps for legal purposes that is not considered profit, but it is obviously exactly profit - the business paying money to its owners (who happen to be exclusively its employees).
- Freak_NL 3y agoThe business doesn't pay its owners a cent. It pays its employees (who happen to be the owners) a salary. In a business where profit is used to pay shareholders/owners you don't count the regular salaries as 'profit paid out' either. This is no different; any profit we have is reinvested (while financially stable, there has been no occasion where the profits exceeded the amount prudent to reinvest in growth or other factors).
- ThunderSizzle 3y agoWhat happens if the company makes more money than it pays salaries for some reason? I assume in this case and your description, the salaries are adjusted accordingly. If so, then the word salary here is just another word for owner dividends, at least to some extent.
- dredmorbius 3y agoThose are referred to as "retained earnings" (occasionally: accumulated earnings, retained capital, or earned surplus), and accrue to the not-for-profit organisation's balance sheet. <https://www.wikiaccounting.com/retained-earnings-for-non-profit-organization/ https://www.wikiaccounting.com/retained-earnings-for-non-pro...> <https://insidecharity.org/2018/05/18/earned-income-for-nonprofits-what-it-is-and-how-it-works/ https://insidecharity.org/2018/05/18/earned-income-for-nonpr...> Note that this may occur on a short-term basis given normal market variability, or over the long term The latter case is more interesting. In the short term, such business profits simply accrue to accounts, and are typically held as cash or cash-equivalents. Over the medium term, funds may be moved to various forms of generally-liquid assets (government bonds, equities, etc.), as part of the organisation's money-management strategy. In the long term ... the organisation gets to decide how to invest those resources. There are several options: - Increase wages, as you suggest. This is of course only one option. - Increase benefits. Healthcare, daycare, commute / housing / educational supports, etc. - Expand workforce. Hire additional employees. - Expand business. This might entail expanding or improving a location, opening additional location, going into multiple lines of business, or aquiring other organisations. - Expand endowment. This is particularly the case for many educational institutions, and those endowments may range into the billions of dollars. Generally you'll find these options discussed in a long term capital plan or similar strategy document. For specific forms of business organisation, such as a co-operative business (which may or may not be a not-for-profit organisation), there may also be dividend payouts to members. My understanding is that these are not equivalent to stock dividends, though I'm hazy on details. What you don't see for non-profits, however, is a mandated and frequently automatic form of return to shareholders, through either stock dividends or inflating the value of a joint stock issue. That cuts two ways: not-for-profits don't have the financial drag of spilling out money to investors, but they also typically have less access to financial capital markets.
- badtension 3y agoI wonder what kind of business this is? Is everyone paid the same salary? Sounds like a great place to work, I wonder how does it look like in practice.
- Freak_NL 3y agoSoftware as a service for healthcare. We do vary salaries based on experience and function, but there is not much of a difference between senior devs and management. We're only a small business of 10 to 20 employees though. It works reasonably well (and we're 15 years old by now); the biggest threat is external market conditions and compliance requirements (because healthcare just is a demanding field).
- ChatGTP 3y agoI bet you get more done with 20 employees than most conglomerates do with 2000. Better incentives.
- 95014_refugee 3y agoRobert Bosch GmbH would be a good example.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoIt's a worker's co-operative. There are all sorts in the US. In SF there are (or were) supermarkets that are organised like this.