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Why cant they hire non share packaged employees? Why do they have to shrink their pie? To me this sounds very annecdotal and intuitive based on what you think

Why cant they hire non share packaged employees? Why do they have to shrink their pie? To me this sounds very annecdotal and intuitive based on what you think you know. I'd like to know if it has been studied and what those studies found.

spookthesunset 3y ago
Well if they start hiring “non share packages employees” it kinda stops sounding like worker owned and more like owners and workers, eh? Seems to defeat the purpose of being worker owned. Maybe if you have a vesting period of something. But even then it is one employee, one vote or is voting dependent on something else like number of shares?
- BartjeD 3y ago
  Just because the name says worker co-op doesn't mean every employee has to be vested. In the Netherlands a coop is an acutal legal structure that businesses may adopt. It will surprise you to hear that we even a big bank which is: A co-op. The core characteristic of a co-op isn't that the workers all have shares. It's that they have members and that the members instead of the shareholders may receive payouts based on the company income. I realize this is different than the American case of a worker co-op. Your reaction though speaks to me that you don't consider this a serious form a company might take. Whereby you ignore that some very big and wealthy companies are in fact co-ops. I assert that this is merely because the US legal systems don't facilitate co-ops, and I wonder whether that isn't a missed opportunity?
  - dagw 3y ago
    It will surprise you to hear that we even a big bank which is: A co-op. There are lots of those types of co-op banks in the US, as well as other large businesses run as the type of co-op you're talking about. That is however a competently different thing than what is being discussed here.
    - mcv 3y ago
      I used to like the idea that the Rabobank is a co-op, but it actually seems to be the least ethical of all the Dutch banks right now. The screwed farmers into taking loans for bad investments, and completely refuse to take their social responsibility seriously, which has become an important thing for banks after 2008.
dagw 3y ago
Why cant they hire non share packaged employees? Why do they have to shrink their pie? How many non-owner workers can you have before you stop being worker-owned? If four workers own 25% of the shares each, and the company employs 400 (or 4000) people are they still "worker-owned" in any meaningful sense?
- notpushkin 3y ago
  I think it's not perfectly black and white, and we shouldn't really put some arbitrary line here. Would be nice if more worker-owned businesses shared details about their ownership structure, though.

spookthesunset 3y ago

Well if they start hiring “non share packages employees” it kinda stops sounding like worker owned and more like owners and workers, eh? Seems to defeat the purpose of being worker owned. Maybe if you have a vesting period of something. But even then it is one employee, one vote or is voting dependent on something else like number of shares?

BartjeD 3y ago
Just because the name says worker co-op doesn't mean every employee has to be vested. In the Netherlands a coop is an acutal legal structure that businesses may adopt. It will surprise you to hear that we even a big bank which is: A co-op. The core characteristic of a co-op isn't that the workers all have shares. It's that they have members and that the members instead of the shareholders may receive payouts based on the company income. I realize this is different than the American case of a worker co-op. Your reaction though speaks to me that you don't consider this a serious form a company might take. Whereby you ignore that some very big and wealthy companies are in fact co-ops. I assert that this is merely because the US legal systems don't facilitate co-ops, and I wonder whether that isn't a missed opportunity?
- dagw 3y ago
  It will surprise you to hear that we even a big bank which is: A co-op. There are lots of those types of co-op banks in the US, as well as other large businesses run as the type of co-op you're talking about. That is however a competently different thing than what is being discussed here.
  - mcv 3y ago
    I used to like the idea that the Rabobank is a co-op, but it actually seems to be the least ethical of all the Dutch banks right now. The screwed farmers into taking loans for bad investments, and completely refuse to take their social responsibility seriously, which has become an important thing for banks after 2008.

dagw 3y ago

Why cant they hire non share packaged employees? Why do they have to shrink their pie? How many non-owner workers can you have before you stop being worker-owned? If four workers own 25% of the shares each, and the company employs 400 (or 4000) people are they still "worker-owned" in any meaningful sense?

notpushkin 3y ago
I think it's not perfectly black and white, and we shouldn't really put some arbitrary line here. Would be nice if more worker-owned businesses shared details about their ownership structure, though.