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Direct worker control ensures a formally flat management structure instead of a hierarchical one. This structure is influenced by activist collectives and civic organizations, with all members allowed and expected to play a managerial role.
Hey that sounds like a horrible process but good luck, it’d be great if that could work somehow.
Seriously, have you ever tried to get 30 or more people to work on a complicated project? Flat structures like that make it take 300x as long.
It’s great for, maybe metalsmiths? Or . . y’know, sanitation workers? Where the gear and scope is more or less always the same? But for software engineering it can’t work like that. Not at any real scale, anyway.
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Hilarious that you would bring up software engineering considering one of the largest names in PC gaming, Valve, has a flat management structure. Seems like they're able to manage running the Steam store, game development, and hardware development just fine.
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I think I just read that Gabe has a fleet of yachts.
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Where's the contradiction in it?
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You think there are no large worker co-ops in the US? Embarrassing. You’ve never heard of Bob’s Red Mill or Publix?
And because I’m sure you aren’t happy with two examples, here’s an incomplete list of notable worker co-ops in the US from Wikipedia:
It’s fucking big
- Acadian Ambulance
- Applied Research Associates
- Arizmendi Bakery
- Bi-Mart
- Black & Veatch
- Bob's Red Mill
- Brookshire Brothers
- Burns & McDonnell
- Carter's Foods
- Casino Queen
- CDM Smith
- Certain Affinity
- CH2M Hill
- Corgan
- The Cheese Board Collective
- Chicago and North Western Railway - sold to Union Pacific Railroad in 1995
- Columbia Forest Products
- Dahl's Foods
- Davey Tree Expert Company
- Dynetics
- Ebby Halliday Realtors
- Edgewood Management, LLC
- Eureka Casino Resort
- Evergreen Cooperatives[4]
- Ferrellgas Partners
- Food Giant
- Frontline Test Equipment
- Gardener's Supply Company
- Gensler
- Golden Artist Colors
- Graybar
- Great Lakes Brewing Company[5]
- Greatland Corporation
- Harps Food Stores
- HDR, Inc.
- Hensel Phelps Construction
- Herff Jones
- Herman Miller
- Houchens Industries
- Huck's Food & Fuel
- Hy-Vee
- John J. McMullen & Associates - now part of Alion Science and Technology
- Journal Communications
- Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc.
- King Arthur Flour
- Lampin Corporation[6]
- Landmark Education
- Lifetouch
- Mast General Store
- Mathematica Policy Research
- Mushkin
- MWH Global
- New Belgium Brewing Company
- Neuberger Berman[7]
- Niemann Foods
- Oliver Winery
- Peter Kiewit Sons'
- Phelps County Bank
- Publix
- Raycom Media
- Recology
- Robert McNeel & Associates
- Rosendin Electric
- SAIC
- Scheels
- Schreiber Foods
- Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories
- Springfield ReManufacturing
- Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
- Stewart's Shops
- Stiefel Labs
- STV Group|
- Taylor Guitars[8]
- Tidyman's
- Torch Technologies
- The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company
- W. L. Gore & Associates
- W. W. Norton & Company
- Westat
- Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo
- WinCo Foods
- Woodman's Food Market
But yeah, dawg, worker co-ops are fake news.
PS: is there some reason you omitted the two sentences before that which make it clear this is one method of organizing worker’s co-ops?
If exercised directly, all members meet regularly to make—and vote on—decisions on how the co-operative is run. Direct workers' cooperatives sometimes use consensus decision-making to make decisions
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One thing I think is telling is how corporate law firms, accounting firms, consulting firms, financial firms etc. will happily provide their services advising shareholder corporations on how to operate, but are themselves organized as partnerships.
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It's always funny when people say this can't work, when it constantly works better than any current hierarchical structure. All the collectives I'm in work great, and there are tons of worker owned co-ops going strong, one of my activist groups will often go for meals at one after a day of protesting.
Just because you can't imagine something different doesn't mean it can't work. It's not just a mess of everyone trying to dominate each other, it's cooperative and there are simple processes to facilitate it. It's possible to run countries this way.
Hierarchies exist to exploit and abuse.
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All the collectives I'm in work great,
Good to know. What do they do? What field are they in, I mean. How many people are in them?
The listing of worker collectives in one of the other comment showed mostly supermarkets and service industries.
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Worker cooperatives don't have to have a flat structure. Smaller cooperatives might use a flat structure, but larger companies will delegate business decisions to management. The main difference is that the board of directors represent the workers instead of outside shareholders making it democratic
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The main difference is that the board of directors represent the workers instead of outside shareholders making it democratic
So from the parent comment if "liberals would want a woman CEO, while leftists wouldn't have a CEO" (paraphrasing) does that mean worker collectives don't have a CEO or that the CEO is 'good' because the board represents the workers (and therefore isn't leftist)?
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Just means the parent comment made a kerfuffle in their verbiage. Leftist aren't against the job role of "Chief Executive Officer", or some other such Managing Director. They are against the idea of surplus value being given unnecessarily to a shareholder or owner, as well as unreasonable compensation packages to management, especially at the expense of the general workforce.
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Just means the parent comment made a kerfuffle in their verbiage.
Indeed.
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There are many corporations structured this way or in a form closer to it the one with a board of directors and a ceo.
Anyone who can't see how it's possible is the same mind as those who couldn't imagine a country without king and lords.
CEO is the king and the board are the lords. For whatever reason leaders loves to implement this hierarchy and the plebs except it. Probably because the later enabled the former.
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There are many corporations structured this way or in a form closer to it the one with a board of directors and a ceo.
I assume you mean “in a form closer to it than the one . . . “
What corporations? When you say many do you mean like 10 or like 20,000?
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Interesting - Publix is 255k and it says it's 'employee owned'. In fact most of the big ones are all Supermarkets for some reason. But it's an outlier in many ways, the next biggest is 22k, and the vast majority, 88%, are under 10k.
The rest are services (ambulance, call centers, tree services, maintenance) or for some reason architecture and engineering.
There's no software companies on there that I saw, which I think speaks, at least in part, to the issues I mentioned above about speed of decisions.
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Software companies usually form as worker coops directly rather than using an ESOP mechanim
Here is a list worker coops: https://www.usworker.coop/directory/
There are some software companies in there under technology
Worker coops can delegate decision-making to managers and executives. This can ensure speedy decision-making. Having workers control the firm doesn't mean that every decision must be made by referendum. There can be delegation and more representative democracy
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I would say the software industry's long running undercurrent of libertarianism and anti-worker/anti-collective action is a bigger deterrent to co-ops not forming there.
For an example that does exist there, see Motion Twin.
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I'm aware of the Peter Thiels of the world and (prior to that, Bill Gates) and so on, but it's also where FOSS lives and Open Source itself is a collectivist process, albeit a very slow one in most cases.
The lack of co-ops is (IMO) more likely due to timely processes related to decision making. New code can be deployed instantaneously, but direction and all the bells & whistles all take time and it's just about impossible in a traditional heirarchical organization. I'd expect if there was no single entity making decisions it'd take even longer to do basic things.
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