Moira Herbst writes:
Last week, retiring Minnesota grocery chain owner Joe Lueken did something
unusual: he gave
his business to his 400 employees. The story received widespread attention
as a heartwarming, It's A Wonderful Life-esque act of beneficence. But Lueken's decision was no one-off Christmas fairytale. In fact, Bob
Moore, owner of Oregon-based cereal producer Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods, did
exactly the same thing two years ago.
Their actions reflect the under-the-radar but growing trend of worker
ownership in the United States. The
surprising truth is that there are thousands of
successful, majority worker-owned businesses in the United States. We're
not just talking small-scale hippie co-ops: the largest majority employee-owned
business is Florida-based Publix Super Markets, a $27bn company that employs
152,000 people. That's more workers than Costco (COST) and Whole Foods (WFM)
combined. At a time of high unemployment, soaring corporate profits and diminishing
job quality, employee ownership offers an appealing, viable alternative to
mainstream corporate capitalism. It's a way for workers to own "the means
of production" without overthrowing the system – and without asking a
gridlocked Congress to create a jobs program.
Far from some communist ideal, employee ownership is an all-American third
way that both left and right can embrace. Worker advocates can applaud the
model's more democratic structure, while free marketeers can admire its
entrepreneurial spirit. Workers who directly reap the fruits of their labor – rather than toil for
higher returns for anonymous investors – are more motivated,
productive, and creative. According to a
study by Harvard and Rutgers researchers, companies with substantial
employee ownership often outperform those without, because of lower staff
turnover and stronger trust relationships at work.
Fortunately, the idea is catching on. Since 1975, the number of companies
with partial employee ownership in the US has grown from 1,600 to more than
10,000 – about 10%
of the American workforce. We sorely need these alternatives. For a nation
fixated on the idea of individual liberty, Americans have a remarkable
tolerance for undemocratic, top-down leadership at our workplaces, where, after
all, we spend most of our waking hours. In recent decades, the playing field between employers and employees – that
is, between capital and labor – has
become severely warped. Especially at the lower end of the skills spectrum,
workers often face a lack of respect by management, erratic schedules, and
punishment for trying to form a union. The vast majority of American workers
are "at-will" – meaning, you can be fired for any reason. Perhaps
your performance has lagged, or perhaps the boss doesn't like your new shoes.
If more enterprises were employee-owned, fewer workers would face this daily
exploitation. Labor's share of the national income – now at
its lowest point in recorded history – would rise. The ratio of average of
CEO pay to worker pay (currently,
an astounding 380:1) would shrink. Inequality, which harms society and hampers
economic growth, would lessen. Here's why. In publicly-traded corporations, the board of directors –
nominated by a tiny number of outside investors – decides who runs the show and
how profits are distributed. In employee-owned companies, workers themselves
are the shareholders. Because stock does not trade publicly, the business is
insulated from the pressures of the stock market and its obsession with
short-term profit. Instead, the worker-owners can focus on long-term growth,
sustainability, and fairness.
Part of that focus is executive pay. The base salary of the CEO of Publix,
for example, was about $810,000 last year, far lower than than that of his
grocery chain CEO counterparts. Publix isn't a slave to Wall Street's tendency
to set bloated executive pay packages on expectations that share prices will
magically balloon under new leadership. Another focus is creating and maintaining good jobs for the long haul. While
publicly-traded firms slash workers in a downturn, for example, an employee-owned
company might choose to cut hours or pay for everyone to avoid layoffs.
To be sure, employee ownership is no panacea. Publix, for example, has faced
employment lawsuits, including
one over overtime pay. That's why proponents call for workplaces to be not
only employee-owned, but also employee-directed. This is a more robustly
democratic model in which workers become the board of directors of a company,
making all decisions about what it produces how the spoils are distributed. Economist
Richard Wolff details these kinds of models in his book, Democracy at Work:
he
often cites Mondragon, a successful Spanish conglomerate, as an example.
And then, there are the worker-owned John Lewis department stores in
Britain, a $13bn-plus business. The company grows at a faster rate than
competitors as it defies the low-wage retail business model, and offers workers
solid compensation and pensions. The company's
purpose, according to its constitution, is "the happiness of all its
members, through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful
business". Sounds utopian … but it's happening every day.
Another example is Der Spiegel, the leading German consumer magazine, which
is part-owned and
managed by its employees. As print media collapses elsewhere, Spiegel is
still going strong. When I did a fellowship there, a writer told me he and his
colleagues skimp on travel expenses because they know it's their
bottom line, too. Academic studies show
they're not alone. When you and your colleagues own the place, you're not going
to steal a stapler or pad your hours. Trust and workplace ethics: isn't that
what all those company retreats and office birthday celebrations have failed to
accomplish?
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