[HN Gopher] Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
___________________________________________________________________
Can a worker-owned restaurant work?
Author : georgeoliver
Score : 73 points
Date : 2023-08-27 06:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (southseattleemerald.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (southseattleemerald.com)
| [deleted]
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| The Seward Cafe in Minneapolis has running successfully as a
| "cooperatively owned, collectively operated restaurant and
| community-oriented venue" for 49 years.
|
| https://www.sewardcafe.com
| TylerE wrote:
| Green on pink is now my new least favorite color combo. Thanks,
| I hate it!
|
| Edit: I encourage downvoters to actually try to read the linked
| page before downvoting me. It's incredibly unreadable.
| dsr_ wrote:
| MacBook M1, afternoon sunlight behind me but not directly
| glaring. Brightness is at about 60%.
|
| It's readable. It's not great. I've seen a lot worse
| (slightly dark grey on lighter grey, faded tan on medium
| blue, cyan on bright green...)
| TylerE wrote:
| What about the background pattern that is nearly the same
| as the text color?
| ccheney wrote:
| also Hell's Kitchen (since 2020), downtown MPLS
|
| https://www.hellskitcheninc.com/#about-us-employee-owned-sec...
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I love the vibes :D
| amelius wrote:
| Not in any successful way, because the entire profit margin is
| being eaten by delivery companies like Uber Eats. There is no
| financial future in restaurants, worker-owned or not.
| kristopolous wrote:
| Is intentional "no delivery" a thing? It should be.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Of course. There is no requirement for a restaurant to
| provide carry-out. Or to lose money providing it. I don't
| know why they let Uber push them around on that.
| willyt wrote:
| There's a whole chain of department stores and supermarkets in
| the UK that's 'worker owned' John Lewis which also operates
| Waitrose supermarkets. It's a partnership, everyone that works
| there becomes a partner in the firm after a probation period.
| It's a successful business; there's a John Lewis in every big
| city in Britain and Waitrose is in many large towns and cities.
| realjhol wrote:
| [dead]
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Toronto has a good and popular seafood restaurant downtown that I
| understand operates as a worker-owned cooperative.
|
| Of course hierarchy is unnecessary, but there are a lot of people
| with resources and vested interest in it appearing otherwise.
|
| The group in the article take the approach of consensus-based
| decision making. For high velocity work like in a software
| company, I am more interested in the consent-based decision
| making processes pioneered by the Quakers and formalized in
| frameworks like Sociocracy.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Also in Italy there is a region where a lot of "companies" are
| cooperatives, (Emilia-Romagna), I'd say it's one of the
| wealthiest regions in Italy, I've lived there and was one of my
| happiest time in my life. I'd say a restaurant owned by workers
| can work, but as everything depends who do you work with, more
| than class, is personalities that make the difference, that's
| why I don't like these kind of articles, I think they are most
| useful to push a narrative and please a segment of the people,
| some "newspapers" would find a restaurant going bankrupt due to
| being owned by people, some other one would find a restaurant
| working being owned by people, they're just cases, people are
| diverse. In the end regardless of what happens to businesses
| funded by workers or by rich daddyskids we need better wealth
| redistribution, more taxes and better worker protections
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Switzerland has a retail/grocery chain called co-op, I always
| wondered if it was an actual coop or not, I'm guessing it is.
| astrange wrote:
| It's probably a customer co-op. A funny thing about this is
| that every kind of alternative ownership structure is
| considered leftist and somehow "publicly owned".
|
| But in a customer co-op that doesn't include the workers
| and in a worker co-op that doesn't include you.
| orwin wrote:
| Actually, customer co-op often include the workers, at
| least in France. They either get the same share as
| customers once they start working, or they have
| preferential price to get bigger shares.
|
| You can even have co-op without workers (there was one in
| Stain, northwest of Paris when I lived there) with really
| good food at really good price, but you had to work there
| like 4-8 hours a month to be customer.
| vidarh wrote:
| _Many_ countries have co-op grocery chains or other
| outcrops of the cooperative movement using that name, but
| most of them (including in Switzerland) are member
| (customer) owned rather than worker owned.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Sometimes coops are customer-owned which still subjects the
| workers to wage labor, such as REI. Customer-owned coops
| are not aligned with the anarchist principles that inspired
| OP
| Archit3ch wrote:
| Wouldn't a family-owned business also qualify?
| epgui wrote:
| Answer: yes. It's what teamshares.com does.
| theogravity wrote:
| San Jose and Sunnyvale in California has "A Slice of New York"
| which is a co-op pizza operation:
|
| https://asliceofny.com/about/
|
| Video about the co-op
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhbupz-iuhU
| skavi wrote:
| Had no idea. They've got great pizza with very reasonable
| prices. (and some huge sizes)
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Very reasonable prices are $40 + 8% coop fee for a standard
| large pizza? That's almost $50 after tax.
|
| https://asliceofny.com/sunnyvale/menu/
| dragonwriter wrote:
| A "standard large pizza" is 14", the size of their _small_
| ; 16" is a common extra-large size, their large is 18"
| (1.65x the size of a "standard large pizza", by area.)
|
| $43.20 ($40+8%) is quite reasonable for an 18" multiple
| topping pizza.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Thanks for helping remind me of the Bay Area / tech
| wealth bubble. Meanwhile the first pizza place I find
| with good reviews elsewhere in the country has a 18"
| multi topping for $25, and two 16" for $37.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| A large cheese is $25, and 18" is quite large. Expensive
| maybe but it's legitimately good pizza as other have said.
| syedkarim wrote:
| As a reference point: An 18" Whole Foods pizza is $15 at
| full price and $10 on Fridays.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Sure, i'm not commenting on the tastiness. Just that I
| remember balking at the $40 I spent for a pizza there,
| and am surprised that anyone thinks the prices are
| "reasonable" when it's likely one of the most expensive
| pizza places in the entire country.
| magicalist wrote:
| I mean: http://www.pizzamyheart.com/menu/
|
| Maybe there's more to the prices than the co-op
| structure?
| thatoneguy wrote:
| Awesome, that's so good to see. IIRC the founder was ex-Cisco.
| I haven't lived in San Jose in over a decade but Slice of NY is
| the only thing I miss other than my friends.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Why doesn't the word "rent" appear in here anywhere? If the
| landlord becomes aware that the restaurant pays way above
| industry norms, it will raise the rents at the earliest
| opportunity to squeeze that money back out of the business.
| Either they own the building or have an existing long-term lease.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| Why would that be different in a worker-owned business compared
| to any other business? Wouldn't a landlord be equally likely to
| jack up the rent on a company that posts high profits?
|
| I'm not an expert on commercial leasing, but I suspect a
| landlord who tried to do that would quickly find themselves
| with no tenants.
| burkaman wrote:
| The landlord could also just not do that.
| FredPret wrote:
| Those evil landlords and their infinite pricing power. If only
| there was competition among landlords (ie, build more).
|
| In all seriousness, businesses can move (easier said than done
| for a restaurant) and commercial leases are very long, 5-10
| years.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Curious how the average lifespan of a restaurant just happens
| to be 8 to 10 years.
|
| Couldn't be a coincidence, just couldn't. /S
| scotty79 wrote:
| That's the exactly the same reason why basic income can't work
| if it's introduced on its own. This money will immediately land
| in the hands of landlords who'll just increase rent.
| tech_ken wrote:
| Doesn't any landlord who defects from colluding stand to gain
| though? Like how Georgists argue that their land tax won't
| get passed directly on to renters because if it's applied to
| the whole market at once then absent perfect and universal
| collusion on behalf of the landlords renters will arb out
| those with the highest rent spikes.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Not if they wait to raise the rent until after they have a
| tenant who has a large cost to move already.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Considering a handful of companies already control most
| rental pricing, and already extract "maximum value" from
| those properties, I'm not sure it would be any different in
| any direction.
|
| I don't get why there isn't some level of Trust Busting going
| on regarding the rental property pricing management at all.
| astrange wrote:
| Because it's not true. People only think this because of an
| innumerate article from ProPublica.
|
| Almost all landlords are small time, only own one or two
| buildings, and can't organize a cartel. Except there's one
| way they can - by changing the law to favor them by banning
| new construction.
| mordae wrote:
| They don't need to collude explicitly. They just watch
| posted prices in their region and match that. Since the
| posted prices are always above average (you start higher
| than the old rent and keep lowering it until somebody
| takes it), rent keeps going up for everyone.
| astrange wrote:
| Rents don't always go up even nominally; you've just
| listed the upward pressures without the downwards ones. I
| believe they're still down in SF compared to last year.
|
| Posted prices can be misleading because they prefer to
| give discounts (X months free) rather than lower the
| sticker price, so it also depends how you count.
| CJefferson wrote:
| If a landlord becomes aware a company pays it's managers above
| industry norms, do they raise rent? How does any company make a
| profit in such a world?
| ralfd wrote:
| An company can more easily switch offices. But for a
| restaurant the location is very important.
| astrange wrote:
| Commercial leases tend to be much longer to prevent the
| landlords from raising the rent. Which of course, also makes
| commercial landlords picky about who they rent to.
|
| Land value tax would solve this. (We have property taxes, but
| they're not as good, and in California they're capped.)
| werewrsdf wrote:
| That is generally not how things work. Your same argument could
| be made if they realized the restaurant was very
| popular/profitable (with low empoloyee wages). Rents have to be
| somewhat in line with market. They can't just increase rents
| ignoring the rest of the market. If you are arguing that switch
| costs are high, so they can. That may be somewhat true, but I
| know of multiple restaurants in my area that have moved. It's
| not that high and commercial real estate is not in the best
| place, so landlords aren't looking forward to vacant property
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This is like _the_ contemporary example of rent seeking and
| during my years of experience in the industry was absolutely
| a key factor in the long term success or failure of many
| restaurants.
|
| When you hear of a popular, well-reviewed, by all accounts
| successful place closing after 5+ years with no whiff of
| professional scandal or business partner discord, this is
| usually the reason.
| tristor wrote:
| > That is generally not how things work. Your same argument
| could be made if they realized the restaurant was very
| popular/profitable (with low empoloyee wages). Rents have to
| be somewhat in line with market. They can't just increase
| rents ignoring the rest of the market.
|
| No, that is actually pretty much exactly how things work.
| Successful restaurants get higher rents on lease renewal
| which is why they're incentivized to sign longer lease terms.
| The restaurant is usually paying for all the necessary
| renovations to kit a property out with their equipment,
| decor, and branding, so the switching costs are very high,
| and the landlord is heavily incentivized to squeeze them.
| It's one of the largest, most common, and most existential
| issues for restaurants as a business, and a major reason why
| the largest and most successful chains usually operate on a
| franchise lease-back model where the corporate entity owns
| the free-standing building, preventing mis-aligned landlords
| from making the business unsustainable and eating into their
| profit-margins. Have you ever wondered why an Applebee's or
| similar is a free-standing building even on a mall property,
| even though it doesn't need a drive-through? Because Darden
| Restaurant Group, just like McDonald's, is as much a real-
| estate investment company as it is a restaurant company, and
| it understands that both the franchisee/operator and their
| primary corporate entity benefit from cutting out landlords
| that are incentivized to be a rent-seeking as possible.
|
| Your comment is deeply misinformed and it's clear you've
| never been involved in running a restaurant as a business.
| Rent is often the #1 factor that can drive a restaurant out
| of business, because it's the thing you have the least
| control over. You can often structure your menu to help
| manage food/ingredient and staffing cost, but you cannot do
| the same about rent. Restaurants are somewhat unique in that
| for single-location entities, too /much/ success can actually
| kill you because of asshole landlords.
| fallingknife wrote:
| How does the landlord know how much money the restaurant is
| making? All they would know is that the rent is paid on
| time and the restaurant "looks busy," which really isn't an
| accurate picture of income at all.
| mordae wrote:
| They just keep raising it till the restaurant starts
| rising the prices, slow down for a bit and then start
| rising the rent again.
| tristor wrote:
| > How does the landlord know how much money the
| restaurant is making?
|
| They don't. But when the local newspaper food reviewer
| gives you a glowing review and there's lines out the door
| waiting for a table when you have full covers for the
| night, and they happen to drive by /their/ building and
| see this, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure
| out you're doing well. The unfortunate reality of
| restaurant economics means you could have booming
| business and still making little or no excess profits
| though, depending on how adept you are at controlling
| other business costs, but since the landlord can't see
| your books they use these other indicators to decide to
| fuck with you instead.
|
| There is neither a legal nor inherent natural requirement
| that a landlord choose a reasonable or accurate metric to
| decide to raise your rent. In fact, in most parts of the
| country (world?) raising your rent is an entirely
| arbitrary decision in their full discretion. You seem to
| be under the impression that the just world fallacy is a
| truth, when in fact it's not only untrue, most landlords
| are scum who will happily do as much financial harm as
| possible to you to the very edge of the limit for what it
| takes for you to go out of business. The landlord doesn't
| want you to go out of business or move, which is the only
| incentive tempering their greed at all.
| peterashford wrote:
| This is why Adam Smith hated rent seeking behaviour and I
| think its the biggest flaw in how we do capitalism: the
| wealthy create wealth by controlling stuff - especially
| natural monopolies like land, not by doing any actual
| work. It's parasitic.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| That's literally the capital in capitalism. There's not
| some other way to do capitalism that's not like that:
| it's inherent to the model and what you want is some
| other system.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The Applebee's location is also leased by Dardens (or
| McDonalds) from the mall...the difference is that they are
| leasing the plot of land and not a building, so they get to
| build the restaurant to their own specifications. (For
| franchised locations, Dardens/McDonalds then leases the
| completed restaurant to a franchisee. Sources differ on the
| %, but McDonalds only owns about 40-60% of the land, and
| about 66-75% of the buildings, for its restaurant
| locations.)
|
| Successful restaurants usually get higher rents because the
| value of the location increases with the success of a
| restaurant. This generally means higher costs for the
| property owner. This is also why most successful
| restaurants have long term leases, meaning 10 years or
| more, and major chains like McDonalds can have even longer
| leases; it's not unusual for an Applebee's location to have
| a 30 or 50-year lease.
| SamWhited wrote:
| This makes me miss Blackstar Co-op in Austin, TX. Great
| microbrewery with excellent food that has a hybrid
| worker/consumer ownership model. If you're ever in the area (and
| if it's still around, it's been years since I've lived there)
| look it up!
| IndoorPatio wrote:
| - https://mirisata.com/
|
| - https://www.bobsredmill.com/whole-grain-store.html
| wcerfgba wrote:
| Wonderful story, thanks for sharing.
|
| Do you know any worker-owned food businesses? Share in the
| comments!
|
| In Preston, UK, we have The Larder. Not sure about the ownership
| model but it is a social enterprise working on food justice:
| https://larder.org.uk/
| colechristensen wrote:
| Hell's Kitchen in Minneapolis does something along these lines
| though the details aren't entirely obvious to me.
|
| https://www.hellskitcheninc.com/
| vector_spaces wrote:
| In San Francisco, the Rainbow Grocery Cooperative has been
| around since the 70s. While working in the food industry in San
| Francisco, I had heard that employees there made in the
| ballpark of 100k~ a year, but that's purely hearsay and I have
| no idea how accurate it is. Before Bay Area tech workers chime
| in with how even 100k~ is effectively unlivable out there, I'll
| mention that I lived on about 25k a year in the Bay Area
| between 2010 and 2017, and lots of people -- food and service
| workers, teachers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers --
| scrape by on similar or less, with no benefits or equity. You
| might be surprised how many restaurants and bars and grocery
| stores in the Bay hire their cashiers, busboys, dishwashers,
| and cooks as _contractors_ , or pay them cash under the table.
|
| Back on topic: there's also the Cheese Board in Berkeley, CA,
| and Arizmendi Bakery but not sure if the salaries are as great.
| There used to be a great bakery in South Berkeley that was
| worker owned and fairly well known, but the name is escaping me
| (edit: it was Nabolom Bakery). In any case, that one struggled
| more with the business side and employee salaries were close to
| minimum wage.
|
| Another aside: it's interesting to me how lots of tech workers
| in the Bay Area live in an entirely different Bay Area than me
| or most people I knew out there -- these two worlds seem to
| scarcely talk to each other in any meaningful ways.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| In the western US, Winco is a pretty large grocery store
| owned by employees.
| astrange wrote:
| Publix is employee-owned in the South, but some own a lot
| more than others.
| TylerE wrote:
| Publix is complicated. One family controls about 30% of
| the shares, and the company has done things (like donate
| lots of money to conservative PACs) that many employees
| are unhappy with.
| raybb wrote:
| Since you mentioned social enterprises, I'll share this repo I
| made where I keep track of resources for learning about social
| enterprises. https://github.com/RayBB/awesome-social-enterprise
|
| Btw the definition varies a good bit around the world but
| generally a social enterprise is more about the goal of the
| organization and a coop (or worker-owned) is about who has
| power the make decisions in the org.
| epgui wrote:
| teamshares.com
| jeffbee wrote:
| We have tons of worker-owned cooperatives in Berkeley,
| including Cheese Board Collective that is successful, and one
| block from that The Local Butcher, also worker-owned. A few
| blocks down was the worker-owned bike shop but it went under
| for reasons related to having admitted a notorious bozo into
| the co-op. We also have Nabolom Bakery that failed after
| decades as a worker co-op but survives today as an owner-owned
| business.
| yodon wrote:
| Is Zachary's Pizza in the same category? (I seem to recall
| being told there was something unusual about their structure
| but I can't recall the details)
| uoaei wrote:
| You might be thinking of Arizmendi, which is a spin-off of
| Cheeseboard. Zachary's is family-owned, not really an
| uncommon setup.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah. Cooperative pizza is an entire thing. Arizmendi is
| also worker-owned, as is Nick's in Oakland.
| dllthomas wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's impossible, and the several I've eaten at
| are merely figments of my imagination.
| SenoraRaton wrote:
| One thing that I never understood was, if an employees wages are
| tied to the success of the company, would that not incentivize
| better work ethic as a whole? That is how it works in the start-
| up world. You get equity, you have literally invested in the
| company, and you know that your work should (in theory) directly
| benefit you financially.
|
| Instead we end up in a system where the employee/employer
| relationship is inherently antagonistic. If you work at
| McDonalds, in is 100% in your interest to do the absolute bare
| minimum possible to not be fired, and in your employers interest
| to pay you as little as legally possible. This costs more
| overhead and resources from managers, and dealing with angry
| customers, and food loss/waste, which could largely be avoided if
| the employees were invested in the success of the workplace.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| This is a concept that dumbfounds people today (at least many
| on this startup incubator forum) but that Adam Smith explained
| over two-hundred years ago. Yes, workers and owners end up
| forming two distinct groups with two distinct class interests.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Ever done a group project in school? Free riders ruin shared
| incentives.
| moate wrote:
| I never did a single group project at school that had a
| legally binding contractual agreement or a board of
| shareholders, so I imagine these are entirely different
| situations.
| SenoraRaton wrote:
| But somehow having a freeloader at the top that siphons off
| profits is totally fine? I would much rather have someone
| that I quite literally worked with, and the rest of the staff
| interacted with freeloading, than some franchisee owner who
| literally does nothing for the business. Not only would it be
| much easier to identify, it would be easier to socially
| address, or remove this person. I couldn't fire my project
| mates in school, in this scenario you could.
| bluedino wrote:
| >> If you work at McDonalds, in is 100% in your interest to do
| the absolute bare minimum possible to not be fired
|
| Or:
|
| _If it 's flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, be the best
| hamburger flipper in the world_
|
| Ice Cube, or Abraham Lincoln, or Dave Ramsey said that. I
| forgot which one.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Horatio Alger stories were about humble, brave, smart and
| hardworking boys from troubled, deprived backgrounds who
| found terrible, unrewarding jobs or situations, worked hard,
| smart, or bravely at them, and were observed doing this by
| successful, wealthy, and wise men who recognized that raw
| merit, plucked those boys from their situations, moved them
| into their businesses and homes, and gave those boys real
| responsibility and a start on their road to inevitable
| success.
|
| Horatio Alger was a pedophile who preyed on young homeless
| boys and orphans.
|
| It is very easy for the best burger flipper at McDonald's to
| remain the best burger flipper at McDonald's forever. His job
| is safe. The harder he's willing to work without getting a
| raise, the longer he will be working without getting a raise.
| One day, he will probably become assistant manager, and his
| promotion will mean a pay cut because now he's on salary, and
| his responsibilities will become greater because he has to
| show up when others don't. They know he will, which is why
| they gave him the job. Meanwhile, he works under a series of
| managers transferred from other locations, or hired from
| other companies. Eventually he gets sick, and his awful
| health insurance runs out almost immediately. He's demoted,
| then fired because he can't keep up at the job anymore. Then
| he's homeless, then he's dead.
|
| Goofus, however, did the least possible in order to keep from
| being fired, and went to community college at night. He
| eventually was able to wrangle a paid internship at a company
| where there was a career path, and quit McDonald's. Everybody
| was happy to see him go, because he was a person like them
| who managed to get a good job, and also because he was
| terrible to work with because he was always so tired from
| school and didn't put a ton of effort in. Goofus is now
| middle-class.
|
| postscript: Goofus later also got sick, his insurance ran
| out, and he became homeless and died. US healthcare is
| terrible.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Have you worked at a McDonald's as a manager? Because I
| have, and their insurance for full-time staff and managers
| was the same as you get at most employers. Anthem, or
| whatever major provider. Salaried managers also earn
| middle-class incomes. Perhaps your experience was
| different, or perhaps you are making it up.
| 542458 wrote:
| I think it would incentivize bailing out as soon as times get
| slightly rough, and last thing you want is all your best (and
| most mobile) employees quitting when you need them most.
|
| For example, if my company has a bad quarter and makes $0 net,
| does everybody get paid $0? Most people wouldn't stand for that
| and would start job hunting pretty quick. The "work for equity
| at a startup" crowd does it because they can afford to take the
| risk of $0. Most people can't or won't take that risk.
|
| > If you work at McDonalds, in is 100% in your interest to do
| the absolute bare minimum possible to not be fired
|
| That incentive won't change much under this new system. Joe
| Average at McDonalds has little to no power to significantly
| increase the company's, or even their franchise's profits.
| Sure, they could _maybe_ move the needle slightly, but working
| (say) twice as hard to make 3% more is probably not a rational
| move.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Usually it's not zero though, like it's base pay + the
| promise of a maybe-payout down the road if things go really
| well.
|
| But part of it also hinges on the organization being small
| enough that individuals can actually make a difference.
| Otherwise it's back to just being a prisoner's dilemma /
| shared commons, where the incentive is to slack off and let
| everyone else carry you.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > If you work at McDonalds, in is 100% in your interest to do
| the absolute bare minimum possible to not be fired, and in your
| employers interest to pay you as little as legally possible.
|
| Having worked that gig before, that isn't how it works. You
| don't want to work hardish, you simply don't get hours. If
| management doesn't want to give you more than minimum raises,
| you leave for something else, and turn over is high. There is
| still leverage to do good things (both on worker and management
| side).
|
| A lot of people working there (mainly managers, but some crew)
| wanted to be owners, McDonald's had a franchise system in place
| to do that but you had a better chance of getting one if you
| actually learned the ropes at another store for awhile.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> One thing that I never understood was, if an employees wages
| are tied to the success of the company, would that not
| incentivize better work ethic as a whole?
|
| It would probably incentivize you to ensure _everyone else 's_
| work was up to par. This doesn't seem that different from a
| small startup with heavy equity comp -- everyone is
| incentivized to work hard, but there are also plenty of times
| where people want everyone else to work hard but not themself.
|
| In the extreme case, imagine two co-founders. It is common for
| each co-founder to try and take distracting side jobs /
| consulting or not quit their dayjob, while the other puts in
| the hard work to grow the value of the startup. Generally this
| is a hard-NO from an angel/vc investment standpoint, but
| outside an external party clamping down, there is an incentive
| to cheat.
| wpietri wrote:
| You might enjoy the This American Life episode called NUMMI:
| https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
|
| It looks at how Toyota took GM's worst plant and made it one of
| the best using the same workers. And how GM's management
| refused to learn lessons from that.
|
| I think the current antagonism is something that started with
| management many decades ago. But now it has a lot of momentum,
| such that people on both sides are used to it and will carry it
| forward. I remember reading a great zine piece from a video
| game tester who'd had a variety of shitty jobs. He finally
| found one that was really good: good pay, good working
| conditions, nice bosses. But he felt compelled to steal office
| supplies in bulk because that's what he'd done at his shitty
| jobs. He was sort of mystified by it, but he couldn't stop.
|
| However, there are alternatives. I live near an Arizmendi
| bakery [1], which is a worker-owned co-op. It's great. The food
| is really good, it's sanely run, and the people behind the
| counter seem serene and present. It's inspired by the founder
| of the Mondragon co-op [2].
|
| Or you could look at companies that shift to employee ownership
| later. Bob's Red Mill was actually started by a guy named Bob
| who sold the company to his employees in 2010. [3]
|
| I don't think those are going to be utopias. But I do think
| they lack some of the structural disincentives against sanity
| and compassion that you find in the typical corporate
| structure, where every dollar in a worker's pocket is a dollar
| less in economic rents for the owners.
|
| [1] http://arizmendi-valencia.squarespace.com/
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob%27s_Red_Mill
| corinroyal wrote:
| Oh, I miss Arizmendi so much since I moved away.
|
| I heard about an Arizmendi customer who went to Paris and was
| really excited to try real French bread. When she got there,
| all she could find was horrible like you could find in any
| supermarket. She told her French friend about her
| disappointment and asked where she could get some real French
| bread. The friend's reply was, "Berkeley."
|
| There are a lot of great worker co-ops in the Bay Area.
| Here's a map from Network of Bay Area Co-operatives:
| https://nobawc.org/map-of-nobawc-coops/
| tiffanyg wrote:
| Good points and info, IMO. One suggestion, though:
|
| _I think the current antagonism is something that started
| with management many decades ago._
|
| I think the pattern goes back, well, as far as you want to go
| back. There have always been individuals who think that
| _they_ * should be in charge. There's a continual 'tug-of-
| war'.
|
| For centuries, only a very few people were able to
| participate directly - when the world largely consisted of
| monarchies, empires, "hoards", and all of that**. Ancient
| Athens, and more recent "Enlightenment" ideas about "natural
| rights" and "mandate of the masses" etc. have generally been
| unusual in practice until quite recently.***
|
| The data strongly support much more shared power past a
| certain level of technological and economic development, but,
| even if aware of the myriad examples, people with power-lust
| aren't going to stop. It's directly contradictory to that
| worldview, ambition, etc. - in multiple ways. And, any given
| person is likely to tack more towards or away from such
| notions over time, depending on multiple factors.
|
| Right now, it seems there's much more interest, in multiple
| realms, on consolidating power, again.
|
| Caveat populus.
|
| * Not consciously intentional play on "the royal we"
|
| ** Before that, there's a lot more variation, AFAIK, but also
| a lot less confidence and evidence - though, ancient Egypt
| and China (three kingdoms etc.) come to mind as particularly
| early examples with solid enough information regarding ruling
| over large numbers of people by individuals (and various
| attempts &/ smaller "kingdoms" etc.)
|
| *** "Radical", some might say "insolent"
| deegles wrote:
| I (naively) think a restaurant would have an easier time
| detecting people who are doing the bare minimum. The issue
| becomes how to "punish" freeloaders who are also owners?
| Imagine the nightmare scenario of a restaurant where every
| employee is a part of the LLC that owns it. "Firing" someone
| becomes an onerous legal process.
| pc86 wrote:
| You can handle it in advance by requiring "vesting" periods
| where you are working but not an owner. The existing owners
| then get the chance to offer you ownership, or not. This is
| how most private physician practices work, and AFAIK a lot of
| law firms as well.
|
| So if you're a lazy employee for your initial 2-year
| contract, you don't get any offer when your contract expires.
| If you're not, you might get a contract extension or an offer
| to buy in as an owner.
| mordae wrote:
| I think coops just vote on it.
| SenoraRaton wrote:
| Does it? If the rest of the community doesn't want you there,
| seems pretty cut and dry. There are no "managers" at Valve,
| yet they fire people all the time. You would simply receive
| your pay, and whatever your portion of the dividends owed to
| you up until your date of firing.
| pc86 wrote:
| There is a lot more legal overhead to buying out an LLC
| owner against their will compared to firing an at-will
| employee.
| username332211 wrote:
| Should a worker-owned company be an LLC? An LLC[1] is a
| union of assets put together for a common purpose. It's
| not a union of people. A worker-owned company should have
| a different legal structure, usually something created
| specifically for such an organization, though one would
| imagine partnerships would be suitable if the law doesn't
| provide for a special structure.
|
| [1]Granted, I'm thinking of European definitions here,
| because I get really confused when I try to educate
| myself about American ones. An GmbH is more or less an AG
| with stakes rather than shares, whereas an American LLCs
| seem to behave somewhat differently (taxation, for
| example is pass-trough).
| singleshot_ wrote:
| No. Taxation of an LLC is not pass through. Taxation of a
| single member LLC that is a disregarded entity can be
| pass through. LLCs can also opt for sub K, sub S or sub
| C.
|
| I also would not refer to an LLC as a collection of
| assets for a common purpose; instead I would say it is a
| popular entity form that limits member or manager
| liability. However you could take a different view.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Entity laws are all state-by-state in the US, but in most
| (all?) states, LLCs and corporations are essentially the
| same ownership-wise. A person buys membership
| interest/stock in an LLC/corporation, and becomes a
| partial owner. The organization is a separate legal
| entity then owning the contributed assets and the
| members/shareholders own the LLC/corporation. The bylaws
| will lay out how to divest a member/shareholder of his
| interest, usually involving the other
| members/shareholders or a board of managers/directors
| voting to buy out his shares.
|
| It's not really a union of assets nor people though. The
| former would be a trust or arguably a non-profit, and the
| later would be a partnership. And LLCs can elect to be
| taxed as a C corporation, although I can't fathom why one
| would. (And most small businesses can elect pass-through
| taxation!)
| fallingknife wrote:
| And how does your remaining equity position work? If you
| lose it on firing then you aren't really an owner in any
| meaningful sense any more than a tech employee with
| unvested RSUs is.
| username332211 wrote:
| Valve is still a corporation with a single majority
| shareholder.
|
| And I can't imagine a restaurant could work the same way as
| Valve. In a restaurant, you have to feed people day in day
| out. You can't deliver a Michelin-quality meal when the
| inspiration hits you and nothing when it doesn't.
|
| Valve also seems to have a strangely forgiving customer
| base. I don't think I've ever seen anyone complain about
| micro-transactions in their games, whereas other publishers
| seem to get a lot of hate for it. (Then again, ever since I
| stopped playing games, I've began to notice that each
| publisher had their own unique method of fleecing their
| customer base, so it may be that Valve got the players that
| tolerate micro-transactions, whereas others would have the
| ones who tolerate endless DLCs.)
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| If you hang out with the tf2 people you might not see
| much in the way of good vibes towards valve. The
| community in that game persists despite valve, not
| because of them.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| Wages tied to success of the company, ie profit sharing; how
| much more profitable could a restaurant become if every
| employee gives it their absolute best labor output? A few
| percentage points here and there? Certainly not orders of
| magnitude. Maybe theres no improvement in some situations at
| all? I don't see it as much of an incentive, especially if the
| variable compensation is partly in lieu of fixed compensation.
|
| The startup scenario you mention offers the _potential_ for
| huge payouts (of course this plays out wildly across a
| spectrum). A far easier sell to employees, IMO.
| FFP999 wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| At the lowest levels, most employees don't stand to share in
| any gains or upside attributed to their hard work. At best
| there will be a small bonus if the company does well which will
| be weakly correlated with their individual efforts.
|
| In white collar jobs and as you move into management then the
| bonus programmes become more aligned with business unit and
| company performance so maybe you can move the needle and get
| paid for it. Companies also have the carrots of promotions and
| pay rises.
| sharts wrote:
| Worker-owned anything can work. It's democracy in the workplace.
| version_five wrote:
| Democracy only works when just about everyone wants the same
| thing. And even then leaders generally abuse power. The lower
| the stakes, the worse it gets.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Oligarchy only works because only what the 10%, 1% (or
| whatever the cutoff) wants _matters_ so what everyone _else_
| wants is per definition irrelevant.
| gochi wrote:
| Democracy works when most involved disagree actually, that's
| its primary function over other formats. Otherwise just go
| with a king since everyone wants the same thing.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I think I agree with the point but people don't need to want
| all the same things so I think I'd rather phrase it this way:
|
| "Democracy fails when the people and their leaders fail to
| realise that the thing they want above all is peace and
| general prosperity, and that neither of those is a naturally
| occurring phenomenon."
|
| Because the peaceful transfer of power as well as respect for
| the truth, and equality before the law is the absolute
| foundation that any prosperous democracy needs.
| version_five wrote:
| Doesn't that just kick the problem down the road to the
| definition of peace and general prosperity? If people have
| irreconcilable differences over what those mean, they still
| may not be able to find the common ground needed for
| running a business or country. With something more nimble
| like a business it's easy to imagine vastly different views
| on how the business can prosper, which makes the benevolent
| dictator (business owner) model all the more attractive.
| xwdv wrote:
| It's a hellish concept. The workers relationship to the company
| becomes less transactional, and they get all the stress of
| owning a business but without the outsized profits.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Most restaurant workers would gladly take the stress of
| owning a business over the stress of being paid 40 hours
| worth of near-minimum wage for 80 hours worth of actual work.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > stress of being paid 40 hours worth of near-minimum wage
| for 80 hours worth of actual work.
|
| which restaurant workers is this true of? tipped FOH
| workers make a little to a lot more than minimum wage
| depending on the shift. BOH workers are indeed getting
| minimum wage or a little more, but wage theft to the tune
| of 50% of a paycheck is incredibly rare.
| disjunct wrote:
| Have you worked at a worker-owned company? I think, largely,
| a goal of worker-owned restaurants is to make the work
| experience less transactional. Is there anything besides
| stress (which is not mentioned in the article) that would
| make transactionality and outsized profit a necessary thing?
| raybb wrote:
| If anyone wants to start a coop there is an accelerator for them
| based in NYC called start.coop. I've joined a few of their calls
| and it seems like they're pushing for pretty great stuff.
|
| https://www.start.coop/accelerator
|
| Also in NYC is "The Drivers Cooperative" which is Uber but owned
| by drivers and they're doing pretty well so far (based on the
| last annual report).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drivers_Cooperative
| e1g wrote:
| "Approval of any proposal or purchase has to be unanimous. Either
| the proposal is revised to be agreeable to everyone or it's
| scrapped."
|
| RIP.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Like so many idealistic things, this kind of setup works only as
| long as the people joining or taking responsibility for the thing
| continue to have and practice the same ideals as what started it.
|
| Start to lose that just a little bit, where responsibility gets
| diffuse, the original intention gets lost, or you start hiring
| people who don't have the same understanding, and it all falls
| apart.
|
| Not every worker wants to have an equal share of the grunt work.
| Not every worker believes that they contribute equally to the
| success of the restaurant and are willing to split the proceeds
| in that way. Not every worker wants to have to live the
| restaurant as if it's their life.
|
| Worker owned coops have as many failure modes as "evil" corporate
| ones do. And in some senses are all the more disappointing
| because of it.
| tech_ken wrote:
| >Because it can be hard to get everyone in the same room, most
| votes are held via a Discord server. People respond to proposals
| with a thumbs-up emoji for yes, a thumbs-down for no, and a
| monocle to signal they want further discussion -- a closer look,
| if you will
|
| I would love a retrospective on the role of Slack and Discord as
| tools of revolutionary politics in the last decade or so. Seems
| like no matter where you fall ideologically, there's a Slack
| channel or Discord server for you and it's doing the emoji vote
| thing.
| wcerfgba wrote:
| Thomas Swann's _Anarchist Cybernetics_ and Rhiannon Firth 's
| _Disaster Anarchy_ both touch on this at points.
|
| https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745340463/disaster-anarchy/
|
| https://academic.oup.com/policy-press-scholarship-online/boo...
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Is the crying laughing emoji a yes vote or a no vote???
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Is this a chain-style restaurant? Fine dining haute cuisine? Fast
| food?
|
| What happens when they don't want to do the actual work anymore?
| Do they still keep their partial ownership of the restaurant and
| hire wagies? What if they can't work anymore? It's not easy to
| step and fetch for 10 hours a day at age 50. What if they just
| need to reduce their schedule to 10 hours a week (and not pull
| their weight)?
|
| What if most people willing to do grunt work also aren't very
| good at managing a restaurant? At menus, at book keeping? What if
| people prefer to be served by the cute young things that you tend
| to see at many chains (even if they're dressed more modestly than
| those at Hooters)? You know, the same sort of people who are just
| unlikely to want to become invested in such a place, where
| they'll be tied down to it?
| [deleted]
| jebarker wrote:
| Left Hand Brewery in CO is majority employee owned but not 100%.
|
| https://www.brewbound.com/news/left-hand-brewing-now-majorit...
| (2015)
| FFP999 wrote:
| [dead]
| hinkley wrote:
| New Belgium Brewery (Also CO... what's going on in CO?) was
| employee owned but a few years ago they sold and now Kirin owns
| them now.
|
| Not sure how you can be employee owned and have a parent
| company. I think the Wikipedia page needs some edits.
| tech_ken wrote:
| IIRC BeauJo's is going this way as well after the original
| owner is retiring.
| aogaili wrote:
| Any good examples of something like that implemented in the
| software domain?
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Igalia: https://www.igalia.com/
|
| Works on open source stuff, like Linux kernel, GStreamer, etc.
| wcerfgba wrote:
| Yes, in UK we have a network of tech workers co-ops:
| https://www.coops.tech/about
| astrange wrote:
| This is a bad sign. The UK is like Argentina - if they've
| adopted an economic idea that means it doesn't work and you
| need to run away from it.
|
| https://twitter.com/JosephPolitano/status/169124217640185446.
| ..
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Burn your fiat money then, pretty sure they've got that
| back in good ole Argentina.
| toyg wrote:
| Couple of notes:
|
| - the UK, or rather UK trade unions, basically _invented_
| the concept of modern cooperatives _150 years ago_.
|
| - by now, cooperatives have effectively been out of fashion
| for decades. Even the flagship Cooperative Bank has
| recently been de-facto "normalized" into a regular
| business.
|
| - the cooperative model can, however, still be attractive
| for small groups of artisans, _like software developers_.
| Hence the link from parent poster. This doesn 't mean that
| it's been "adopted" at large scale, or seen a mainstream
| resurgence - it has not.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > The bylaws are 10 pages long and cover just about every
| eventuality the group might encounter
|
| I predict they will find out this is very much not true. I have
| seen 1000 pages fail to do this.
| wcerfgba wrote:
| It's less important to cover every eventuality, and more
| inportant to outline the decision making process for handling
| the unexpected.
| exabrial wrote:
| Yes, absolutely, but there are pitfalls:
|
| * Somehow finances have to work, which is usually a harsh reality
| for some. Ex: Hey we can't pay workers $250/hr without raises
| prices to above what customers are willing to pay
|
| * Consumers despite "Least common denominator" which is often the
| result of "design by committee". Usually consumers are after
| something niche, unique, artistic, and creative, which is the
| inspiration or vision of an individual.
|
| > As for making business decisions, it's done democratically. The
| entirety of the member-owner group votes on major decisions, and
| the bylaws outline scenarios where employees are authorized to
| act independently of a vote
|
| I don't see this working in the long term unfortunately unless a
| majority of the workers have a lot experience with business,
| especially something as cashflow-sensitive as a restaurant (which
| typically operate on razor-thin margins). But I do wish them luck
| in their experiment.
| ska wrote:
| > unless a majority of the workers have a lot experience with
| business,
|
| That may be the wrong way to think about it. Vanishingly few
| people have enough experience in all aspects of any business to
| make good decisions without others inputs. So in many cases we
| are reliant on someone's domain expertise, not to make the
| decisions, but to get the the right decision point. Once the
| pros and cons are laid out properly, anyone with a real stake
| can contribute to the decision.
|
| The bigger the decision, the more people with a stake need to
| be involved. In the typical business world this shows up all
| the time: "that's a board-level decision", "we need all the
| execs to agree on this one", etc.
|
| We don't know the actual implementation, but it's possibly it's
| just a reasonable reflection of that practice into collective
| ownership...
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| It would be interesting to see reports of long-term experiments
| of this sort, see how businesses run this way fare over time
| and whether this sort of model is unsustainable, or if these
| people are onto something effective that stands the test of
| time. Any other restaurants who have tried this sort of model
| in the past and stuck with it?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| The simple fact that you never ever heard about something
| like that, tells you all you need to know aboit the long term
| prospect of business owned by "the collective". In my part of
| the world we have a saying " what fattens the cows is the
| owner's gaze". A company that belongs to everyone working
| there belongs to no one, and it will eventually become a
| freeloader's dream. I have heard of one or two examples of
| this things being tried, one even a restaurant close tomy
| home town. It never lasts.
| ska wrote:
| >The simple fact that you never ever heard about something
| like that
|
| actually there are lots of examples, so it can't be that
| simple.
| soligern wrote:
| How do you fire people? Do you just get voted off the island?
| There would need to be managers.
| jancsika wrote:
| > * Consumers despite "Least common denominator" which is often
| the result of "design by committee". Usually consumers are
| after something niche, unique, artistic, and creative, which is
| the inspiration or vision of an individual.
|
| Dollars to donuts you wrote that bullet point without having
| read the article:
|
| * the _extant_ worker-owned restaurant discussed in the article
| is the epitome of "something niche, unique, artistic, and
| creative," which was "the inspiration or vision of" the owner
| making a pitch to the staff to become worker-owned. It even
| mentions getting employees because of the unique approach. I
| can't imagine they haven't drawn non-trivial consumers to their
| restaurant for the same reason
|
| * pictures of the food exist in the article
|
| In short: I know "design by committee" food. I've worked with
| "design by committee" food. That fried chicken sandwich, sir,
| _is no "design by committee" food_.
| willio58 wrote:
| > Hey we can't pay workers $250/hr
|
| Unless those workers were looking to make half a million per
| year I think that's okay.
| p1necone wrote:
| > Somehow finances have to work, which is usually a harsh
| reality for some. Ex: Hey we can't pay workers $250/hr without
| raises prices to above what customers are willing to pay
|
| If it was worker owned wouldn't you just pay everyone some
| reasonable wage that the business can afford and then also
| split profits evenly?
| danielheath wrote:
| It's challenging to retain senior staff at those rates;
| there's a limit to how much of a cut I'll take to work at a
| cooperative.
| dnissley wrote:
| Don't forget to split the losses evenly as well!
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Yes, but only if there is enough money to pay the base wage
| in the first place, which is far from a foregone conclusion.
| Let alone having any profit left to distribute.
| carabiner wrote:
| What is "reasonable," what is "fair." These words signify a
| death spiral in wage discussions. The reality is that
| businesses cannot increase prices forever and have a market
| that still wants to pay them. If I sell burgers for $10k and
| they're shit burgers then I'd make no money and have to shut
| it all down. Just like my friend who shut down his cabinetry
| business because he was paying his employees more than
| himself (doing the "right thing"). He is a one man shop
| working out of his van and is doing much better, but his
| employees' wages became 0.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| Some years ago a burger joint opened in my neighborhood, a
| very hispsterish kind of place. I went once, and saw a
| message attached to the menu, saying that 50% of the
| revenue obtained from every burger would be donated to some
| cause du jour, probably climate change related, bla bla
| bla. To me it signified that the burgers they sold were at
| least 100% overpriced when compared to what they should
| cost if they were trying to have a profitable business. Fun
| fact: they were, and their burger joint went under in a
| couple of months. Capitalism wins in the end, it doesn't
| matter if you want to fight it, the sun always rises again.
| fn-mote wrote:
| The restaurant has been in business 10 years. I think that
| evidence makes me dismiss your comment as pessimistic
| hyperbole. If the wages really didn't work, the restaurant
| would have been long gone.
|
| I acknowledge that you have seen something similar not work
| out, first hand, but in this case it is apparently
| different.
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| > What is "reasonable," what is "fair." These words signify
| a death spiral in wage discussions.
|
| Another commenter commented on a burger-joint giving a
| share to "climate" causes. What a share entails in this
| case, whether it comes from profit, or whether they pass
| the cost of this cause to the customer is unknown.
|
| Additionally I live in a place where there are reparations
| discussions and where unions agreed that teachers of a
| certain ethnicity would be eliminated first in the name of
| equity if it came down to staff cuts.
|
| How does this play into the scenario if these types of
| events happen more often, even discussing these things is
| difficult and people could veer away from. I heard that
| Amazon inserted "woke" discussions into union talks in
| Georgia in an effort to de-rail them, not to engender
| unity.
| SamWhited wrote:
| In my experience the opposite is almost always true:
|
| > Somehow finances have to work, which is usually a harsh
| reality for some
|
| At most places I've been involved in the workers are more
| careful with money _because_ they are standing together and
| want the business to succeed. They have transparency into the
| finances, so they know what 's possible and try to make sure
| not to go overboard.
|
| > Consumers despite "Least common denominator" which is often
| the result of "design by committee". Usually consumers are
| after something niche, unique, artistic, and creative, which is
| the inspiration or vision of an individual.
|
| All of the worker owned places I've been have been exactly
| this: creative, interesting, and individual. These aren't giant
| chains designed in a megacorp boardroom.
|
| > I don't see this working in the long term unfortunately
| unless a majority of the workers have a lot experience with
| business, especially something as cashflow-sensitive as a
| restaurant (which typically operate on razor-thin margins). But
| I do wish them luck in their experiment.
|
| There are many of these and though I don't know the success
| rate compared to hierarchical businesses in the food industry
| in particular, co-ops have a higher success rate than
| hierarchical businesses in general and there's been a lot of
| research into it, though I don't know if an exact "why" has
| ever been established. I suspect it's that there's no handful
| of individuals who can get greedy and ruin things by trying to
| maximize profit. Even for-profit co-ops generally have a better
| sense of balance since the workers don't want their business to
| dry up and if one person gets greedy there are lots of other
| people to keep them in check.
| Avshalom wrote:
| >> Usually consumers are after something niche, unique,
| artistic, and creative, which is the inspiration or vision of
| an individual.
|
| I mean, I feel like a quick survey of the american restaurant
| landscape implies that consumers are mostly after something
| reliable for their time and money.
|
| but also the idea that front of house having a say in the
| business would mean the menu is anymore design by comittee than
| any other restaurant is weird, especially because menus aren't
| generally decided by the owner of the restaurant anyway.
| saled wrote:
| These points are solved by the workers electing an executive or
| directors who makes those decisions, until the workers are sick
| of them and replace them in an AGM or an emergency meeting.
|
| Works the same as shareholders.
| toyg wrote:
| In the long run, that is bound to generate a separate
| managerial class, with all that it entails. It's how most
| cooperatives eventually die: they turn into regular
| businesses.
| Affric wrote:
| Well said.
|
| Good co-ops that last have the decisions made by those
| working there.
|
| And it's a lot of work.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Somehow finances have to work, which is usually a harsh
| reality for some. Ex: Hey we can't pay workers $250/hr without
| raises prices to above what customers are willing to pay
|
| Somehow finances have to work, which is usually a harsh reality
| for some owners. Ex: Hey we can't have collective payout to
| investors totaling $10M this year without raises prices to
| above what customers are wiling to pay.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| This is one of the main advantages owner operators have over
| PE funded or publicly traded businesses.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Also a reason that at least some (perhaps many?) franchise
| restaurants don't allow owner-investors, they must be
| owner-operators. McDonald's is one, at least they were last
| I knew.
| markandrewj wrote:
| The answer is yes. It has also been well studied
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_democracy). If you want
| to understand more of the history, look at the IWW, or other
| resources such as the Chomsky's book A People's History. Usually
| the idea that it will not work is a capitalist view pushed from
| the top down onto workers. I.E. You are not smart enough, or you
| are too lazy, to be productive without a figure of authority
| making decisions for you. Even the concept of what is considered
| productive use of time can be a topic of discussion in this
| regard. Anarchy is largely misunderstood also, it is a philosophy
| that focuses on the collective making decisions, instead of a
| central figure of authority.
|
| Ref: Noam Chomsky on Worker Ownership and Markets
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RafTFDwImrU
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-28 23:01 UTC)