Cooperatives guarantee that only people working in the company benefit from the profit of their own work. If one can stop working and still take a share from the profits, everyone else would have to not just work for themselves and lose part of their profit to an increasing amount of people, who are not taking part in creating that profit. Cooperative guarantee that profit is owned by the people who create it.
abeppu|1 year ago
> Cooperative guarantee that profit is owned by the people who create it.
I don't think all the value created by workers is realized as profit immediately. Workers can create value which only shows up in contributions to revenue much later. If you and your coworkers figured out the design and manufacturing process for a new product and the product only goes to market after you retired, you helped create the profits even if they arrive after you left the firm.
If the coop structure as you narrowly define it doesn't allow workers to receive the profits of their labor in industries that have a long time to market or R&D cycle, then isn't that a recipe for those high value industries to be inaccessible to coops?
Try to imagine an alternate history where Nvidia was a coop. A lot of the value behind its current high revenue was done many years ago. Cuda was released in 2007. I don't know how much of the hardware has inherited from older designs. If only current workers benefit from the current high sales, has the organization really ensured that "profit is owned by the people who create it"? That seems implausible.
max_hoffmann|1 year ago
And as the worker creating that future profit you are very well aware of that, plus everyone else working on the design and manufacturing is in the same situation as yourself. The good news is: all of you are also owners of the company. So together you can decide how an exit package should look like for people deciding to leave before the design reaches the market and generates profit.
The same situation in a non-cooperative is a lot worse, because you have no stake in the company. The owner might be willing to negotiate an exit package before you even start working there, but they also might not. Plus before working at the company, you have no idea what the profit margins look like and what you might be working on. It’s the worst time for you to agree on an exit pacakge. Also during employment you are in a worse position, because the owner(s) can just let you go, if you are the only one asking for your fair share of future profits. You don’t have a say in the company. Most often they see your current salary as your share of the profit, no matter how much profit your design might create in the future.
lishzen|1 year ago