[dimal]

Were they a coop when they went bankrupt? According to the article, they only became a coop recently, so having a CEO capable of firing everyone didn’t work out for them.

They took investors, who agreed to the rate of return on their investment. That doesn’t sound like charity.

Now, your example of a CEO that wants to fire everyone assumes that that’s the right decision. How well has that kind of thinking worked for other firms like Boeing? That type of authority structure introduces its own set of distortions, which usually skew towards shareholders, and often not towards long term sustainability.

As a worker, I would be against that decision for selfish reasons as well as for rational reasons. It sounds like a bad idea. If they want to sell commodity glassware, then that’s a race to the bottom. But they’re selling quality, which requires humans with skill.

> In general coops are not good at tough decisions and innovation.

This needs to be backed up. Mondragon in Spain has thrived for decades. In America, mutual aid societies used to provide health care, unemployment insurance and other benefits before being squeezed out by other groups who were better at things like regulatory capture.

There is a long history of cooperative ownership that goes beyond the stereotypical hippie grocery store. I think it’s too quick to dismiss Duralex.

[aaplok]

> Were they a coop when they went bankrupt?

They were not. In fact they went through series of mass-redundancy episodes that were supposed to save them from bankruptcy, soon followed by yet another bankruptcy.

The COOP might fail. Indeed the call for contributions discussed in the article was motivated by that risk. But it won't fail because it was a COOP, because every CEO who tried also failed to save it. The COOP structure is this company's last chance, literally.

[mytailorisrich]

Their Wikipedia page says that headcount is flat to increasing over the last 10 years.

The coop structure is a result of their bankruptcy in 2024. As I understand, this was the proposal that didn't involve any layoffs and it was chosen by the bankruptcy court. They also got a large de facto subsidy. The fact that they have run out of money again so quickly (the root of the article) is quite worrying to say the least.

None of that changes anything to the points of my previous comment.