Mass layoffs, AI anxiety, and corporate surveillance have heightened interest in unions among IT professionals. Organizers who've been through it explain how to get started — and what to expect.
Oh I bet a cooperative would have plenty of internal conflict. No group of humans gets together without conflict even when incentives are really well aligned.
The points above on the governance model I think are ideal, but another reason to do this would be to encourage other companies to look at the model and be encouraged to adopt it. If you start with a co op I think it’s less likely other companies would look at that and say he lets convert to a coop. I want to find ways to help improve the system currently running not just make one just company.
A great outcome in my mind is a story where you say look at this software company that’s fully unionized and they are killing it on growth and productivity, even higher than those non union shops.
This would make everyone pay attention because people don’t really care about anything but long term growth independent of the company’s operating system.
A co op would be so different from existing systems that I fear people would think hey that’s neat but we can’t replicate it unless we started over.
I didn’t say there would be no conflict, but significantly less.
If everyone is an owner, there is no incentive to withhold labor and strike, as they can simply come to a consensus with the other co-owners instead. The only reason unions exist and strike is because of an imbalance of power between the capital owners and the workers that generate the capital, so the unions must leverage their labor as a bargaining chip to try to get a slightly more fair deal. That dynamic is not present in a worker owned co-operative, since everyone is an owner and has the same incentive to increase profit, since it benefits all instead of the few.
This would make everyone pay attention because people don’t really care about anything but long term growth independent of the company’s operating system.
All traditional companies have an incentive to fight the formation of unions, even if they do generate more profits, as CEO’s and shareholders do not wish to split up those profits to the workers any more than is absolutely necessary to retain those workers to begin with.
CEO’s and Shareholders are virtually all extremely self interested, often times combined with dark triad traits which both encouraged and enabled them to reach those positions to begin with.
They do not act rationally purely in interest of profit, as if that was the case, then they would’ve already adopted lower working hours, work from home, better benefits, and given partial ownership of the company to the workers voluntarily. Instead, history has shown time and time again that they would much rather let an entire company be destroyed rather than give up power to workers.
You will not have any success whatsoever of convincing existing corporations to embrace unions by proving an example.
A co op would be so different from existing systems that I fear people would think hey that’s neat but we can’t replicate it unless we started over.
There are plenty of examples of worker owned cooperatives, even huge successful ones like Mondragon, which is a multi bullion dollar coop that employs 70,000 workers.
Virtually no existing corporation nor its shareholders would want to become a co-op, because it would mean the inability to exploit and profit from their labor force. Just as they do not wish for unions to impede on their ability to exploit their labor force.
Hmm so I guess the challenge is create co ops that outperform c corps so much that investors give up trying to invest in regular c corps because they lose in the long run.
Ultimately worker coops by their design limit the amount of excess money that can be siphoned off and concentrated to CEO’s and shareholders, so capital holders would likely refuse to invest in co-ops in fear that were they to become the standard way of organizing businesses, they would get a smaller and smaller piece of the pie globally, as more wealth is distributed to the workers themselves instead.
The current system of capitalism is inherently designed to oppose all forms of more equal distribution of power and wealth.
If co-ops were to become successful in spite of that, the capital owners would likely attempt a military coup to literally fight back against it, just as they attempted during the Business Plot in response to FDR’s economic reforms.
The capital holders hold a tremendous amount of the power to influence the globe to their will due to their concentrated wealth, which is only possible to accumulate due to the accepted exploitation of labor. They will do everything in their power to prevent the loss of that power, even if it means sub-optimal profits.
Oh I bet a cooperative would have plenty of internal conflict. No group of humans gets together without conflict even when incentives are really well aligned.
The points above on the governance model I think are ideal, but another reason to do this would be to encourage other companies to look at the model and be encouraged to adopt it. If you start with a co op I think it’s less likely other companies would look at that and say he lets convert to a coop. I want to find ways to help improve the system currently running not just make one just company.
A great outcome in my mind is a story where you say look at this software company that’s fully unionized and they are killing it on growth and productivity, even higher than those non union shops.
This would make everyone pay attention because people don’t really care about anything but long term growth independent of the company’s operating system.
A co op would be so different from existing systems that I fear people would think hey that’s neat but we can’t replicate it unless we started over.
I didn’t say there would be no conflict, but significantly less.
If everyone is an owner, there is no incentive to withhold labor and strike, as they can simply come to a consensus with the other co-owners instead. The only reason unions exist and strike is because of an imbalance of power between the capital owners and the workers that generate the capital, so the unions must leverage their labor as a bargaining chip to try to get a slightly more fair deal. That dynamic is not present in a worker owned co-operative, since everyone is an owner and has the same incentive to increase profit, since it benefits all instead of the few.
All traditional companies have an incentive to fight the formation of unions, even if they do generate more profits, as CEO’s and shareholders do not wish to split up those profits to the workers any more than is absolutely necessary to retain those workers to begin with.
CEO’s and Shareholders are virtually all extremely self interested, often times combined with dark triad traits which both encouraged and enabled them to reach those positions to begin with.
They do not act rationally purely in interest of profit, as if that was the case, then they would’ve already adopted lower working hours, work from home, better benefits, and given partial ownership of the company to the workers voluntarily. Instead, history has shown time and time again that they would much rather let an entire company be destroyed rather than give up power to workers.
You will not have any success whatsoever of convincing existing corporations to embrace unions by proving an example.
There are plenty of examples of worker owned cooperatives, even huge successful ones like Mondragon, which is a multi bullion dollar coop that employs 70,000 workers.
Virtually no existing corporation nor its shareholders would want to become a co-op, because it would mean the inability to exploit and profit from their labor force. Just as they do not wish for unions to impede on their ability to exploit their labor force.
Hmm so I guess the challenge is create co ops that outperform c corps so much that investors give up trying to invest in regular c corps because they lose in the long run.
That might be worthwhile to try…
Ultimately worker coops by their design limit the amount of excess money that can be siphoned off and concentrated to CEO’s and shareholders, so capital holders would likely refuse to invest in co-ops in fear that were they to become the standard way of organizing businesses, they would get a smaller and smaller piece of the pie globally, as more wealth is distributed to the workers themselves instead.
The current system of capitalism is inherently designed to oppose all forms of more equal distribution of power and wealth.
If co-ops were to become successful in spite of that, the capital owners would likely attempt a military coup to literally fight back against it, just as they attempted during the Business Plot in response to FDR’s economic reforms.
The capital holders hold a tremendous amount of the power to influence the globe to their will due to their concentrated wealth, which is only possible to accumulate due to the accepted exploitation of labor. They will do everything in their power to prevent the loss of that power, even if it means sub-optimal profits.