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.
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?
They don’t get all the stress of owning a business per-se because they most likely vote on a CEO/a council to handle that. Just like the Walmart heirs aren’t stressed about owning a business because they vote on a CEO to do that part, or how you as a voting citizen don’t get all the stress of running a country.
It is true though that an employee will be much more personally invested in that kind of voting than a typical investor given that’s they essentially can’t diversify like an investor can, without being so rich that they make more from investments than working anyway. And that they may choose to give themselves the option of direct democracy to varying degrees instead of representative democracy. In a standard white collar corporate environment that could kick up workplace politics to insane levels.
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.
> 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.
