Co-ops and employee ownership

[ygolo]

Founder Refuses To Sell His $100M Company To Corporations, Gifts It To His Employees

One such person turned out to be Bob Moore of Bob’s Red Mill, who never forgot where he came from or the people who helped him get there. Having been born in 1929, Bob served in the Army, owned a couple of gas stations, lived a farmer’s life, managed an auto center, and built Moore’s Flour Mill...

www.aol.com

I have a lot of Bob's Red Mill products in my regular diet. They make nutritious food with natural ingredients that are affordable.

I just found out they're 100% employee owned.

 

[The Cat]

This company deserves all the good press! Always love to hear about these kind of companies. Sweet Thread!

 

[ygolo]

This company deserves all the good press! Always love to hear about these kind of companies. Sweet Thread!

This is one of the reasons I don't like -isms. What do you call that, Socialism, Capitalism, Communism?

I don't consume Ocean Spray products, and I don't understand their ownership structure, but they are one of the most famous growers co-ops.

Ocean Spray (cooperative) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Interestingly founded near the same time as Bob's Red Mill. Edit: Bob was born around that time. I misread.

 

[ygolo]

I remember hearing about the following. I don't know much about it, but I've also heard that the food in Italy is much better without people being able to put their finger on why.

The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP - YES! Magazine Solutions Journalism

Discover insightful articles on The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP. Join us in exploring solutions for a just, sustainable, and compassionate world. #The Italian Region Where Co-ops Produce a Third of Its GDP

www.yesmagazine.org

 

[The Cat]

This is one of the reasons I don't like -isms. What do you call that, Socialism, Capitalism, Communism?

I don't consume Ocean Spray products, and I don't understand their ownership structure, but they are one of the most famous growers co-ops.

Ocean Spray (cooperative) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Interestingly founded near the same time as Bob's Red Mill.

I don't worry about naming it beyond: "It works."
People can ism or not as long as they shut up and color when it works.
At the end of the day I figure it's just easier to convince some folk to bleed if you put an ism on it.

 

[ceecee]

All US and Canadian credit unions are financial cooperatives. Public banks are owned by a municipality or state, like The Bank of North Dakota - state owned and run. The US needs many more of these, in addition to placing banking back with the USPS (which existed from 1911 to 1967, this is in no way a new thing).

None of these are socialism or communism or even capitalism. But it's very difficult for the American mind to understand things like a massive consumer cooperative. This one is my favorite.

Inside the Walmart of Finland

Finland's largest private sector employer is a consumer cooperative.

www.peoplespolicyproject.org

The interesting thing about S Market, and what brought me all the way to Finland, is not this bog-standard grocery store. It’s the parent entity S Group, a cooperative network owned by its members—and one of the biggest and most successful companies in Finland. S Group has about 2.5 million members—in a country of just 5.6 million inhabitants—representing 78 percent of Finnish households, along with 41,000 employees, 1,984 business locations, and an annual revenue of €13.5 billion last year. S Group accounts for fully 47 percent of the Finnish grocery market.

King Arthur Flour, Great Lakes Brewing, WinCo Foods..are worker owned. Places like Defector Media, Means TV, New Era Windows...are actual worker cooperatives where workers are exclusive owners and managers of the firm, with one vote per employee in democratic decision-making.

 

[ygolo]

Workplace democracy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ygolo]

Mondragon Corporation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Virtual ghost]

This is one of the reasons I don't like -isms. What do you call that, Socialism, Capitalism, Communism?

The answer is simple, this is Capitalism. Constructive Capitalism to be exact. The variety that is so rare in certain countries/areas that the idea confuses people. I mean this is the "light side" of how a business can work. After all no one should really have a say in how ownership structure of a private company should look like. Trying to define that is kinda totalitarian logic when you think about it. Therefore this example is more genuinely capitalist than the corpo-hegemony (which most consider to be "the real Capitalism" for some reason). The example you have shown at the end of the day is basically nothing more than "going back to basics".

 

[ygolo]

Makes me wonder. What is the difference between a three-person founder-only company and a co-op? I suppose the small business could morph into something else.