Why is the idea of quality oriented “getting by” businesses popular here, but worker cooperatives generally scorned? A worker owned coop is more resilient to deciding to focus on quality and affordability than a business with investors and hierarchical ownership that can change (after a death or a sale etc)
I've never actually seen them criticized here but I'll bite since I've worked for one.
Worker owned companies are just a different shade of typical corporate politics. I worked for North America's largest sewer inspection and cleaning company. The company did about equal volumes of each type of work but since inspection is more technology based there were far more cleaners than there were inspectors and analysts. I'd been there about a year and I'd noticed that we were so far outpacing cleaning that we'd started to lapse on some of our contractual inspection storage commitments which required about ten years storage of raw inspection files. The inspection files were raw video with annotations. I drew up a proposal to build out centralized storage arrays and upgrade video processing site internet connections. Pretty baseline stuff to meet the needs of our contractual obligations. It went up for a vote because it'd effect the yearly budget which impacted dividends checks. It was unanimously voted down by the cleaners. I realized then and there that any business that's worker owned will be primarily be influenced by the largest in quantity labor group and haven't worked for one since.
Long way of saying that I wouldn't say it's any better or worse than other management structures.
There are different ways to structure worker cooperatives and decision making. Have you seen the consent-based framework sociocracy uses (rather than majority voting or consensus)?
It's hard to say without turning back time that this would've changed things. I could see a seasoned cleaner arguing that the diff of x and y dividends would be impactful to their lives and that I could be pressured to build a less efficient, decentralized system that compliments the existing decentralized system because when I signed up inefficiency was already built in.
Having voting power didn't actually change my position as someone making a proposal. It actually made it worse because now instead of convincing one slightly less informed king I'm trying to convince a room full of even lesser informed peasantry. It'd be like if the cleaners tried to convince me to buy the new line of vac truck with technology advancements that can clean a complex sewer in ten minutes instead of 30. Reflexively, having never dropped down in waders into a sewer I'd say, "Well, what's 20 more minutes of contractual time?"
That's ultimately the social mechanics that were at play: "Okay nerd, why do you need better efficiency and audit ability? This industry has gotten by just fine filing physical hard drives into physical filing systems for a long time." Without being required to empathize with the problem, and without being necessitated to have experienced decision making it's like democracy with pure bureaucracy and no subject matter experts.
https://www.sociocracyforall.org/consent-decision-making/
A reply would've been better. I'm not going to read an entire website after putting that much effort into a reply.
Your reply was premised on a misinformed understanding about consent based decision making so I shared how it works. Ok if you’re not interested. Have a good one
My reply was based on my experience at an actual company that makes money and holds a dominant market position, not a website or an idea. You have a good one as well.
Ok
What are some examples of worker cooperatives that are successful due to their focus on quality and affordability?
What might I buy from them?
(The only worker cooperative I knowingly buy from now is a local bakery/pizza place.)
As you mention, plenty of bakeries, grocery stores are worker owned. For example rainbow grocery is not _cheap_ but the quality is high and the bulk prices are not bad.
For some reason two of the biggest and best flour brands are worker owned: King Arthur and Bob’s Red Mill.
But if we’re talking bottom of the barrel prices, I don’t know many worker owned orgs that focus on that.
Turns out when operations are more democratic and left leaning (and all worker owned coops I know of in 2025 are left-leaning), workers are unlikely to support things that are cheaper but have negative externalities. So produce is more likely to organic (and expensive), farming practices are more likely to be ethical (and expensive), etc.
I’ve been on the lookout for worker owned clothing brands but they’re few and far between.
The post to which I replied was specifically about:
- worker cooperatives, and
- quality and affordability
I don't know whether worker cooperatives are more or less likely than a median business to generate negative externalities, so I won't comment on that part.
I wouldn't call Rainbow Grocery 'affordable'. It's been a long time since I bought anything there, but I recall it being much more expensive than every single chain supermarket (not just the lower end ones).
King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill are not 'worker cooperatives' as far as I can tell. They both have ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans), but I don't see anything suggesting they're run in a democratic (one employee = one vote) fashion.
https://www.bobsredmill.com/employee-owned Certainly many non-coop businesses have ESOPs but this says the goal is to transition to 100% employee-owned via the ESOP (rather than the typical single or low double digit employee grant pool). I recall reading that when Bob was dying he decided or had it in his will to transition his ownership fully to the employees.
edit: "100% employee owned / That happy day came in April 30th of 2020: as of our 10th anniversary, Bob’s Red Mill is now 100% employee owned, one of only about 6,000 businesses in the country to achieve this incredible feat."
Equal Exchange is a worker-owned co-op: https://equalexchange.coop their management leadership positions are rotating (across workers) and have compensation multiplier caps. The coffee at least is quite affordable compared with other specialty brands.
Thanks to zoning laws in Japan, whereby practically anyone is able to start a retail business with minimal capital and permitting requirements, there are many shops and food-related businesses that are worker-owned. Many are also highly affordable can be cheaper than chains or convenience options (apart from the very cheapest of chains).
'worker-owned' and 'worker cooperative' are not the same thing.
Re: small busineses... Many family businesses are 'worker-owned' but they are not 'worker cooperatives' because either:
- there's only a single worker, or
- the decisions are generally made by a single person (e.g. 'head of family')
Re: Bob's Red Mill... it has a board and a CEO etc. It doesn't seem to be a 'worker cooperative'.
Worker co-ops are scorned here? I think they just don’t come up much due to the nature of the industry.
Like all [citation needed] nerds I consumed a ridiculous amount of fantasy fiction growing up, and think programming is as close to magic as we’ll ever get in the real world. If somebody made a “Programmers Guild” in the style of a wizard’s guild, who among us wouldn’t join such a thing?
> If somebody made a “Programmers Guild” in the style of a wizard’s guild, who among us wouldn’t join such a thing?
HN is the wizard's guild.
I sort of assumed there was a wizard message board, that’s why they spend so much time gazing into their crystal balls.
Yes. HN is a western, liberal, and capitalist hive mind essentially. Or to put it another way, it is for the status quo, more or less. Things like coops are naturally going to not be too well received in such a place.
I’ve seen co-ops come up in a couple threads. Usually I see interest, not a ton of direct experience, sometimes a little bit of skepticism of the idea, but not a ton. Here’s an example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42748394
Now, you can find some negative reception I’m sure of you look hard enough, but generally the reception ranges from “a little experience” to “totally naive but curious.”
Yes they get criticized as communist idealism and without upside for people to start
Valid inquiry!