Employee-owned corporations are corporations that are completely owned or partly owned by the employees. Employees are given shares of stock after a certain amount of employment or they can buy shares of stock at any time.
There are differences between an Employee-Owned Corporation and a Cooperative. Cooperatives do not have their stock publicly traded on stock exchanges. This means that in employee-owned corporations part of the company could be traded on stock exchanges and not owned by employees. Employee-owned corporations have elected leaders, but they are not held responsible to the employees. Often in employee-owned corporations they are much more profit oriented than cooperatives. Cooperatives have a different voting system and employees have much more say in the company. In most cooperatives every employee has an equal say in the way the organization is run. In the case of large employee-owned corporations such as Norcal Waste Systems most of the stock is held by millionaire executives. Most average pay employees do not have much stock compared to the rich executives. The executives control most of the stock and they control the company.
While employee-owned corporations might be seen as better than non employee-owned corporations, as a whole the company can be just as corrupt and profit hungry as any other big box corporation.
List of Employee-Owned Corporations in San Francisco:
