Governance Template for a Worker Cooperative Company
Christopher Clayton
12/16/2011
Introduction and comments concerning this draft, 12/19/2023
When I first started to conceive of my own organizational conception of a decentralized worker co-operative business model (as opposed to marketing co-operatives or other models), I decided to write a basic charter to outline my core beliefs. Then the specific by-laws of any particular company using such a template would be decided by participatory democratic vote, at least in terms of core operating matters and company principles.
If I were to edit and rewrite this now, I would expand it with further ideas that I've thought about, such as an allowance for worker-owners to retain a share of the intellectual property that they help to come up with (ownership share between the corporate entity and the worker-owners). This is my conception of adding meritocracy to an otherwise equal compensation model for a co-operative company. That is, in every other sense compensation would come from equal profit distribution, or distribution out of the treasury in lean periods, and equal distribution of ownership shares meant for worker-owners only. I'd also add firmer language to make clear that various types of decisions would still belong to specific company job roles; every decision would not literally be up for democratic vote at a department level or corporate level.
The other part of the intellectual property section, namely how a company approaches other people using its software or other products that can be pirated/cracked without paying for the copies, came from a place of seeing Nintendo and other video game companies pursuing copyright claims (namely, video takedown requests) against YouTubers for video game footage that wasn't even monetized (before YouTube had many, if any, ways for users to make money off ads). At the time, that only served to spark fan backlash and harmed 'goodwill ' in the sense of consumers' attitude toward the companies partaking in such absolute pursuits. Now it is uncommon, if it occurs at all, for such footage to suffer copyright claims.
I cannot conceive of a workers' cooperative making copyright claims against people on a personal basis if they are not using the products to monetarily enrich themselves. My original idea about 'such copying by individual users also potentially gives the company free advertising anyway' is not one I necessarily agree with anymore, but the point is to conceive of a company that weighs pursuing copyright enforcement relative to the potential risk of harming its own brand reputation among consumers. This to me is a 'spirit of the law' approach, rather than an absolute litigation-happy and claims-happy strategy.
I also notice my tendency to drop commas in certain context and other language that could be cleaned up since writing the sections.
Regardless, the below draft reflects principles that I've generally held. I wanted to share the basic, unedited draft for that reason.
The point of such a company, to me, is to get away from treating labor as a commodity in itself in the most explicit way possible. I.e., setting a market price on peoples' skills or abilities directly is anathema in such a structure, and instead worker-owners are compensated indirectly based on overall company performance in the market (profit sharing or the equivalent in lean periods), along with equal provision of worker-owner stock shares (comprising at least 51% of the company's shares as a rule). This is my market-oriented and decentralized answer to addressing the classic economic concept of people becoming alienated from their own labor and subsequent chronic malaise & rebellion in industrial capitalist societies; i.e., the fetishization of labor as a commodity.
There is a growing cooperative movement, but I do not believe the existing governance practices of large cooperatives go far enough in addressing the questions that I find important. E.g., Mondragon may have a salary cap on executives (a wage ratio limit in terms of how high executive salaries can go versus other workers), but this doesn't address treating everyone's comparative advantage as equally contributory. Keeping in mind that 'comparative advantage ' doesn't mean someone is the most efficient at an assigned job role; it means they are covering the burden of someone else having to do that particular work.
To me, in a truly cooperative organization in which all members are worker-owners (besides outside minority investors), if someone is truly seen as not contributing equally to a company's provision of services/commodities, generating revenue and/or saving costs (depending on role), then they will be voted out by their fellow worker-owners as appropriate (fired). Under this idea, people in the company are not inherently paid less for having skills that are 'less in demand ' or 'are in over-supply ' in a direct sense, and that is the primary purpose of such a democratic system.
Thoughts on interview processes and standards for judging comparative advantages - 29 June 2024
Because there has been a large round of layoffs in the white-collar jobs market over Q1 and Q2 of this year, of course lots of anecdotal articles have ended up coming out or have been recycled on news aggregators about interview processes, how to interview effectively and how to present one's skills and experience. Including articles about how someone even with a lot of skills and experience can still end up needing to find a job that is lower-paying than jobs previously held. Especially in large tech companies, the 'rigorous' interview process to get hired at all or to get promoted reflects the particular standards of these companies, their perceived prestige as desirable companies to work for even as they lay off many people, and the internal company labor market standards they create (akin to a company town) which adds distortions to the overall market of labor as a commodity.
However, holding everyone to the same type of standard for interviews and hiring glosses over consideration of the total comparative advantages they could fulfill. It may motivate them to work to meet those standards, i.e. if they are rejected for a particular role and thus become motivated to try again, but in the meantime other aspects of their character may be lost in terms of their other competencies as they go through the effort of meeting those particular standards. Why does a company necessarily need everyone to be excellent at interviewing (public speaking skills) and showing exact, quantitative results of their previous work? What about showing results through a portfolio, or other written means? What about qualitative analysis skills to break down alternate ways of approaching a problem or situation? Having everyone conform to some particular standards for various roles means a company doing so is at risk of becoming inflexible at all levels.
This also means that the intuitive conclusion that having more experience and skills translates to being a relatively rare entity in the job market, and thus that one should be more highly compensated under such circumstances, breaks down under these excuses and competition among workers to meet various market skill standards and large company's internal standards, including standards for how these skills are even presented. Then these standards become a baseline and an excuse to pay new hires less compared to previously when those particular skills truly were harder to find, especially after a mass layoff, and especially if they don't interview or negotiate 'well'.
I find that more companies starting with a cooperative governance model that pay base equally for all comparative advantages, provided different comparative advantages are onboarded proportionally but where the hiring system is still ultimately up to decisions from direct democratic mechanisms, are thus needed more than ever. Companies that now have trillions of dollars in market valuation, which got to where they were without having any direct democratic structures and treated labor purely as an expense, have more room to set their own standards for hiring that distort the market for labor as a commodity more than ever to bend the supposedly meritocratic social compact that having more experience and skills means higher compensation. Why assign different valuations to different comparative advantages and levels of skill and experience when excuses are made up to pay someone less than they made at their previous job anyway? A big excuse can be claiming 'skill rust' solely due to extended unemployment that was not the fault of an active job seeker. This is partly why I started to think of alternate compensation models to begin with, besides expanding on the premise of labor as a commodity being a form of fetishization and dehumanization.
The question which I didn't address in the original corporate governance model draft is how hiring should be done to judge what skills and experiences are needed in a worker-owner cooperative model, given limited resources. There's nothing inherently at issue with having quantitative and rigorous standardized interviews and tests to measure certain skills, especially for certain positions. However, in a direct democratic company where one is being judged for hire at a department or company level, where an interview group reports the results for voting on who to ultimately onboard versus why an additional position is needed, I'd think that results from those tests or questions would be measured against other skills and abilities demonstrated in the interview process, resume, portfolio, etc. which may add a different viewpoint and flexibility to such a role. I.e., perhaps a tactical or strategic (relative to that role and hierarchical position) instead of absolute linear problem-solving skills. Both are important even in software programming and mathematics; rote-memorizing equations or lines of code is not the only skill involved and some will be more efficient or effective at one aspect of such subject matter domains over the other. This is where a balance of looking at what skills the company already has versus current candidates matters, instead of hiring to one absolute standard for a particular role. E.g., someone on a factory floor may not have the highest output (assembly completion rate for their particular work-station), but may be taking other actions that lower costs or result in higher-quality work along that production line.
Activities or roles that are in fact only temporarily needed to be done to cover a seasonal output ramp-up or to gain insight (outside consulting) could still be contracted, ideally from companies holding the same worker cooperative principles or from individuals acting as their own business, under fair and mutual contract terms. That is, true back-and-forth to conclude a temp work contract or consulting contract with no terms effectively imposed onto one party as a condition of agreement due to relatively higher market capitalization or other differences in power to prevent distortions in the contract process.
That being said, even though a worker cooperative company will still need to make decisions on which skill mix to have for different roles, and how many for each level of hierarchy relative to company size and revenue due to limited resources, the basic idea remains to make worker-ownership share assignment and monetary compensation base equal for all worker-owners so no one is internally competing and jostling for particular roles only because they pay more and thus are gate-kept behind 'rigorous' standards. Companies that treat labor as an expense may call this getting the most out of their employees and forcing candidates to skill up, but the fact that this is subverted through other excuses to end up paying highly skilled and experienced people less money than expected anyway, or to have them effectively start from the hierarchical bottom again in spite of having cross-transferable skills due to their finding that they had to change career paths given market conditions or other factors, means that treating various comparative advantages as commodities that are directly subject to supply and demand ends up not even being an internally consistent system or consistent social contract. Companies that treat labor this way have too much motivation to keep labor expenses at a minimum, and have too few high-hierarchical positions which are associated with relatively high wages.
A worker-cooperative model with base equal compensation methods instead is intended to create a base level of motivation among worker-owners, especially in terms of giving them a stake in the company that allows for voting and bringing decisions to vote that are agreed as department-wide or company-wide in importance, with base compensation directly tied to company performance at all levels. This does not rule out meritocratic methods such as allowing people to keep part ownership of intellectual property created for the company, but gets rid of conformist systems that select for only specific skills and competencies to disproportionately compensate those who happen to meet those standards, in spite of others having equally important competencies for such roles or who contribute a comparative advantage in some other way.
If a role is truly needed in a company (comparative advantage is being filled, and filled competently), why create excuses to pay lower for that role versus others, and risk de-motivation and high turnover, besides the fundamental inhumanity of treating labor as an expense? It's especially suspicious when various roles require fulfilling multiple comparative advantages as needed in a modern company anyway, or someone may laterally move into fulfilling a competency considered to be 'worth more' as they learn or as requested, relative to those skills as having a higher market demand or scarcer supply, but that doesn't mean a review for higher pay will occur. This is why I conclude that more businesses need to be started that provide majority worker-owner classes of shares, or else we will continue to have a majority of businesses focused on reducing labor expenses to the extreme on outside shareholder value maximization and other logic, regardless of more difficult to measure consequences on company performance that attend this type of workforce regime.
Specific comparative advantages targeted in mass layoffs - 4/23/2025
At least in the United States, we are now seeing mass layoffs as a 'cost cutting' measure within the context of most companies' employment systems treating labor as a commodity, on top of other tactics and excuses used to push out experienced workers and make them practically have to restart their careers over again, eroding what sense of a 'free market' even existed to begin with. I don't believe it can be compared to anything recent except what occurred during the Great Recession. Software engineers were targeted recently where such a comparative advantage was beforehand thought to be entirely safe and immune from such pressures, and now there is a push at various companies to eliminate 'middle manager bloat'.
All of this belies a return to even more intense short-term outlook strategies where massive profits made during COVID are deliberately not available for use to maintain a workforce during a downturn in consumption activities; where labor is absolutely seen as most expendable and where capital goods take the center. Private equity firms especially have motive to do this to vassal companies because they have no direct legal obligations to them; they can be made indebted and gradually turned into a shell with no consequences to the ownership companies.
The problem with mass layoffs directed at middle-managers in particular, even if it were viable long-term to gut a company's workforce that otherwise needs enough workers assigned to various comparative advantages to operate effectively, is that the burden will then fall to other workers anyway where such business management skills are not necessarily their competitive advantages in terms of effectiveness at such skills. This is especially the case with engineers or product directors who might then be asked to pull double-duty and where even if they are skilled in such business matters, they still may be stretched thin in dealing with those areas of the company.
Companies that cut 'bureaucracy' in favor of 'innovation' may not even achieve such innovation goals if the engineering force itself doesn't represent a diversity of job positions representing different comparative advantages to increase the chance of product improvements occurring that the public wants. 'Engineer' still normally has only one professional definition: someone who has successfully rote-memorized a lot of information in order to pass a battery of standardized tests over a prolonged period of time where such tests are widely recognized, or who already had prior knowledge built up outside of school to accomplish this (e.g. earning a Bachelor’s in engineering after completing coursework largely consisting of such tests as marks of qualification). That doesn't necessarily represent that everyone meeting such a definition has creative thinking abilities within the context of hard sciences and how to apply such principles to an engineering project. Someone who can't pass such tests with high scores may still be effective at looking up data, formulas and procedures, and applying them toward creating safe as well as creative products or sub-systems (components/parts) of overall products.
Absolutely culling people who have effectiveness in certain comparative advantages, or who are otherwise filling them so someone else doesn't have to do such work, such as 'the bureaucracy' also doesn't give such people a chance to do some other work in the company, instead imposing costs on society in reduced service provision and product offerings as well as costs imposed on the individual due to needing to 'up-skill' at their own expense. In practice this ultimately creates a race to the bottom of destructive competition between workers to compete for jobs representing comparative advantages for which companies have deemed to be the only ones worth paying a living wage or salary, while constantly changing what extremely exact, specific skills are needed for such jobs without regard to cross-transferrable skills and knowledge, such as applicants supposedly 'needing' to know the latest software application of the day and having 'expertise' in it despite whether a given candidate has worked in multiple very similar software applications (e.g. experience in ERP systems and multiple modules in them despite not knowing the currently most-popular one, where such software packages are prohibitively expensive to buy and practice with on an individual basis).
Again, the only way out of such contradictions and spirals to me is if more companies are formed that adopt a co-operative model based on equal base compensation according to company performance, alongside worker ownership shares being issued which are returned to a company if someone is laid off or fired after a democratic review process takes place at either a department-level or company-wide level, or if more companies reform toward such a system. Paying people inherently differently by comparative advantage when those people are presumably needed in a company and are contributing to the results of the company is only designed to keep workers competing with each other destructively, and where in monopoly capitalism the large companies are hardly competing with each other; rather that they hint at each other about collectively making mass authoritarian lay-off decisions, deciding which skill should be promoted as the 'most valuable' or taking other such measures designed to keep labor as an expense low. Having companies with alternative employment and compensation principles would also mean more employment systems that are more likely to encourage re-utilizing what would amount to worker-owners in the company toward other comparative advantages instead of immediately considering a complete and flat role elimination, and to retain more emergency money for lean operational periods. Because worker-owners would not be 'labor expense' line items in such systems, every worker-owner in such a company may also simply get paid less due to reduced company performance relative to the share of revenue and treasury money allotted for compensation purposes without resorting to any particular comparative advantages being scapegoated as dragging down the company, unless it's found from peer review that some people truly aren't working effectively.
Fundamental theory of what defines capitalism versus other potential iterations of modern economies and societies - 5/17/2025
Anyone with knowledge of socialism and Marxism can see the influence both have had on my thought development process regarding cooperative company models. I call my approach a form of market socialism; this involves theories contemplating a fundamentally decentralized form of socialism or with minimal centralization (such as a consumer price aggregation board and little else) as opposed to Leninist strains of intense government control of the economy and even cultural matters, where the early to mid-term results of the latter system resulted in high human cost to rapidly develop heavy industry, followed by diminishing returns and little in the way of continued living standard increases. Another source of influence on my ideas as such has been the closely-related idea of council communism (government structure largely defined by autonomous but mutually-cooperative councils). I never wanted to explicitly call this out as such, but it is central to how I came to a fundamental conclusion about how to cut through the noise and minimally define 'capitalism' as a concept.
In my view, what modern macroeconomics of any strain has always taken as part of its fundamental basis, which can be traced even back to Boehm-Bawerk's criticism of Das Kapital, is a rejection of the labor theory of value in totality in favor of ascribing a company's fundamental value to capital goods and equipment, in spite of labor being the entire source of the physical building of capital instruments to begin with. Once modern economics and consumer theory began after the privations of the first industrialization efforts of nations pushing factory laborers to extreme depths of overtime work with little pay and safety standards compared to company performance and the dangers of the work, the labor theory of value was largely thrown out by mainstream economic thinkers. Soon then came the idea of 'human resources' as part of managerial science developments.
This defines what I see as the fundamental difference between capitalism and moving toward another system on the whole. That is, that labor is seen as a commodity in itself under capitalism, which now takes the form of being called a 'labor expense' in modern accounting disciplines. That is the simplest and most fundamental difference between it and other organizational and economic systems, especially in how feudalism and slavery treat labor which in various nation-states and polities has existed side-by-side with forms of capitalism and mercantilism. It's about lack of inherent meaningful ownership to have a say in business decisions over business activity as a worker in a company or other concern (a business' or other concern's 'rental' of someone's labor via distinct primary ownership groups). This can apply even up to the hierarchical status of being an executive despite that class of worker typically being compensated many times more than other workers and sometimes under modern business theory being defined as a 'manager' in the sense of managers being taken to be completely distinct from workers. This then means compensation is not directly tied to company results (profit sharing or stored treasury sharing based on the market performance of the company's goods/services) in favor of a supposedly fair supply and demand determination of one's skills and abilities to determine pay rate by type of comparative advantage being filled for the concern. However, to me, further growth, living standards and a smoothing of tensions due to inequality of opportunity and unequal contracts due to workers having to settle for conditions that they otherwise might not reasonably accept because of the power of companies cannot be overcome unless the definition of 'free market' no longer acceptably includes directly treating labor as a commodity in itself.
As I've said in the above foreword and expansion of notes to expound on the worker cooperative draft that I originally assembled, businesses in their modern forms as largely authoritarian entities keep redefining what 'skilled' even means to get around even previously-established notions of supply and demand valuations of labor in itself as a commodity that modern companies themselves originally set from hinting at each other (or via outright colluding with each other before anti-compete laws became commonplace), with a common goal of maintaining such a system of treating labor in that way. The original excuse of then-nascent industrial companies to work factory laborers overtime in particular and to use relative disparities in power as they grew to displace farm labor and other systems of employment to force such standards due to such laborers being considered 'unskilled' in the comparative and competitive advantages they could offer stopped being so easy after governments began to implement centralized mandated safety and minimum wage counter-standards, as well as the introduction of welfare systems (the modern theory of a mixed economy). This is where original cooperative theory came about with some pioneering businesses putting it into practice in Europe, as well as the further development of syndicalist and anarchist movements, to attempt creating counter-systems.
Now particularly in the United States and the European Union, we see continual challenges to monopoly companies again, particularly against 'tech' companies (software and some hardware), after the first Gilded Age breakups and the breakdown of centralized Union-mediated bargaining and pension plan-based corporate relations and compensation systems in the United States. However, like other government-centralized attempts at reigning in excesses and overreach, anti-trust action or other endeavors can only do so much. Particularly in the US, Federal government action can change or be suspended based on the motivations of newly-elected politicians given that 'social democracy'-style mixed economy standards are not as prevalent as a counter-balance to large authoritarian companies.
This is why I find that forms of market socialism, or however one wants to call it, deserve more attention now and where more companies either should be started on such principles or existing ones should start to reform towards such governance bases. Modern nation-states have all of the judicial framework, dispute resolution mechanisms and infrastructure for exactly these endeavors toward further developing such ideas as norms. The example draft I created was always a policy suggestion for how the basis of such a company could be formed to begin countering completely top-down companies run by a few majority ownership entities based on the economic principle of treating labor as a commodity, pending how a direct democratic vote might proceed in a given startup company among the founding worker-owners to define the specific starting governance principles in actual practice.
Otherwise, at most, capitalism under the fundamental definition of 'treating labor itself as a commodity' eventually took the form of Japanese keiretsu conglomerates, with attendant job security and other concerns that in theory take just as much policy importance as profits, but true to this fundamental definition, even that form of capitalism still involves allowing labor to be fetishized (no inherent ownership or control over such companies by workers and little or no compensation based on the direct market performance of the goods/services), and such a system still involves trusting top-down ownership structures to keep maintaining even those values. Even that much of a development hasn't happened in plenty of other countries. Japan's style was also seriously tested from the overreach that various financial companies took in global property investments when the economy reached a peak, creating an eventual bubble which still affects the country now in low consumption and growth patterns. The matter also forcibly introduced some Japanese companies to the then-nascent American concept of vassalage under private equity companies when some banks and other entities had little choice but to sell themselves to such ownership regimes for cash infusion. The power of private equity companies as a particularly authoritarian strain of capitalism is still felt now, where debt-pumping into vassal companies to cover inventory or other operational matters is now a standard when the short-term extraction of all profits results in a later cash shortfall within the vassal. At least in the United States, the vassal companies can be made to take sole responsibility for such debt, leading to now-classic outcomes such as Toys 'R Us' bankruptcy under this type of financial regime that can spiral into extreme outcomes for society.
Fundamental reasoning for why treating labor as a commodity represents an exploitative economic contract - 8/31/2025
Continually for years, my friend and I vociferously but ultimately good-naturedly discuss whether it's sensical in a true free market to treat labor as a commodity and what the impact actually is, and if the impact is fair. He in essence takes a high-level Austrian school-type standpoint that it is fair because it is a matter of competition among peers and so needing to 'up-skill' to escape relative low wages is just fine as a concept, even though it creates a circle of new high standards and thus forces people to undergo this process or that otherwise they 'deserve' relatively low wages if they don't participate in such peer competition. Further, that people who had 'most wanted' skills at one point should have socked enough money away to ride out being able to re-train themselves for the 'next skill cycle.'
Sure, this logic makes sense except that it requires being fine with those with the 'most common' capabilities (labeled as 'unskilled') being forced to choose between starvation or needing to take jobs which the vast majority of employers adhering to a 'supply and demand' system as it applies to labor and skills in themselves hardly pay out for. Then resulting in an inability to ever reasonably afford to so-called 'skill up,' and that in any event the companies presumably need such comparative advantages filled.
My argument then always comes down to why a needed comparative advantage fulfillment would then not be paid the base amount relative to overall company performance, anyway. Peer review in a 'labor as a commodity in itself' employment system doesn't entirely take place in terms of hiring (no real voting systems in modern authoritarian companies across departments as to whether to hire a given person or fire a current worker based on peer review), and yet it's expected increasingly for workers to compete among themselves for a smaller and smaller number of actually living-wage jobs just because those jobs are called inherently 'more useful.' This still doesn't escape the fact that if a company needs those comparative advantages filled, why wouldn't it be paid the same? To value it inherently lower is ultimately less effective for society and the company itself because again, the individual has far less means to even consider taking on different skills in such circumstances and is nevertheless presumably freeing someone else from having to undertake that role.
This is especially the case if some employees are paid extraordinarily highly in certain markets because of having 'rare' skills, driving up housing prices, rent and other living costs for everyone due to sellers being able to increase prices and expect buyers at those prices, and yet resultingly where few people can truly afford such an area anymore and still have any standard of well-being. Even the 'hot' skills in such 'tech' markets such as programming have finally lost their status and are being paid less on that logic with fewer jobs. Again, as I described previously, such activity to straight cut 'labor expenses' has occurred without any creativity applied toward how to use workers in other ways, especially given that anyone can learn.
If companies would stop using living wages as some reservation for only the 'rare' skills and instead instilled meritocracy via allowance to partially keep intellectual property rights, or if a majority of newly-formed companies displace this employment model from majority use, a huge relative income inequity between workers would be alleviated. The argument for paying more for 'rare' skills lies in meritocracy to some degree and as recompense for the company taking the intellectual property rights completely, but because of the relatively exploitive nature of even highly-paid employees ultimately being used as commodities relative to direct base equal compensation based on company performance, I can't agree with the logic under a labor theory of value standpoint.
Sure, a system of considering people who won't 'upskill' as a 'lazy worker' category of people and making sure workers are destructively competing for a relatively few number of living wage jobs whose skill requirements keep constantly changing keeps working thanks to mixed government interventions, rebellions and strikes, but it need not be this way. It's only this way now because of large companies that became as large as they did under an absolute ownership and labor division structure with uneven values assigned to different types of labor because of baseline exploitation of power to offer employment contracts where people don't have a reasonable choice between it and starvation in the most baseline and fundamental of situations. I can't call that a true choice and thus I can't call that truly a feature of a free market system.
It is the case that modern labor expenses can be a relatively high percentage of company expenses in systems that treat labor as a commodity; see [Deloitte] (archived summarized analysis) or blog posts such as at [Rippling.com]. However, it's still highly uneven based on type of comparative advantage that someone is formally hired to fulfill and the mechanism for payment is still based on treating labor as a commodity. As I described before, this has become increasingly hypocritical anyway because people regularly fulfill duties beyond their supposed comparative advantage assignment due to 'do all other tasks as needed' now being a common job requirement; in spite of modern tools, processes and average level of education and capability across all types of skills resulting in higher productivity than ever. Even if baseline living standards have increased, the massive discrepancy between modern workers (including when treating managers as workers given that they also are typically paid in wages as an expense) and owners has still sparked sociological studies finding for a correlation with relative feelings of unwellness, if not that there is direct causation. E.g., see studies such as one at [BMC Public Health].
I had also found a pop culture/pop economics article in essence analyzing this type of destructive competition among workers as a requirement just to keep from starving, or amongst those with actual living wages or even higher-paying jobs to keep up status symbols and a sense of social progression, as needless waste, but it made the conclusion that social democracies such as those in Scandinavia could serve as a model for removing baseline exploitation of economic contracts (that which inculcates a feeling of needing to work without any actual overall social upliftment being accomplished on an equal opportunity basis without destructive competition) [Jacobin.com]. This was also related to previous Keynesian spending programs to make up for a lack of demand during economic contractions caused by contradictions in capitalism because of exploitation. Sure, top-down intervention to that extent has been shown to remove unnecessary privation and circular status-chasing to reduce exploitative benefits to companies, but as part of putting forth worker cooperative governance visions for companies, I don't see why that should be necessary. A wellspring of enough independent organizations participating in an economy in a way which rejects treating labor directly as a commodity without intervention would fulfill the same outcome and without as large of a mixed government intervention.
To me, again, it only makes sense from an organizational and overall economic well-being standpoint to value actually-needed skills and capabilities in a company all in the same base way to prevent malaise, unwellness, rebellion, and strikes; and thus ultimately production inefficiencies and potential cycles of people being unable to afford buying any goods or services. That is, overall economic contraction, especially due to the uncreative shedding of jobs for large language models to take over without any immediately explicit replacement job types or plans to reutilize impacted workers in sight; just plans to shed labor as an expense. The performance of a worker cooperative company and thus what is left to distribute as profits will necessarily mean differences in the competency that they can attract as a natural effect instead of inherently attempting to value skill competency and type of comparative advantage filled on a direct supply and demand basis; again what I find inevitably becomes a directly exploitive endeavor.
A mixed economy government policy approach to help seed more worker cooperative companies might be to offer loans through small business departments, whether interest-free or otherwise, to those seeking to start businesses based on minimally non-exploitive principles as outlined in this article. That is, exclusive loans or funding only to such businesses as a public policy principle, whether as allowed by government administrative functions or in the explicit creation of related Statutes. It could be said that such policies are discriminatory, but my argument would then be that it is discriminatory against the government funding of companies that are ultimately exploitative against both the most vulnerable and in those thinking they are working hard to attain an even higher quality of life but where strings are pulled (on the excuse of supply and demand regarding abstract concepts such as 'skill level' and 'type of skill') to make this impossible except for a few. I wouldn't then reasonably call this harmful discrimination; not actually harmful and neither constituting an undue or bad faith rejection for funding but rather putting government in a position of helping to obsolete portions of itself via general, sustainable social uplifting. Progressive taxation to attempt, on a public policy scale, to claw back money earned from social harms via exploitation and similar interventions don't ultimately create a positive feedback loop for different economic systems that don't rely on centralization, and thus the risk of exploitation via power imbalances forcing outcomes that others would not reasonably agree to is not actually curtailed.
Citations
1. Rippling.com, https://www.rippling.com/blog/payroll-as-a-percentage-of-revenue-by-industry, accessed 29 April 2025
2. Deloitte, https://web.archive.org/web/20250421232629/https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/human-capital/us-cons-laborwise-core-data-sheet.pdf, originally natively accessed 29 April 2025.
3. BMC Public Health, https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-023-16871-6, accessed 31 August 2025.
4. Jacobin.com, https://jacobin.com/2025/03/work-keynes-scandinavia-class-leisure/, accessed 24 August 2025.
Overlap with challenges in starting a business in general; unique challenges of worker co-op startups - 11/13/2025
In contemplating worker co-ops, the fact is that they are business organizations like any other. The point is that hierarchical, ownership and compensation regimes are meant to be fundamentally different than traditional 'labor as a commodity' structures.
With that, choosing original partners and finding a product or service to offer is the same challenge as any company in a start-up stage. Just because the structure is different also doesn't preclude seeking outside funding. At least in my conception, however, no more than 49% of the company would be made available to outside investors which would especially preclude certain types of venture capital offers wanting a majority of control.
Part of why I have self-published a variety of articles outside of my core admin and intellectual skills and experience is exactly out of exploring product concepts with which to start such a potential business. The original product idea involved drones but my own technical deficiencies precluded motivation towards taking the idea even into a concept stage until relatively recently. Further, since I first originally thought of drones as a business idea, the market has became highly saturated. I also thought about refurbishing bikes which I still believe has a niche market (buy frames or other used bikes and rebuild the setup with new components), but the bike market has always been saturated and has suffered from a post-COVID excess production phenomenon like other sports hard-goods products. I've also brewed beer by renting semi-commercial setups with other people and then transitioned into individually brewing wine, which also requires finding an exact niche in a crowded market if it were to transition from a hobby into a business. I didn't conduct in-depth statistical analysis on business prospects in these areas, but if someone is serious about providing any given product or service business, SWOT analysis and other methods are clearly relevant regardless of planned business structure.
The other problem as mentioned is finding people to initially start such a company. Unlike a traditional start-up, the original founders will not be the only owners as the company expands given that everyone who comes into the company will have part-ownership. In my such conception, that means 51% of the company is reserved for that purpose and where every worker-owner taken on is given an equal proportion of such shares. Meaning the proportion of 'worker-owner shares' everyone has will either be diluted or expand if worker-owners are taken on or drop out (or laid off/fired by peer vote, or otherwise leave by whatever means the governance mechanism employs for changing the workforce composition).
Before I was even much into what turned into a major, lasting job for me at a company owned by a publicly-traded parent (which was later sold to an equity company), I had put out a post on Craigslist to find people who wanted to contemplate starting a worker co-op and to come up with a product together. I did find a few people willing in theory to meet and potentially figure that out, but I was still feeling the effects of grief and other emotional attachment impacts from certain interpersonal matters at that point. I couldn't follow through in any real sense, and ever since my stint as a volunteer video game modification maker, I had found that I like to work alone more than anything. I especially don't like being in a leadership position trying to figure out what other people can or should do (role assignment). That came up in a modding context when I had people from a particular forum community I was volunteering in willing to help me on a particular more-ambitious (for me at that point) mod I was contemplating, but I just wasn't willing to take on much help. By then I was getting tired of doing work on video games in general after helping as a team-member on various mods in that particular video game community.
Part of the point of a worker co-op, to me, is to decentralize certain agreed decisions across all worker-owners and/or on a department basis as needed, as defined in the governance document (where it is periodically reviewed again and points updated by vote as more worker-owners are taken on). That means less reliance on any particularly generally charismatic people conducting a vast number of top-down decisions. However, such a company has to start somewhere and I've always had less and less willingness to employ charisma or interpersonal skills towards meeting strangers to any sort of in-depth goals myself. Yet that's what is required in particular to start any sort of multi-person (thus, reasonably scalable) business; at least at first. If it's done with preexisting friends, the risk is bleed-over into the personal connections in a deleterious way (added stress or drama from the business). Having a voting and ownership mechanism like a worker co-op is designed to relieve such tension, but nevertheless a business and co-worker connection added on can change the dynamics of preexisting personal friendships.
Consideration for the ethical use of multiple business entity registrations - 12/15/2025
As outlined in my article dealing with a cryptocurrency fraud situation for a family member, one of the tactics commonly employed by companies to attempt dodging responsibility for harm or for the fulfillment of relevantly-invoked contractual duties is to claim some sort of other entity is actually responsible. It doesn't matter if the entity is effectively a related company; unless it participated directly in harmful acts or can be shown otherwise to be self-similar to another entity that may be 'more relevant' in terms of direct control of its finances or employees, at least in a US context this type of argument can run afoul of alter ego standards. I.e., a registrar entity in a digital Internet company context is not necessarily responsible for a registrant's activities, even if the registrar explicitly gives up control of customer identification matters to a registrant as a proxy service that is completely under its ownership. Or more generally, a US subsidiary accused by a US litigant of having responsibility for harm or for failure of a duty by a parent company in a different jurisdiction relevantly failing an alter ego test.
I've also seen one entity in my particular disputes allege another entity in a completely different region as most relevant even though that second entity didn't even exist during events in controversy. Further, the second entity is a foreign business registration under a registered agent (no corporate officers in that location at all) and the founding entity targeted is otherwise the principal place of business (the founding entity). I find that can't possibly represent a consistent legal framework because the stances of each off-shore jurisdiction on matters relevant to that dispute aren't even anywhere near the same (i.e., the extent of duties around the identification of third-parties mixed up with entities are interpreted far differently in each jurisdiction).
Obfuscation via multiple business entities to me is then an unethical corporate strategy, even if it works legally in certain contexts, because it's used to attempt dodging responsibility for the results of laxities in other corporate policies allowing for the risk of harms to occur, or otherwise allowing for the failure of legal or contractual duties when convenient, via making it difficult to target the 'correct' entity for rectifying the harms or to invoke certain duties. Ownership-separated companies that treat labor as a commodity clearly instruct their lawyer employees or third-party counsel to use such defenses wherever possible in various disputes, including the ones I've outlined in my article on the fraud case I'm dealing with for a family member and in my outline of international data privacy laws and policies. I don't necessarily blame internal employees or employees at third-party law firms for this.
However, at some point third-party partners as separately-contracted part-owners at law firms handling a given case directly, to me, have a responsibility to knock some sense into their clients if it's becoming apparent in any given dispute that a litigant or claimant has chosen a jurisdiction applicable for subject matter and personal jurisdiction and where it has been described exactly why other entities are not relevant (summoned at least one correct entity in an acceptable jurisdiction), even if this takes a few jurisdiction changes or dispute resolution forum changes to achieve this. There's always the risk of arguments on technicalities being fully defeated by a determined-enough litigant or claimant who may make certain initial filing 'mistakes' in that sense, but who is ultimately willing to make corrections/revisions. Such partners in particular are not mere employees within law firms that treat non-partners as commodities via pure wage labor, and so they can control whether to fully follow client instructions without question pushing for defenses on technicalities. Even so, I suppose they could be at risk of forfeiting a service contract even if they explain to a client why arguing on such procedural matters ultimately won't work due to resistance encountered, but then they are still sandwiched with the reputational risk otherwise in dishonestly continuing to push such defenses.
Most fundamentally, in a company where all workers have equal co-ownership and understand what workers can go through in a company and how consumers can be treated, I can't see policies which maximize the shirking of duties or for the risk of harm occurring against the public as being possible in the first place. I.e., to me it would be unlikely for standing corporate policies to exist in the first place of such a sort because of the unlikelihood for them to be voted into place by the worker-owners, such as allowing for laxities in customers being accepted to use such a company's services without necessarily understanding their identities fully (e.g., particularly in regard to financial and Internet services that allow customers to interact with third parties); or for such a company to ignore foreseeable risks in harming other people or the environment in taking certain patterns of action. Under such circumstances, I then can't see an excess of business shell companies being created for the obvious sole purpose of making it difficult for harms and duties to be disputed with or litigated against such a company. Of course, on an international scale, different entities need to be registered by region or country for tax and core operational purposes in the least and in some cases for responsibility over customer identification by region, but that is very different from a policy of obfuscation via registering large numbers of entities in various jurisdictions; including creating shell entities in off-shore jurisdictions (again, entities without corporate officers in the jurisdictions of registration which are not de facto principal places of business; including in situations where a company is made up entirely of off-shore registered entities. There's still a primary founding entity even in the latter sense).
Then in any ethical sense, to me, as soon as any corporate strategy is contemplated with a core purpose of making it difficult to decipher a corporate governance structure in terms of a company's number of business entities and what they do, it already represents the makings of a dishonest corporate policy. I.e., obfuscating which ones are actually operationally-relevant and for which exact operations, which are simply around for off-shore tax purposes, which serve as trademark registration repositories, and which are mere attempts at breaking up legal responsibilities into multiple jurisdictions even if that violates consistency in legal framework upon scrutiny. Again, ultimately, such excuses will break down anyway in dispute resolution as soon as a 'correct' entity and associated jurisdiction is targeted for a given situation. All such a structural strategy can ultimately do is stave off less-determined litigants or claimants, but there's no need for this within an honestly-run business anyway in terms of how it executes the core provision of products/services.
Consideration of large language models in driving possibilities for alternate social organization - 1/28/2026
As has been reported continuously in popular culture-adjacent articles, large language models (typically now referred to in the media and marketing materials as 'AI' without any other qualifier) has had an impact, at least to some extent, on both low hiring rates and mass layoffs in the current economy.
The extent of such automation's current impact can be debated, including what the return on investment for businesses has been, but it can be postulated that more and more disenfranchised workers exist even when solely considering the mass layoff of engineers and mid-level managers in particular regarding white-collar jobs alone, as previously discussed. The typical headline is a fear of permanent job loss without any replacements.
In terms of what heuristics/large language models actually do in their current state, however, it comes down to their utilizing an amalgamation of existing information and data; putting aside how all that training data is acquired and what property rights controversies can arise from that process towards commercial ends. It is leading to software automation as well as in how machines or robots can move autonomously or do other tasks (complex interfacing between analog-to-digital scanning devices and internal digital systems), where the most-effective average result in the training data may be referenced first. However, that's what it all amounts to; this is not 'creativity' in any particular sense. Yet most businesses in seeing labor as a mere commodity and expense item are at least in part motivated to conduct layoffs because of this possibility in mass replacement with capital-intensive heuristic-based automation.
This means, again, that it is largely a losing game to 'up-skill' in a way which such businesses want to see because paying to go through training/learning for official or otherwise provable credentials results in skills that are obsoleted by such business standards rather quickly, besides that the overall expected level of skills may rise to such an extent as to push the skills one is in the process of gaining into a less-than living wage potential by 'labor market' standards (how such businesses continually come to an indirect consensus in how to value and re-value particular types of skills). Specialization is simultaneously propped up as the path to the highest wages/salaries, and yet is now discouraged because of an ever-greater risk of obsolescence by whatever standards that the currently-dominant business models come to at any point.
A typical answer to address potential mass permanent unemployment of this nature has been to propose 'universal basic income' programs, but such programs have to be top-down administered by governments to make up for businesses' lack of creativity in figuring out how to internally train and re-utilize employees relative to the way they regard labor. At least, that is where funding would most logically originate. However, to me the matter can rather be addressed in a decentralized way by framing automation-based changes in the economy as a shift in emphasizing adaptability and willingness to learn among a workforce. Large language models make various tasks more effective to complete relative to previous accumulated data on how such tasks should be done, and that should in theory make every employee more effective overall at those tasks (as the types of tasks stand at that point) if that weren't also an excuse to outright cut a portion of them from employment.
One of the missions of a modern worker coop in that sense, to me, is then to emphasize role rotation just like factories in general already tend to do so current worker-owners in a given such business are put in a state of having to adapt and change because of needing to take on contributing different comparative advantages. This doesn't mean every worker-owner has to be entirely constantly 'productive' by any given measure due to potentially being in a process of learning, but the point is to have a system which retains worker-owners while emphasizing the skill of adaptability without requiring any of them to formally prove competence. There would still be voting structures to remove worker-owners if truly needed for any reason, including for questions over competency, but the idea is to emphasize peoples' general ability to learn and to become more effective at learning/adapting in particular to prevent the need for government intervention or charitable intervention. In a way, this would then echo how Japanese conglomerates used to typically retain workers even if there was nothing for them to do during economic down periods, but in this updated sense within the ownership, profit sharing and voting structure of a worker cooperative.
The only other result I can see if there is not an increase in social reorganization, either in businesses reforming their attitude towards how to treat labor or in more businesses being founded with different principles, is a rise in emphasis on self-sufficiency by more people in order to keep expenses as low as possible across conceivably any facet of living amidst uncertainty as to how to consistently offer products or skills to society. Learning resources in any subject are widely available through the Internet, and becoming more self-sufficient need not require becoming a master in any given skill. However, such an outcome potentially means more social fragmentation, at least in terms of a loss of productive and collaborative multipliers.
Governance Template for a Worker Cooperative Company – 2011 Draft
18 November 2011. Edited 5 December, 8 December, 10 December, 14 December, 16 December
Clayton Consultants, hereby referred to as 'the company ', shall begin as an LLC with C Corp tax status. This is to maintain the company as a wholly separate entity for liability and tax purposes.
I. Governance Description
a. This document outlines the basic way in which the company shall be run, in various general situations, i.e accounting for size and if a hierarchy exists. As the company runs on a participatory democratic model, a number of specific aspects outlined can only act as suggestions for the most efficient, fair or economically sound methods of running the company, as it is ultimately up to members to choose to run the company in this way and uphold said methods. Therefore they are appropriately phrased.
b. Decisions which must be voted on or are suggestions for best operation as outlined in this document shall become part of the bylaws. That is the changeable part of how the company operates. Hard structures which are integral to the functioning of participatory democracy are unchangeable without destroying the whole company, and best side-methods for keeping up equity and economic efficiency shall stay in the corporate governance, even if the bylaws decided upon by the company for company-wide stipulations or by a division for division-wide stipulations do not end up reflecting this.
II. Compensation and Property (see IIb(v) for power limits)
a. Wages
i. As everyone effectively operates as equal owners, no matter what position one is in, one adds proportional value to the commodities one works on. I.e. in a managerial and more indirect role, one receives less compensation per commodity but adds value to more commodities the higher up one is. If one is working below someone but directly on a small amount of commodities, one adds the same overall value thusly. This is in terms of a larger company context with a hierarchy and one or more districts of operation, as in a smaller-company context in which everyone has the same amount of power and has similar roles, everyone is taken to add equal value to commodities.
ii. This proportional monetary compensation comes as soon as commodities actually sell on the market, minus profit margins which go to the treasury and other expenses which add value. This margin shall be decided on a by-district basis for local workers, but for overall company services, everyone in the entire company must vote on that decision. The same in regards to what price to sell the commodities at, and it is hoped the ideas of the financial analysts observing the market or those with the next most amount of skill, if available, would be considered.
iii. If people wish to take on even more labor to earn more, i.e. adding particular values to even more commodities, they may, if the work is available.
iv. Anyone may be voted as deserving higher wages for any reason, including merit, skill or other reasons. However it is hoped that voters would consider analyses of financial experts or those with the next most amount of skills, if available, i.e. overall impact on the company and/or division if such a decision passes.
b. Equity
i. Anyone joining the company shall be granted an equal amount of equity. If no extra reserve of stock exists, an equal amount of equity is taken from everyone to give that person an equal amount. If some people have unequal amounts of shares, this still holds; the majority shall still have equal shares after that process, and those with more or less will lose an equal amount of shares but still have more or less shares in comparison to this majority. If more than a majority of people in the company have unequal amounts of shares, the division in which the employee is in must vote on how to give them shares. In the case of someone currently in an executive position, i.e. inter-divisional, this becomes a company-wide decision. This is also assuming there are no reserves, and this percentage must be voted on a company wide basis. It can be determined that reserves of stock should be wholly determined on a division basis amongst the shares of that district, in the case of a larger company structure of more than one district and a hierarchy. In that case the division in which a current executive came from shall decide stock matters in regard to that person. If someone wishes to create a side-business, in competition with the company or not, of course others may bring up a vote to take away that person's shares, i.e. terminate employment, for those reasons.
ii. Anyone may be voted as deserving more equity compensation, etc. for merit, skill or other reasons. However a cap shall be placed on ownership of equity such that no-one can accumulate so much as to have a controlling interest. In this sense the company must be equal. However voters must consider analyses of financial experts or those with the next most amount of skills, if available, i.e. overall impact on the company and/or division if such a decision passes. Voters thus must consider analyses of financial experts or those with the next most amount of skills, if available, i.e. overall impact on the company and/or division if such a decision passes.
iii. There may be non-company-owned equity which the public may purchase, or even that other employees may purchase, which won't become re-distributed upon leaving or being terminated. However the percent allocated on a company-wide or division basis must be voted upon in corresponding company-wide and division contexts.
c. Intellectual Property
i. Any intellectual property created by groups of employees for economic activity related to the company is taken to belong to the company. Thus everyone in the company has equal ownership and rights of use of the property by default.
ii. Those who create something on company time and/or resources, and not directly associated with company economic activity, may choose to keep their creations as their own. However, the company shall have the right of free use of the creation, i.e. the company must be provided a free license of use. Thus everyone in the company must have equal access to the license, or whatever means by which access is granted. Otherwise the employee has full rights to the creation, as it is ultimately theirs.
iii. Otherwise the employee may make their property company-owned. In this way everyone in the company has equal ownership of it and can come up with a license of use, and so on. Or the employee may make it owned by the division worked in, in the case of a large company setting, as the employee feels appropriate in regards to democratic procedure efficiency or other aspects. If an employee leaves or is otherwise terminated, then of course, just like with company-owned equity, it is re-distributed within corresponding company-wide or division contexts.
iv. In any case, all intellectual property, individual and company-owned, must be steadfastly protected by all employees, unless property, either division-based or company-wide with corresponding voting body sizes, is voted to be released into public domain.
iv. The intellectual property terms of other entities must be respected in accordance with law, i.e. adhering to their license and buying a license if required for use or commercial use.
v. The company legal team or other employees must not pursue any and all copyright 'infringement ' situations entirely in the realm of personal use, as doing so is all at once a bad faith, resource-wasting and bad PR-generating activity which goes against the spirit of copyright law. If it is a matter of legitimately stolen core source property such as proprietary source code or wholesale copies of properties being used for commercial gain, this is an entirely different matter.
III. General Hierarchy
a. Structure
i. In small company form the Board effectively consists of all people working in the company, and in this sense, there can be no pure owners, and everyone is an executive. In the case of the company increasing past a certain size, everyone shall still be an equal owner, albeit the Board size shall be capped, with the limit determined by collective vote.
ii. Ownership and control are thus directly tied together, and as everyone is an owner they work for themselves and for each other, regardless of company size. This is to prevent corruption and conflicts between employees, higher workers (executives) and owners, while fostering an environment of mutual respect and personal development.
b. Extent of power
i. In larger company form, all Board members can be recalled from their position for any reason by majority vote. District managers can also be recalled from their positions by majority vote in their sector, and the same down the chain of command, and the same for termination.
ii. In smaller company form, i.e. everyone being the Board of Directors, the process is much simpler. At any time a Board member can be terminated from their position by simple majority vote at any time.
iii. People acting to vote on such matters, as with any corporate matter, must consider the advice of professionals or the next-most-skilled in such matters, if available, before voting or proposing such an action.
iv. Immediately following such an action, simultaneously someone must be voted up the chain of command to assume the now-empty position, if it is agreed upon that such a position is still needed (e.g. the person was demoted or terminated by recall for reasons other than cutting the position for financial or other reasons). This can be done through internal and/or external candidate searching.
IV. Voting System and Rights
a. As everyone acts as an owner, everyone has the ability to vote in the company. One vote per person shall be upheld, no matter if that person has more equity for any reason. It is hoped that people with expertise in the issue under vote, or the next most skilled, would be considered, if they are available.
b. An issue under consideration, hereupon called a 'bill ', shall be in effect for discussion and voting for the agreed-upon length of time for the company or within a division.
c. For company-wide decisions, a majority of people within the whole company must have willingness to take an active stance on it for it to have the status of being under consideration, and for division-wide issues, the majority of that division.
d. The unwilling minority which does not take an active stance on a bill must be informed in any way possible to assess that members of which are truly disinterested, and they shall not count as for or against a bill.
e. The ability to terminate people shall follow the same principles, and the same for recruiting processes.
f. Anyone may come up with an issue and promote it as they see fit, keeping in mind the equal nature of everyone else's voting powers determining if it even spreads. However higher-chain people can certainly help spread a bill, as they are in the position to do so and can take that responsibility. However, even though ideally people would consider performance over politics in keeping someone in a role of higher power, proposing or helping spread certain proposals can certainly aid or detract from someone holding onto said power, as that is part of their responsibility.
V. Adherence to Law, Ethics and Governance
a. The company shall strive in all of its capacity to uphold gender, ethnic and other forms of equality as protected by law and in an ethical sense as well which a letter of the law interpretation does not necessarily account for, just as all members help to maintain an equal ownership system.
b. Corruption includes excessive acceptance of gifts from clients, domestic or foreign government officials, etc.; intentional acts of subverting the system of equality established in the company by working against the equity distribution system, the voting system, etc. In so far as this falls under law, these people must be stripped of equity and thus terminated immediately, or else the whole company falls under legal violations. Therefore it is hoped that all owners would take no tolerance to any form of corruption, especially because it detracts from everyone's ability to benefit from the company and to produce economic value, regardless if the corruption even falls under legal violation.
c. It is hoped that all members will strive in their utmost capacity to preserve intellectual property in the true sense of the word, e.g. protecting any trade secrets, instead of fruitlessly attempting to stamp out copies of products created by such trade secrets, as this is simply most economically sound. Going after personal use situations of copies only serves to waste resources and effort on what effectively acts as free advertisement, with subsequent greater product recognition, customers and hence good-will value. In this sense, it is hoped that members will practice sound cost-benefit analysis, but again, it is ultimately up to them to make those decisions. Thus also it is hoped they would consider the advice of legal experts, or those most next skilled in such matters, if available when pursuing any such activities, or allow them to pursue it. For concerted company or division-wide voting on a decision to pursue such an action on those kinds of levels, the consideration of experts or those with the next-best skills if available still holds as the ideal to create an environment of fully fair and informed voting.
d. Specific details passed by vote in the bylaws are to be adhered to as company policy. However anyone may attempt to bring up their own issue with it in any way they see fit, while considering their equal standing with co-workers.
e. Minimal paid and unpaid leave time for emergencies or other situations must be adhered to according to state, provincial, federal, etc. laws. It is hoped that owners would also go beyond this as well and plan briefly with fellow co-workers what should be done while gone and what to do upon return if they leave, and that other owners would pick up their work as well as possible in the mean-time or some other solution created (such as using contractors, etc.)