Democracy at Work

Imagine an economy without bosses. It’s not a utopian vision but a growing daily reality for many enterprises. Analysis of the performance of worker owned cooperative organizations shows that, compared to standard top-down firms, coops can be a viable, even superior way of doing business. When maximizing profits isn’t the only goal, companies can actually work better.

Starbucks “hired the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country and literally ran not even a textbook anti-union campaign but almost an unprecedented union campaign,” says Jaz Brisack, a barista at the Starbucks located in Buffalo. #Unionize

Under free and democratic conditions, millions of American workers would probably join a union tomorrow. Thanks to laws heavily slanted toward bosses, unionization votes resemble sham elections in a dictatorship. It’s an instructive exercise to imagine what a federal or state...See more

If they build strong enough organizations, workers can challenge the power structure of capitalism itself. That is exactly what Swedish workers did. During the late 1960s and ’70s, an increasingly radical workforce had become more and more fed up with capitalists’ tyrannical...See more

Research shows that a shorter workweek can result in just as good or better performance. Yet while worker productivity and profits have steadily increased and research is showing more benefits to reducing work hours, wages have stagnated and workers have more often been driven to overwork instead.

Lawmakers and corporate lobbyists stymied recent proposed legislation to protect employees’ jobs when they flee an unsafe workplace, exactly the kind of protection that could have saved the Amazon workers who died at work during tornadoes over the weekend. #CorporateAmerica

Firms like Uber and Deliveroo systematically deny their workers basic rights by falsely treating them as self-employed contractors. Now Europe is finally passing legislation to recognize them as employees — and the UK should do the same.

The United States was built upon entrepreneurialism and taking control of our own destiny. Democratically owned and operated organizations are a better and proven way for every worker to realize that opportunity.