The broad purpose of the labor movement has always been to
further the economic self-determination of workers, to maximize
working people's control over their economic destiny. Selfdetermination
is the goal, but what are the means?
In the past and present state of capitalist society, the only real
opportunity for most people to earn a living is by selling their labor
as an employee to some employer. In that historical situation,
workers can best promote their self-determination through
unionized collective bargaining with their employer. Collective
bargaining is the best means at hand, but it is only a means, not
an end in itself.
As the economic situation changes, new opportunities arise. In
some cases, workers can break out of the employees' role and
achieve the status of worker-owners of their business. Labor can
hire capital (instead of the reverse). In this newfound role, the
workers can have much greater powers to control their own
economic destiny, to promote their own self-determination. But
worker ownership also presents a whole new set of problems and
challenges.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the two major forms of
worker ownership in view of the overall goal of the labor
movement, to promote democratic self-determination in the workplace.
In the United States today, there are two principal forms of
worker ownership, the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
and the worker cooperative. Advocates of worker ownership can
usually be classified as either "ESOP advocates" or "Co-op
advocates." The current debate over the most appropriate structure
for worker ownership is often conducted in terms of such matters
as reducing taxes or gaining access to conventional capital markets.
But this distorts and trivializes the basic issues. There is more
involved than narrow technical considerations.