Employee Ownership: A Brief History

According to economist Robin Hahnel of American University, "There are over ten thousand employee-owned enterprises in the United States sprinkled through almost every industry and region of the country." These enterprises include all types of businesses, many of which operate according to traditional "co-op" guidelines, and many others which just make up their own structural rules as they go along. There's even a temp agency in Boston that's owned and operated by the very temps themselves.

In Argentina, workers own, manage, and labor in an estimated 140 factories. They didn't set out to become business owners, but when the companies they worked for went out of business during bad economic times, the original owners and bosses left, and the workers took over in order to survive. (A documentary movie called The Take has been made about this.)

By far the largest experiment in worker ownership is the almost-famous Mondragon Cooperative Network in Spain. Initiated in the 1950s by a Catholic priest, it now consists of some 150 businesses being run by more than 60,000 workers.

That, in a nutshell, is some of the heritage that Tribe is dipping into. Co-ownership and democracy empower all of us to have a voice, keep us highly motivated, promote internal security and solidarity, foster collaboration, and make us genuinely care about our clients and the success of the work we do for them. It’s our way of bringing Common Good into our own workplace.