Forum Post: Employee owned factory.
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 11, 2011, 12:16 p.m. EST by jomojo
(562)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Legislation should be passed giving incentives to form an employee-owned company at each shut down of a business moving it's operation out of the country. Perhaps even allowing patent uses be free, in that circumstance.
People with common sense should be able to do this without big brother paying them to do so. However, I can assure you that our schools do not churn out many graduates capable of any concept other than "I worked today and you need to pay me right now. I need minutes for my phone or need to buy a pallet of baby formula."
People who have owned and operated businesses know very well what an impossible situation this turns into, and quickly. Most well run businesses, do not divide up profits until profits have been made.
I have no idea what you mean by free patent use. My patents will not be infringed, without civilized and amenable terms agreed upon prior.
The gist of my post is that empty industrial parks will not solve the economy, any more than empty subdivisions do. The prevailing wisdom is to exempt the "job creators", bringing coveted industry to a town, from all sorts of taxes, and provide "partner" funds to improve the enviroment with city and state funds. How would employees get bank loans, without a backer? It's been done, and employees' labor management can improve competetiveness, and change products. It's easy to say it's not feasible, but there's people who will look for possibilities instead of selling their homes and moving to look for work. Some companies' shut down is basically because they're moving to where employee unions are not a problem. Many patents are created by employees, and I disagree with current law that the employer own patents based on employee's inventions. Thanks.
The employees can already do so. They can arrange financing to buy the factories being shut down or buy a majority share of the company stock and simply stop the closure. I would be careful, however, in assuming either approach is a good one.
Contrary to people's beliefs, CEOs have family and friend's in their community, and they don't like shutting them down. They only do so when it become necessary to compete with the low cost foreign goods coming ashore from Japan, Korea, Malaysia, China, etc; the CEO is literally placed in the position of either closing the entire company or moving his manufacturing work off-shore.
Since the factory is moved off-shore to remain competitive, there is very low probability that the same factory purchased by the employees would generate sufficient revenue to represent a good investment.
So why does the company face so much competition from overseas? Because We The People don't cast our voting dollars very responsibly at the register. We consistently ignore social costs and focus on sticker price alone when buying products; we buy the foreign product made with slave labor over products made in the US in order to save a buck or two and never consider the impact on our fellow citizens. See http://occupywallst.org/forum/the-power-of-the-people/ and http://occupywallst.org/forum/the-rise-of-the-machines/ .
By the way, if you're arguing the workers should get the company's assets for free, then you're destroying the notion of private property, and I can't agree with that. Once we destroy the notion of private property, your own property can be taken by the state without compensation to put a road in, etc. See the guy in the Daily Show video at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-16-2011/occupy-wall-street-divided who says, "I'm talking about private property, not my personal property." There is no distinction between private property and personal property. They are one and the same.
OWS people can own a factory. That is not the problem. The problem is that they will have to "WORK" and that is where the problem starts.