Questions for Employee Owners: The Bindner Analytics Guide for Expanding Cooperative Democracy

By Michael G. Bindner MPA

This volume is the technical proposal for employee-owned, union owned and cooperative firms who want more involvement from their employee-owners than a monthly rubber chicken dinner followed by a briefing on the financials and ownership culture. It goes beyond other employee-ownership books because it offers a rationale for employees controlling the means of production by first controlling the means of consumption (with management included as a consumable good). This book will be sent for free to interested clients, along with a management volume containing staff biographies and past performance, as well as our schedule of fees, usually in response to the favorable consideration of our capability statement. The book will also be available for a rather large fee on Amazon for firms who wish to use this technology on their own. The Cooperative Socialism presented here is a free market alternative to state Socialism. It strives for the same type of worker equality that Socialism strives for but attempts to surmount the allocation problem inherent in state control. The goal of Cooperative Socialism is the equality of workers at the corporate level, rather than the political level, although that follows as well, as the book shows. It is also described as Inter-Independence, working in an interdependent manner so that each worker is financially and environmentally independent. It is also internationalist, so as to avoid nationalism and protectionism, which so often taint the struggle for workers' rights. Previously, this topic was called corporate socialism. I have since learned that this term is in use by Ralph Nader to describe corporate welfare. This is not that. I use Cooperatives to describe the free association of workers for their common independence in a way similar to the way Silas Locke Allen, my great-grandfather, used the term when he helped start the cooperative movement in both the Farm Bureau system and Land O' Lakes.Democratic Socialism is equally important. We cannot raise the necessary funds for rapid conversion to cooperative ownership without it, nor could we enact the needed health care, tax and welfare reforms to maximize the value of cooperation without our publicly minded comrades. Of course, to win politically, we must start winning in the workplace. This transition must maximize freedom and democracy everywhere (including in religious organizations) or it is not worth doing. Socialism happens when workers first control the means of consumption, which makes make v. buy decisions on production really easy. Workers can make the same choices about government in house health care v. purchased or government healthcare, or education, or infrastructure, or housing or food. More important is the choice between external finance with interest or cooperative finance with less profit. Most important is the question of management: meritocracy, election or lowest bidder, from foreman to CEO. Making that last choice apparent will cost me clients. Other options to consider are providing housing to younger workers near the workplace, higher pay v. free cafeteria for breakfast, lunch, clothing, cooperative markets, how to deal with multi-national workers and supply chains.Workers currently chose money over group consumption and more control over production, even if they only do so implicitly and they have no access to the profits unless they borrow them back on credit and take slavery to a whole new level, like in the 2000s. It is better to Occupy Capitalism than remain it's slave.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1983343587
• ISBN13: 9781983343582
• Release Date: July 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 179 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.0" x 0.5" x 8.5"