Everyone here seems to be talking about co-ops… And I’m really confused by the conversation in this thread, alas,

I worked for some years for a manufacturing company that was 100% employee owned. We were a multinational manufacturer for: wire and cable, aerospace, and medical. The company began around 1972, started the EO process in the early 90’s becoming 100% employee owned by 2000.

The [National Center for Employee Ownership] (nceo.org) is a good resource for businesses looking at employee ownership. The most common ESOPs are manufacturing companies in the states last I heard at one of the nceo conferences.

The obstacles that I see, is that most companies have Investors. Obviously we all know what the investors want as they own the stock. It takes a generous leadership/company founder to sell their stock to the company for employee ownership. It’s a long process with lawyers and other legal hurdles. Not impossible, but finding generosity in the white collar business class, especially today, is not common it seems. You must have initial generosity and care for your employees from the initial owners. They decide to go employee owned or not. They either see the investment EO is, or they keep greedy.

The founder of the EO I worked for sold his last stock to the company for the same price he sold his first stock (which in the ten-ish years it took to get to 100% EO, raised considerably).

Profit sharing is dope. Basically we all got an extra large paycheck every quarter. This company I worked for paid $3-$4 more per hour to start than any other manufacturing company in the area, and bennies began the day you were hired. They literally held financial literacy classes for all employees, to better understand our financial reports, as the company was super transparent. They believed that the best ideas come from the ones running the machines, and the founder often could be found sweeping floors of his shops to better know his employees and their struggles. In 2019, the company stock was valued at over $6K a share.

The original owner passed away, then covid hit, (I left) then the leadership changed to new people who never met the founder. It’s gone down hill since. Im to be paid out this year, and the stock is half was it was when I left. I still carry a card with the original founders mission and values listed for the company. That card is no longer what they follow. It’s been sad to see.

However, I still believe Employee Ownership is a solid pathway to restoring the middle class.

Folks who began in the 90s were retiring after 25 years with the company with $1-$2 million dollars in their esop accounts alone. I know what a Roth IRA is, what it means to diversify, and what dividends are all because of this company’s financial literacy classes.

It also is possible a company becomes too big to support the EO model. This company was hitting that point around the time I left, they told us “we’re hiring lawyers to make sure that it doesn’t happen”, but as I’ve watched the stock price drop year over year, yeah bet-

I worked at four US manufacturing gigs before landing at an Employee Owned Company that actually paid living wage ($19/hr to start with benefits).

Prior to that, these four manufacturing companies I was hired at paid minimum wage, you were lucky to get a ten cent raise after a year. The work was grueling, health insurance was basically nothing, no paid time off, just shit conditions with mandatory overtime and zero workers’ rights.

Not to mention something like injection molding or QA off a line and into a box, is the most boring work there is. I hate injection molding. Even the aerospace department at my decent paid EO company was repetitive boring work, but at least they cared about ergonomics an employee well-being. This is not true in the majority of manufacturing.

There are some decent manufacturing jobs in the US, but the ratio of decent paid “good” ones, to shit companies who just beat every ounce of labor out of you before you destroy your body to pay you pennies is not great. Worker Unions and Employee Owned companies are where it’s at, but there is less of them than shit manufacturing companies beholden to their white collar, red tie shareholders.

Edit, for expamle, I actually got laid off by a company making car parts two weeks before Christmas. I was just temping there, had been four months. They told me they really liked my work, I was one of the better employees (wasnt hard at this place, the night shift all drank on the job and half the day folks didn’t give af). I wasnt going to stay with the company anyway, I just needed work for that winter. So they complimented my work ethic and skill, and then told me, a 26 year old single mom to one, that they had to lay me off because they couldnt afford to hire me until the new year, sorry its just before Christmas. This company was running more than half the year in the red.

Annoying as hell. I went back to the temp agency and they found me a job for a different company just for two weeks, cutting back scrap for this other company. I said sure. This new company was the employee owned one. I got lucky, one of the guys in the department was on thin ice already, so when it came out he was sharing a disgusting misogynist nickname for both me and the only other female (engineer) in the department, he got fired as his last strike. Guess who swooped in to take his job? Guess who got to smuggly tell the staffing agency there was no fucking way I was going back to the car parts place when they asked about me in January :)

Trump may have never happened if the fucking dnc supported bernie in 2016…

It does! I only buy this kind now, my picky son will only take lettuce on his sandwiches, and it keeps them from being dry, and adds a nice crunch

I’ve been cooking with lamb for the first time recently. My favorite was a stew. I used shoulder chops with the bone in. Absolutely great flavor if a person doesn’t typically like or use lamb.

Making Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon should be attempted by any curious cook, and is a wonderful sunday meal. I had so much fun making it, and the flavor really was devine.

Oh lawd that looks amazing!

I havnt finished reading Ive just gotten excited when you mentioned the sugar and molasses information.

For years I’ve only bought pure cane sugar. It is interchangeabe with white sugar, it also still has its molasses. If a recipe calls for a half cup of white sugar and a half cup of brown sugar, I just use a full cup of cane sugar. This works beautifully. Even a recipe that calls for caster sugar. I have placed it in the food processor and ran it for a bit to make it more fine, no issue there. It worked in the recipe beautifully. I do have molasses in my cabinet for its purposes, because they are some, but I don’t understand why today we need white sugar and brown sugar differentiated when we have regular cane sugar. To bake a white cake (The only instance I can think where you would need white sugar at the moment) is pure vanity, not practicality.

I’m so glad you’ve mentioned it here

Any fellow bidet user should feel smug about it, I say in half jest. Not using a bidet is barbaric, I say in full seriousness.

Honestly! It’s a good thing it takes so long to make, or we’d all be done for!

I wish I could make another and I’d share it with all of you

I really like the color on the one cooked in the cast iron, that crust must be phenomenal

I get it, but this is where he comes from, I thought the same thing you did until I read this.

Hell yeah