America's 'Actually Existing' Worker-owned Capitalism

guardian.co.uk — Last week, retiring Minnesota grocery chain owner Joe Lueken did something unusual: he gave his business to his 400 employees. The story received widespread attention as a heartwarming, It's A Wonderful Life-esque act of beneficence. But Lueken's decision was no one-off Christmas fairytale. In fact, Bob Moore, owner of Oregon-based cereal producer Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods, did exactly the same thing two years ago. Their actions reflect the under-the-radar but growing trend of worker ownership in the United States. The surprising truth is that there are thousands of successful, majority worker-owned businesses in the United States. We're not just talking small-scale hippie co-ops: the largest majority employee-owned business is Florida-based Publix Super Markets, a $27bn company that employs 152,000 people. That's more workers than Costco (COST) and Whole Foods (WFM) combined.

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