Forms of Employee Ownership and Workers' Control

Abstract

Worker-owned enterprises may contribute to the development of a new system of productive relations in the United States. Various approaches to employee ownership are classified into two principal schemes. Type I methods include the Scanlon plan, Drucker's logic of "pension fund socialism," and Kelso's Employee Stock Ownership Plan. 7hese designs coalesce in efforts to preserve capitalism by broadening its rewards, retaining the traditional profit motive, and remaining within the confines of traditional role relationships between management and employees. Type II alternatives include new business collectives founded in an ideological commitment to cooperative action, company-takeovers by employees, and worker/community owned firms. Comparisons are made between the two principal typologies with respect to selected criteria.