In a development that has sent tremors through the cognoscenti of Kensington and the saloon bars of Soho, it appears our American cousins have stumbled upon a radical concept: buying the company they work for. As the great grey wave of baby boomer business owners finally shuffles off to Florida or the great golf course in the sky, their employees are clubbing together like Bolsheviks in a boardroom to take over the means of production. And who is being held up as the shining beacon of this new industrial dawn? Why, perfidious Albion herself, with her quaint co-operative societies and her worker-owned bakeries.
Let us pause for a moment to savour the rich, ironic bouquet of this situation. The land of rugged individualism, the spiritual home of the leveraged buyout and the hostile takeover, is now looking to the nation that brought you the Ministry of Silly Walks for a lesson in employee ownership. It is as if a pack of wolves suddenly decided to adopt a vegan diet and seek nutritional advice from a lettuce.
The numbers, as they are wont to do, tell a tale. According to the priests of data at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, employee ownership trusts in the UK have increased by a staggering 87% in the last decade. Meanwhile, across the pond, the Exit Planning Institute, which sounds like a consultancy for people who want to leave parties early but is actually about selling businesses, reports that a mere 20% of retiring owners have a succession plan. The rest are apparently just going to slam the door and hope for the best.
So, what happens when a small business owner in Ohio decides to call it a day? They could sell to a competitor, who will strip the assets and fire everyone. They could sell to a private equity firm, which is essentially the same but with fancier spreadsheets. Or, in an increasing number of cases, they sell to the staff. And who do they call for advice? The British, naturally. Organisations like Co-operatives UK and Employee Ownership Association have become the Yoda to America’s bewildered Luke Skywalker, dispensing wisdom about trusts, tax breaks, and the art of not being a complete git to your workforce.
The irony is so thick you could spread it on a crumpet. Here is a nation that has spent decades exporting reality TV, fast food, and the concept that the customer is always right (a notion we British have embraced with the enthusiasm of a man being asked to eat his own hat). Now they are importing our co-operative model, a system so fundamentally British it involves endless committees and a profound suspicion of anyone who looks too successful.
But let us not be churlish. The success of employee-owned firms is hard to argue with. John Lewis, that grande dame of British retail, has been worker-owned since 1929 and is the only high street shop where the staff can simultaneously serve you and call you a pleb in their annual general meeting. A study from Cass Business School found that employee-owned companies are more productive, more resilient, and less likely to make stupid decisions, which is more than can be said for most of the banks that crashed the economy.
So, what does this mean for the future? Perhaps we shall see a wave of American co-operatives, with Starbucks baristas owning the franchise and deciding that, actually, decaf has no place in a civilised society. Or Amazon warehouse workers collectively voting to replace the conveyor belts with hammocks. It is a glorious, intoxicating vision.
But let us not get carried away. The forces of capital are not going to roll over without a fight. Expect a flurry of think-pieces from the American Enterprise Institute warning that worker ownership is a slippery slope to gulags and rationed gin. And let us not forget that the British model is not without its flaws. Our co-operatives have a tendency to become insular, obsessed with the correct way to fold a tea towel, and prone to marathon board meetings about the precise shade of beige for the office carpet.
Still, in a world where the rich get richer and the rest of us get poorer, the idea that employees might actually own the fruits of their labour has a certain … revolutionary charm. So, raise a glass of warm British beer (or a perfectly chilled G&T, if you must) to the plucky American worker who is finally learning that the answer to capitalism's excesses is not socialism, but a good old-fashioned British compromise: the co-operative. Now, if only they could learn to queue properly.
