Let’s immediately acknowledge that the title is lighthearted, and that “communist company” is an oxymoron. The better choice would’ve been, “which is the most worker-owned, egalitarian, power-structures-free cooperative?”, which SEO experts told me was too long of a title. With that said, let me tell you about Igalia and other tech cooperatives

  • fubarx@lemmy.world
    92·
    6 days ago

    Wonder:

    • How do they handle someone who may not be performing as well as others?
    • What’s the process for conflict resolution? Both professional and inter-personal.
    • Not sure if they’ve been through a big global recession yet. That’s usually when companies and their policies get tested.

    Not to take away from their unique model. Just curious how the idealism handles the messy parts of human nature.

    • CapriciousDay@lemmy.mlEnglish
      7·
      5 days ago

      By the sounds of it the first point is handled by having essentially a year long probationary period, and then another two year period before someone becomes fully entrenched in the org as a full partner. This is almost certainly a long enough time to determine if someone is going to be a piss taker or not and so other instances of underperformance can be handled via supportive mechanisms.

      It’s worth highlighting that performance “curves” in some companies seem to lay off reasonably productive people and preserve people who are great at gaming the system/metrics.

      For conflict resolution I don’t know how they do it, but if I were in charge of this I’d probably have a dedicated body like an HR set up for this which would be democratically accountable but ultimately still deal with that kind of thing as a last resort (assuming it can’t be sorted out between team members).

      Many worker co-ops have been resilient to recessions as members often choose to temporarily lower their own pay/share of profits rather than having layoffs or other similar arrangements. https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/new-economy/2009/06/06/mondragon-worker-cooperatives-decide-how-to-ride-out-a-downturn