Dividends, labor remuneration, and capitalization in worker cooperatives. Worker shareholding

This paper is devoted to the possibility of creating worker cooperatives in which worker members are remunerated not through wages, but through dividends calculated on the added value produced by the enterprise, that is, cooperatives in which there is no labor cost, but only dividends on the net economic value produced by collective venture. It is shown how this solution makes it possible to unambiguously link dividends paid to worker members in each accounting period with the value of the member's financial stake in the equity capital of the enterprise, that is, with the value of the shares held by each individual member even in the absence of a real market for corporate shares. In the presence of a capital market, that is, an equilibrium price for the shares held by members, it will be possible for the cooperative to issue shares to be allotted to worker members but also sold to investors outside the membership. The paper concludes by discussing possible fairness criteria in the distribution of income and shares to members and concludes that the Rawlsian maximin criterion seems to be the most suitable for the democratic and collegial governance of worker cooperatives.