6.3 Worker cooperatives without shared ownership

VoTa permits businesses to be operated as worker cooperatives. It does not require the workers to co-own the business. A single Person owns the business property and may enter into a contract with the workers under which the business is governed cooperatively and all of its profits are distributed to them. The owner receives no share of the profits.

The cooperative contract may give workers votes on operating policies, the selection of directors, investment, remuneration, and the distribution of profits. It may require the owner to implement decisions made under that procedure. The workers exercise contractual rights rather than shared property rights: the legal authority to use the property remains with its single owner, who has voluntarily agreed how that authority will be exercised.

The contract must define the profit available for distribution. It may specify wages, operating expenses, reserves, treatment of losses, investment in the business, and the formula by which all remaining profit is distributed among workers. If the owner also works for the business, the owner may receive remuneration for that work on the same contractual basis as another worker, but receives nothing merely for owning the business. A Person acquires and relinquishes participation rights upon joining and leaving the business.

Perpetual cooperative operation

A cooperative arrangement may be intended to continue perpetually, but the owner is still a Person rather than an immortal legal entity. The contract can provide for a succession of single owners. Before death, incapacity, retirement, or another specified event, the current owner must transfer the complete property right to one successor selected under the cooperative procedure. The successor must accept the cooperative contract as a condition of receiving ownership.

At every moment there is one identifiable owner. A transfer replaces that owner; it does not add another one. In this way the cooperative constitution can continue across generations without attributing ownership or legal personality to the business or to the workers collectively.

Contractual governance

Worker voting does not itself exercise or divide the property right. The vote determines what the owner is contractually required to do. If the owner disregards the cooperative procedure, the owner may exercise the legal power to act while breaching the contract and becoming liable for its agreed remedies. Those remedies may include compensation, an order to perform the contract, or a mandatory transfer of the complete property right to a designated successor.

This permits worker democracy without making ownership indeterminate. Property belongs to one Person, workers receive the governance and financial rights promised by contract, and responsibility remains attributable to the Persons who own, decide, and act. Cooperative operation is therefore available as a voluntary arrangement, not imposed as the only lawful form of business.