Let workers elect a set share of the seats on the board that runs a company
In short
- In companies above a certain size, workers elect some of the seats on the board that makes management decisions.
- Companies stop treating themselves as belonging only to shareholders, and workers also help decide where the company is headed.
- Worker representatives can vote for or against plans to close a factory, cut many jobs, or automate work.
- People hired in different ways, such as part-timers and agency workers, can also vote for these representatives.
If this comes true
A woman who drives a forklift in a distribution warehouse votes against a plan to move the warehouse to a distant town, and the move is pushed back two years. In those two years, though, the company loses one big customer to another company.
Water so far 💧 0
The proposal in detail
The rule covers companies whose workforce is above a certain size, and each society decides where that line falls. The larger the company, the bigger the workers' share of seats: roughly one third of the board for mid-sized companies and close to half for very large ones. If a vote is tied, the chair, who is chosen from the shareholders' side, decides, so the final say stays with the shareholders. The representatives are chosen by everyone who works there, not only regular employees but also part-timers, fixed-term workers, and agency workers who are always placed at that workplace, by secret ballot with one vote each. Like the other directors, a representative has a duty to decide in the interest of the whole company and a duty to keep secrets, and is not allowed to favor only their own workplace. There is no limit on what the board can discuss, but closing or moving a site, plans to lay off many people, automation that greatly changes how work is done, and the pay of directors must always be put to a board vote, and representatives can have their objections entered in the record. During their term and for a set period afterward, representatives cannot be fired for what they said or how they voted on the board, and the company pays for the accounting and management training they need to make decisions. At the same time, the legal principle that directors work only for shareholders is changed so that they answer to the whole company, including its workers. Young companies within a few years of their founding, and companies in which workers already hold a majority of the shares, are exempt, and for companies that operate across borders, the system is applied to each country's subsidiary separately.
BenefitsDecisions made with the long view of people who stay at a company
When people who plan to keep working at a company for a long time sit on the board, more decisions will put more weight on whether the company is still alive in ten years than on the share price in a few months. Shop-floor representatives know firsthand which process has frequent machine breakdowns, which service desk gets piles of customer complaints, and which department keeps losing people because of impossible staffing, and that information reaches the board faster than stacks of reports. Even when a factory closure or automation can't be avoided, if representatives are involved before the decision, the timing of transfers and preparations for retraining can be built in early, which reduces the cases where sudden layoffs sink a whole town. Workers learn the reasons behind decisions, and if they objected, the objection is on the record, so it becomes easier for people to accept what is decided and to trust the company. Having workers where the pay of directors and the sharing of profits are decided also acts as a brake on wealth piling up in a few hands. And the experience of having a voice on matters that affect them, in the workplace where they spend most of their day, also builds the foundation for people to take part in the decisions of society as a whole.
DrawbacksSlower decisions, and money and jobs flee to countries without the system
When worker representatives join the board, painful decisions such as closures and layoffs take longer, and there is a danger that the whole company falls behind the market and starts to sink. Representatives try to protect the people working now, so the interests of young people not yet hired, of consumers who want good products at low prices, and of people trying new ventures tend to be pushed aside. From an investor's point of view, there is less reason to put money into a company they can't run as they like, so the cost of raising funds rises and investment in new factories and research may fall. Companies will try to keep their headcount just under the cutoff, send work to outside firms, or move their head offices and factories to countries without this system. If that happens, the very jobs the system was meant to protect will decrease. There are also cases where representatives are absorbed by management and become mere formalities, or become tools in power struggles between labor unions. Even in countries that have kept this system for a long time, some say its good effects on wages and employment are small, and it is not clear whether it is worth such a price.
Learn the background
The directors who decide where a company goes are, in most cases, chosen only by shareholders. Many of those shareholders are far-off investment funds or people who buy and sell shares within a few months. Meanwhile, people who have worked for decades in the same factory or store, built a home in that town, and sent their children to school there have not a single vote on decisions to close, move, or cut jobs. The idea that a company belongs to its shareholders and that directors should focus on raising the share price has spread around the world. As a result, choices made for short-term profit, such as buying back the company's own shares or cutting labor costs, have been repeated, and the share of the wealth created that goes to workers has stalled. The only options left to workers are to quit and look for another job or to stop work in a strike, and both are very painful. Now AI and automation have been added, and decisions that fundamentally change workplaces are being made faster than ever, in places far from the shop floor. In some countries, worker representatives have sat on boards for a long time, and their economies have not fallen apart because of it.
Choose them ready to accept their drawbacks too (up to 5)
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-20a) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes