SamBam nailed it. For us, any large expenses must be approved by consensus of the whole group. For larger coops, they would need approval of a democratically elected and recallable board of directors.
We are developing a "thrivable" payscale that rewards each of the following:
- relevant prior experience (before joining the coop)
- longevity (aka seniority)
- dependent care responsibilities
- membership (a small raise once you become a member)
The prior experience piece is determined with a points system, designed to take as much of the self-advocacy (with all of its race/gender/class pitfalls) out of the process as possible.
The system also includes annual cost of living adjustments.
Heh, you can't sell a worker coop. One of the key defining features is a "de-mutualization" provision in the founding documents. You can only sell your own share, which has, in our coop, a fixed value of $1,000. And you can only sell that share back to the coop.
There are lots of small tech worker coops in the U.S. and Canada. See https://techworker.coop.
I co-founded one, Sassafras Tech Collective, in Ann Arbor. It's been an amazing journey. I don't think I could ever go back to working in a non-democratic workplace.
First, one of the best ways to do social good is to fight capitalism. Just by working at a worker co-op, you're doing this. Many tech co-ops are also built around resisting other oppressions like racism, patriarchy, etc.
Second, many co-ops (e.g. http://sassafras.coop, the one I work for) work on lots of social good projects.