this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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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

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[–] suoko@preferred.social 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I remember Huawei claimed that its employees owned the company. It would be nice to have a list of these "kind of odd" companies

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 16 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Indeed they do

Ownership

Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd. is a private company wholly owned by 151,796 of its employees and retired beneficiaries, as of December 31, 2023. Mr. Ren’s investment accounts for nearly 0.73% of the company’s total share capital.

https://www.huawei.com/en/media-center/company-facts

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So this Mr Ren is the founder? How did they get to that? They've got a lot less employee owners than total employees?

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mr Ren is the founder, and the company was started as a cooperative as I recall. The total size of the company is 207,000 people, but typically people have to work at a company for a bit before becoming part of the cooperative. Hence why there non owner members.

https://www.huawei.com/en/corporate-information

[–] suoko@preferred.social 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

And this is why the US (and now the EU) boycotted Huawei so much. It mines they're society structure where sons of business men will replace their friends sons. They attend super expensive schools to learn how to manage expensive companies which do not differ that much in complexity compared to less expensive companies.

It's basically almost all fake. And Huawei demonstrated that that structure can be humiliated in less than a decade.

Deepseek did it again Xiaomi with its devices and vehicles too

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 months ago

Yeah, Huawei demonstrates that worker ownership works at scale and that a worker owned company is just as efficient and competitive as the best oligarch funded companies. It's a threat of a good example.

[–] suoko@preferred.social 1 points 3 months ago

After Elon will be arrested because of illegal procedures applied in case of injured people in Tesla's factory in Berlin, Tesla will follow a similar management structure ⚖️

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

They are a massive megacorp though. It always leaves me to wonder "how much".

Tons of capitalist companies do stock options where "technically" the employees own a share of the company, though that percentage is usually extremely small, even collectively such that they have no decision power. I can't help but think that it is similar with huawei, but with better marketing.

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 months ago

Vivaldi is an employee owned cooperative

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 months ago

There is this showcased at the end of the article.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yea, agree with the description for this post. This is an example of a worker cooperative, which is certainly a form of business that usually is much better for the workers involved, but calling it Communist is certainly a stretch, as Communism is more about full public ownership of an economy than it is carving a niche out of a broader Capitalist system. Not saying it's bad! Just that the title is definitely toungue-in-cheek, if I'm going to be annoyingly nitpicky.

[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 months ago

There was the 2008 crash they survived?

[–] Wobble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fascinating read. Thank you for sharing!

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago

You're welcome 😊

[–] noxypaws@pawb.social 5 points 3 months ago

This sounds awesome! Thanks for sharing!

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

However, that comes with some extra requirements, such as having 85% of the partners be from Spain, a limitation that Igalia did not want.

How does that comply with EU law? Is not most discrimination between citizens of different EU member states prohibited by it?

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago

Good point not sure. There must be some exceptions because I'm certain there are citizenship requirements in France for some jobs.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 months ago
[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing. I'm not sure I'd be happy in a fully remote role where you've got hundreds of employees voting on how you build stuff, but I know that there are lots of people who dig this pattern, and they're clearly doing Good work.

[–] lascapi@jlai.lu 1 points 3 months ago

Amazing, thank for sharing!