this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2026
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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- Better and fewer working hours.
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CEOs should be personally liable for grave mistakes made by their company. Then a lot of this nonsense would end.
That is only the case if you're the CEO of a small mom and pops business. Then oh boy, the state makes sure you're responsible, to show the people they hold CEOs accountable for their behavior (read: they close shops for small accounting mistakes they forgive big corporations to "save workplaces"). If you even manage to get to that point, and not just being prematurely shot down with "why don't you just work hard at to climb the rank ladder to CEOdom?" and cost of entry into forming your own business.
CEOs shouldn’t exist. Workplaces should be owned and managed by the workers.
Finally real democracy!
For sure. Can’t have democracy without democracy in the workplace.
What makes a workplace owned and managed by the workers incompatible with the role of a chief executive officer?
CEOs exist to siphon surplus value to shareholders instead of letting the people who produce it retain it. It’s more that the CEO role is unnecessary in worker owned businesses than incompatible.
CEOs exist to execute the decisions of the board. In a capitalist system the decisions can often be boiled down to "siphon surplus value to shareholders instead of letting the people who produce it to retain it."
In a socialist system where the workers have a controlling majority of the board, you still need someone to execute the decisions of the board. Or are you suggesting that a worker owned company doesn't need any top leader beyond the board?
Why should it? If the workers themselves are on the board, then they know what the board decides. No need for a middleman CEO.
Are you imagining that every single worker are on the board at every single company? Even the ones with hundreds or thousands of workers? It's all direct democracy, and no representative democracy?
I mean, we have the technology to make direct democracy work, but even with representative democracy, there's no need for a single leader. There are many examples of functioning anarchic organizations. I'm not really imagining one ideal way to organize enterprises, there are many ways to do it. Hell, you could even do it with a single elected leader, but it wouldn't be functionally the same as a CEO. In a socialist workplace, the leader wouldn't have absolute authority nor be payed an outrageously unequal wage. The workers would elect them and be able to recall them.
The last option you are describing is a CEO. The employee who among the officers, charged by the board to execute their decisions, is chief among them. That's what makes them a CEO. Their mandate, authority and wages are decided by the board. And in the companies where the workers have a controlling majority, the CEO is unlikely to have either absolute majority nor an disproportional wage.
You have described how a workplace owned and managed by the workers can be compatible with the role of a chief executive officer.
Sure, I guess by technical definition. But popularly, if you describe a role that has no power except to communicate decisions of the board and who is not paid excessively, most people are not going to think “CEO.”
Cool in concept, not feasible in real life.
lol what? Even setting aside worker-owned socialist societies, worker-owned businesses exist and prosper in the United States today. It is obviously feasible.
Which would suggest workers owning the means of production is compatible with market capitalism. Just heavily incentive coops and other collective ownership schemes.
Don't stop there, the CEOs just absorb blame for the owners.
That's where I will disagree a bit. "Owners" usually have a CEO or something similar to run the company in their stead. Imagine you employ someone, he fucks up big time and you go to prison, despite having done nothing wrong. That's horrendous. That's like hiring a tax accountant, he fucks up and you go to prison for it ... oh wait, that's how it works in many countries, but anyways, that's fucking shit and shouldn't be a thing.
If the owner has had any influence on the company that have led to this decision, he should absolutely get punished aswell. But if he had nothing to do with it, nah. I feel like that would be cruel and unjust.
These guys are killing people. It's like employing a psychopathic security guard who shoots people at best, or playing dumb about hiring a hit man at worst. Insulating owners from the consequences of their choices has been horrendous.
The pic above is criminal negligence, and the CEO was hired to do it.
Yes, and the CEO is hired to keep an eye on everything that happens in the company. That's his job. Not the owners at this point. The owner doesn't tell the CEO to employ psychopathic people (unless he does excplicity, ofc). He tells the CEO: "Here's your monthly salary, don't fuck it up" and that's it. Every further responsibility is with the CEO.
But hiring the wrong people isn't the owners choice. The owner doesn't make any choices anymore, otherwise he would be the CEO and not employ someone to run the business in their stead.
Hiring the CEO is the owners choice. They're choosing to hire literal psychopaths. They have every resource to research this person first. It's incredibly charitable to even call them criminally negligent because they are not sorry at all.
I see that you're not trying to have a fair argument, you just want to hate. That's fine, but there's no point in having a genuine discussion with you about this topic. Have a nice day.
If we're hurling insults, then it appears you're simping for your own oppressors.
"Limited Liability" means what then? There are legal constructs that exist that have not been dismantled to even allow an idea like that to exist in legal doctrine.
It means limited, as in imposed limits. No doing wide spread economic or environmental damage is an existing limit?? Also no ones talking about LLC CEOs, we are talking about c corps lololol. Take your little libertarian ass back to school.
What the fuck is your problem? Jesus you think everything is a challenge to your identity. You are tilting at windmills you idiot. How many libertarians voted for Kamala and support the DSA, including donating and voting for DSA candidates? I have my copy of Capital on my kitchen table literally right now, right next to a giant collection of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon essays titled "Property is Theft!", surely the mark of a libertarian. A libertarian who reads The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin... okay... Imagine being as wrong and stupid as you are.
I was literally just saying LLCs are a thing. They limit liability. You can't make LLC CEOs suffer as much as you want because of what Limited Liability does. You have to change what Limited Liability means to achieve your goals. Sorry you have challenges. l
I guess that means I'm a libertarian? Maybe if you're a fucking idiot you have that logic and consider that libertarian rhetoric.
Linited Liability makes it so the CEO of Activision faces no accountability from the government when he caused his employees to kill themselves. Or the CEO of BP suffering consequences after those oil spills. Or the CEOs of for profit private prisons being held responsible for all of the illegal activities done inside the prisons. But they arent. That's not a libertarian opinion you fucking moron. That's a fact of life. Get your shit together the next time you comment.
It really tells you that the nobility class never went away, it just rebranded itself.
Wealth hoarding, not to be mistaken with accumulation, should be grounds for investigation, and redistribution if necessary.