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.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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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.”