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Comment by nrook | Hacker News Reader

This is required in some European countries. For example, in Germany, workers have a right to 50% of the board for companies with more than 2,000 employees. (Ties break for shareholders, due to the way the chair position works.)

https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Rela...

Obviously, this hasn't destroyed Germany's economy, so it's doubtful it would hurt Google's profits much either.

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50% of the board with votes breaking for shareholders sounds a lot like the workers don't actually have any control at all. What prevents the shareholders from just consistently railroading the workers, forcing everything to a tie, and then having the decision break their way?

I was reading about employee-employer relationship in Japan(in the context of Sony) and it seemed like most people used to work at a place for life. It might be similar for Germany in a lot of industries(Automobile, heavy manufacturing). However, wouldn't this pose a new set of problems when applied to companies where the average employee tenure is very short? I think the average tech worker tenure is very very short compared to other industries. While representing employees on the board is a good idea in general, it might need some modifications before being applied to companies with high employee churn rate.

Sounds like half-communism to me. It's messing with the reward/punishment mechanism of profits/losses. They have 50% of control, but no skin in the game. If their policies hurt dividends, it doesn't matter, because they didn't invest their own money in the first place and the salary is stable. If the company goes broke, they can just find another job.

> Obviously, this hasn't destroyed Germany's economy, so it's doubtful it would hurt Google's profits much either.

You can't say the Germany economy wouldn't be better off without this regulation.

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