Is Worker Ownership just Small-Time Self-Exploitation?

["Vic Thorpe" <just.solutions@pandora.be>]

Dear Friends and Comrades,

I think that the revived discussion has got straight to the point in the New
Year.  Lisa and Ian's concern that worker ownership may be just a way of
staving off inevitable collapse - at the expense of wage rates in general -
needs serious consideration.

Does anyone out there have any direct experience of successful and growing
worker ownership initiatives?  Or the opposite, come to that?

Is the worker ownership solution only appliccable to small semi-bankrupt
outfits?

I attach background details of the medium-sized and successful Scott Bader
Commonwealth chemical concern in the UK which has been going for many
profitable years.  Also the still profitable Tower Colliery.  Then there's
the multi-billion dollar US worker takeovers> United Airlines (union members
cashed in big bucks after some years as majority holders), Republic Steel,
many quite big paper companies, etc.  Of course, LTV, one of the biggest
steel takeovers, is in the throes of bankruptcy again at the moment.

Can anyone point to research data that helps us on this?

Is it just that we have not been bold enough to try it out as a positive,
but only as a defensive strategy?

Vic Thorpe