Repressed

 "I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective." Ah, the ignorance of bliss. This little bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail reminds me of my time working for an employee-owned company, "We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week," says the constitutional peasant. When I arrived in Oakland, I was looking for a job, and it never occurred to me that I would be part of a social experiment, let alone an anarcho-syndicalist commune.

After three months of working at Bookpeople, the employee-owned corporation founded in Berkeley in 1969, I was asked to become a shareholder. For five hundred dollars. Which was a chunk of change for a guy who just landed in the Golden State to fork over, so arrangements were made for deductions to be made from my paycheck. I did ask, at the time, if there was another version in which I just never became a shareholder, kept my job and didn't have those deductions. It became clear that this was discouraged, but in a very polite and meaningful way. All I had to do to become a shareholder was endure the deductions and show up to work each day until the five hundred dollars were paid off. It was explained to me that everyone who was currently employed at this book distributor had navigated this same path. No one else held any more shares than anyone else, and that a someone working on the packing line had an equal say in what went on in the company as the folks in the offices. The offices just behind that big wall. The offices with carpet and heat. And natural light. Except for that whole environment thing, and the monthly salaries paid to the folks clever enough to hang on to those carpeted, heated, naturally lighted offices. 

And I was assured that even though I was just a warehouse worker, who rose abruptly to the ranks of order puller, I could run for a one year term on the Board of Directors. This group of five individuals took the place of that "executive officer of the week." They would meet and once a month we would all stay after work and listen to their report. "But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting," reminds the constitutional peasant. There was a lot of voting. And plenty of opportunity to orate at these monthly meetings. 

Yours truly landed himself a spot on the Board of Directors just about the same time I climbed the ladder into the warehouse office. Management at last. Well, after a year and a half. As a newlywed, this allowed me the chance to bring home a few dollars more, since I had an office, even though it was still on the other side of the wall. The whole time I worked at Arby's back in college, managers sat a desk in the back room when they weren't doing the things that everyone else did: pushing roast beef sandwiches at customers. I knew it was a management gig because I had a clipboard. And a spot of the Board of Directors. Which got me more hours after work, wrestling with budgets and policies and the inner workings of a corporation. While the folks I was managing were leaving to go home, my day went on. And on. 

Somewhere in there, the economic realities of the book business began to make themselves apparent. The margin that we relied on to make our social experiment work began to shrink. The ideals we held so dearly and our independent spirit began to shrivel in the harsh light of Barnes and Noble and Borders. Chains wanted better deals than our traditional mom and pop bookstores. It was the Board of Directors upon which I sat that first sailed the idea of a general manager. Somebody with a big office and a big salary to shepherd us through these stormy seas. And in my second term on the board, we hired a guy for that office. From outside. 

When it was all over, and the people's voices had all been heard, from both sides of the wall, we went ahead and made a king. For a while, we tried to shine everyone on that this guy was just another shareholder, and made a show of doing his shareholder review as part of a board meeting. But the die was cast. "You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship. ..... A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--" Which is about the point where Arthur grabs Dennis by the scruff of the neck and tells him to shut up. 

It took a few more years, but once Bookpeople had a king, they once and future place where everyone had an equal share and equal say disappeared. And I went where the big bucks could be found: teaching in a public school.