[gamblor956]

worker owned companies don't have the same legal structures as capital owned companies, at least in the US.

This is false. In the U.S., worker-owned coops are just corporations. Or partnerships. Or LLPs. or LLCs. Or a variety of other business entity types. (The point is, in the U.S., the ownership structure does not necessarily determine the legal entity type.)

For example: every law firm in the U.S. is employee-owned, by law. Most accounting firms are employee-owned, also by law.

For specific examples of employee-owned businesses that aren't law firms or accounting firms: Publix Super Markets, WinCo, Brookshire, WL Gore, Gensler, HAC.

[eikenberry]

Companies can be employee owned, but there is no (and there should be) laws specific for them that make them attractive to start. The fact that 2 of your examples are required by law to be that way and the other examples are so few that it really drives the point home that our laws discourage employee ownership instead of encouraging it.

To put it another way, according to a brief internet search, there are around 1.3mil companies in the US with >10 employees and there are around 6000 employee owned companies. As such employee owned companies make up around 0.005% of businesses in the US and, IMHO, this shows that the legal system isn't there for them or there would be more (a lot more) of them.