How do firing decisions get made? If workers own a part, I assume they can still be forced out. Does it require a majority vote though, or do one or more people have that authority granted to them?
Hiring and firing happen through our Employment[0] and Membership[1] processes. The most important concept to get is that ownership and employment are the same thing in a co-op. If someone is no longer employed, they will cease to be a co-owner and give up their single worker-member share.
We have had to let people go before. We got together and talked honestly and openly about what was best for the co-op and the mission, what headcount we could afford to budget, and what skills were most needed going forward. And the people who weren't required anymore decided to step down of their own volition.
We did have one case where someone who clearly needed to leave didn't accept that at first, but through a series of conversations and mediation we worked it out and the agreed to step down. We now have a better conflict resolution process[2], developed out of learnings from that situation and others. If there's a conflict that cannot be resolved through this process, the result might be the person no longer being employed. This has yet to happen.
People could theoretically be forced out. Section 11 of our constitution[3] talks about the power of the Board to surrender shares at the option of the co-op, under certain circumstances (basically if someone is no longer employed or acts in bad faith). This has never been used so far.
We have a separate system to acknowledge the work people did for free or under market rates in the early days, and the risk they took giving their time to an early stage startup with no guarantees. This is called Loomio Points, and it's kind of like sweat equity (which we don't have because we don't have equity in that way). People keep their Loomio Points even if they leave the co-op, and we really hope to be successful enough to pay well on them in the future (currently everything is still being reinvested in the business).
