Worker cooperatives are not new, but they’re seeing new life as progressive-minded employees seek out remedies for the nation’s growing economic inequality. Worker cooperatives are equally owned and governed by employees, who also earn money from the profits of their labor. There are no CEOs here making multi-million dollar salaries while workers receive minimum wage. Nor are there CEOs with decades of experience and education to successfully guide the company through the up and downs of the dog-eat-dog business world.

In worker cooperatives, decision-making is democratic, so each worker has one vote, and policies can’t be determined by an investor whose only priority is profit. (Most profit-minded investors probably wouldn’t touch a worker cooperative with a ten-foot pole anyway.)

In a typical workplace, “there’s a pretty clear hierarchy at work, where power and wealth are concentrated at the top and decisions tend to flow from the top down,” Carlos Perez de Alejo, the executive director of Cooperation Texas, an Austin-based resource for cooperatives, told me. “We end up with the results of those decisions without really knowing where they came from.”