Meet the New Boss(es)

“Hot coffee coming through!” yells an employee rushing into the annual board of directors election at Equal Exchange. It may be the least necessary warning ever: Pots of dark roast and Colombian have been brewing all morning at the coffee company’s West Bridgewater headquarters, and just about everyone is clutching a steaming mug as they enter the conference room where the voting will take place. Inside, the dress code is business casual in the loosest sense of the term—jeans and khakis mixed with visible tattoos, flowing skirts, a tie-dye or two.

Since its founding 20 years ago, Equal Exchange has been a pioneer in the fair-trade movement, paying farmers above-market rates for coffee beans, then jacking up the price for earnest health-food shoppers who don’t mind paying extra for a more compassionate cup of joe. Less noticed, however, is the equally innovative way the company handles its internal affairs. At most businesses, workers aren’t even invited to board elections; here, they not only attend, they run for the bulk of the seats.

Milling about before the meeting, Rodney North, the company’s head of public relations (his business card lists his title as “The Answer Man”), declares the vote “up for grabs.” Short with spiky hair and a graying beard, he is running for reelection, and is one of three candidates for two open seats. His competition includes Jim Desmond, a salesman with a patchy red beard and a dark blue button-down. Addressing the room, Desmond describes himself as an “effective communicator” with “strong analytical skills,” and says he looks forward to helping the company adapt as it continues to grow. When it’s his turn to make his pitch, the third candidate, roasting-plant supervisor Steve Bolton, at first talks so low he’s almost mumbling. He sums up his qualifications thus: “I have a pretty good financial background, pretty good operations, pretty good safety and personnel background, and pretty good technological background.” He finishes, though, with a bang. “I just want people to know that I am not a person who came from corporate America with a screwed-up mindset. I really think that capitalism the way we see it is going to be gone someday. It is inevitable.”

The room erupts in hoots and cheers. For these staffers, electing their own board members isn’t merely a matter of business principles. It’s nothing short of a revolution in American office life. In fact, Equal Exchange’s employees aren’t just workers; they’re “worker-owners,” a term that’d have Karl Marx drooling into his wurst. Yet this is not a communist throwback, but rather “workplace democracy,” a rare but growing breed of corporate governance that gives workers unprecedented control over their employers. So empowered, Equal Exchange workers have called the shots in choosing a new headquarters, doubling their profit-sharing plan, and in one case deposing their own boss, a company cofounder who’d helped implement the very system that led to his removal.

This spring Washington, DC, think tank WorldBlu selected Equal Exchange as one of the firms on its first-ever list of “most democratic companies” in the world. It was one of several in Massachusetts—which was disproportionately represented on the list—to make the honor roll, which WorldBlu created as a way to celebrate this emerging business niche. “We give people the right to vote for president, and have children, and join the PTA, and drive a car, but they have to ask at work to use the bathroom,” says Traci Fenton, WorldBlu’s upbeat, thirtysomething founder. “We are fighting for democracy all over the world, but we so easily give up our freedoms walking in the door every day.”

And indeed, it is ironic that here in the land of the free, most of us spend the majority of our waking hours toiling in totalitarianism. Offices, after all, are strictly hierarchical environments, where orders flow in one direction (down) and employees are kept in line by the threat of retribution (being fired) or promise of reward (getting a raise). No wonder a recent Gallup poll found 73 percent of employees at U.S. companies were either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” on the job. Meanwhile, average vacation days are declining and healthcare premiums are rising. In that environment, what employee wouldn’t want to be able to vote to increase his take-home or can his supervisor?

At the same time, the phenomenon also raises a few questions—like how the hell a CEO can get anything done when he’s constantly on guard against his potential overthrow, or how companywide elections can be kept from descending into popularity contests. But Rodney North, the Equal Exchange Answer Man, says such concerns have proven unfounded, at least if his company is any indication. “The immediate presumption is that if you have the inmates running the asylum, they are going to pay themselves too much, and give themselves more power,” he says. “Well, no. At other companies, the same decisions have to be made. The change is just who makes them.”