This proposal considers implementing a dynamic trajectory for firm democratisation and value-chain inclusion as a predistributive component of a roadmap to eradicating poverty beyond growth. Corporate decision-making power is generally concentrated in the hands of shareholders and top executives, while workers — who generate value and bear the risks of restructuring, relocation, or automation — have little influence over strategic choices. This imbalance contributes to wage suppression, deteriorating working conditions, short-term profit maximisation, and decisions that undermine long-term social and ecological sustainability. The decline of collective bargaining coverage and the expansion of precarious work have further weakened workers’ voice, reducing their capacity to shape workplace practices, investment strategies, and technological change. Workplace democracy seeks to rebalance power within firms by institutionalising meaningful worker participation in governance and decision-making, moving away from a framework that treats workers as mere “resources” exchanged on a labour market — a view contrary to the ILO Constitution — and toward recognising them as citizens at work who are investing their labour. To operationalise this transition, the proposal introduces a predistributive framework which, unlike traditional redistribution that relies on state transfers after inequality has been produced, rebalances power at its source: the government of the firm.
Three operational steps can be taken. First, the bar can be raised through mandatory minimum thresholds, requiring reforms to company and labour laws that mandate worker representation in governance structures and, drawing on established precedents such as European co-determination, establish three statutory minima: voice, through worker representation on corporate boards ranging from one-third to one-half when firm size exceeds 1,000 workers; ownership, through statutory minimums for worker shareholding to ensure a stake in the firm’s capital; and protection, through legal safeguards for union organising across all forms of employment, including platform and subcontracted work, to prevent anti-union retaliation. Second, a dynamic trajectory for the whole economy can be operationalized through a Corporate Democratic Development Index (CDDI) that evaluates firms on Voice (V) and Ownership (O) scales beyond statutory baselines, which public authorities can then link to a “bonus/malus” incentive approach tying corporate tax rates, state aid and public procurement access to these ratings, thereby creating a market-wide incentive for firms to move from capital-governed models (Rating 0) toward worker-governed or steward-owned models (Rating 5). Third, and crucially, the framework extends to global value chains, requiring lead firms — typically, but not exclusively, in the Global North — to disclose and eventually incorporate the “hidden” workers of the Global South (for example, in the AI value chain, data labellers, content moderators, and factory workers) into their “demos”, thereby addressing the “fissuring” of work, combating wage theft, and ensuring that wealth is shared globally where it is created. As the European example illustrates, it is entirely feasible working with unions to organise the representation of all the labour investors across the value chain so as to enable them to consent to the decisions taken at the level of the lead firm and to govern their lives in return. Such an extension would be a game changer in terms of workers’ access to a say over decisions and over the distribution of wealth across the globe that workers create through the existence of these transnational value chains.
Workplace democracy will help internalise social and environmental externalities: democratic workplaces tend to improve job quality and encourage longer-term decision-making. Moreover, by giving workers a voice in how productivity gains are shared, workplace democracy supports fair wages, safer conditions, and more equitable distribution of working time. More fundamentally, it would move the economy beyond extractive GDP growth: research suggests that labour-centred design — in which workers have the power to prioritise sustainability — could reduce energy consumption by up to 75%, and by facilitating worker-led successions and establishing New Citizen Funds the policy safeguards the productive fabric and territorial sovereignty against extractive financial actors. By redistributing power within firms, workplace democracy strengthens economic citizenship and enhances resilience during transitions, ensuring that economic decisions serve human wellbeing and stay within planetary boundaries, and providing a practical path toward a distributive, regenerative, gender-just and dignified global future.
