The John Lewis Partnership[0] in the UK (which owns a chain of department stores[1] and the supermarket chain Waitrose[2]) has more than 80,000 employees and operates like a cooperative.

Technically it's a Public Limited Company (albeit one wholly owned by a trust for the benefit of its employees), but it does run an internal democratic system.

Profits are distributed to employees as bonus, which is a uniform percentage of their salary. 2021 is the first year they won't distribute a bonus (because of Covid), but historically it's been between 5% and 20%.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_Partnership

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_%26_Partners

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose

That’s cool but isn’t it similar to the incentive pay programs or RSUs/ESPPs offered by traditional employers? Not to mention that once the company is large, it’s hard to feel you have that much control over the success of the entire company.

Employees of JL don't own any shares. They cannot be bought or sold or given to employees. 100% of the shares are owned by the Trust.

That also means that every employee effectively has the same stake in the company - those high up in management, for example, don't have a lop-sided number of shares compared to those on the (both literal and metaphorical) shop floor.

JL employees also elect colleagues to hold the management to account, and appoint people to the Board and Trust. How many "traditional employers" allow that to happen?

It doesn't have to be. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

I don't doubt you can make a large co-op. What I do doubt is that working at a large co-op is much different from working at any other large employer (I guess unless you're on the executive team).

At Mondragon, employees can choose their managers by vote (the corporation is run like a democracy inside), perhaps that can make some difference. I have no experience, therefore no strong opinion on this; sounds good to me, but maybe it introduces its own problems that I wouldn't guess.

That's interesting. Maybe it's more different than I would have imagined. At least it would seem to give some recourse if the manager is a tyrant.