Worker Owned

Someone requested I write a newsletter about the way Belt Publishing is structured as a business, and before I could do so I had to have a few questions answered. They just were, so here goes:

Belt Publishing is a worker-owned LLC. We have no employees; all of the people who are paid by Belt are self-employed, including me (we are also owners; I’ll get to that). We do plan to transition to becoming an S Corp over the next few months, which will allow us to have employees. But that’s a side issue for now.

As an LLC, we have an Operating Agreement that spells out our bylaws and ways of proceeding, voting, distributing profits and the like. And we have Members who own shares of the company.

When we started, I owned a majority of the shares, based on sweat equity. Three others became Members based on capital contributions. A few years later, one of the Belt staff (“staff” is used loosely, again, as we are all self-employed/owners) had been working for less pay than she deserved, so we gav…