Goaded by their conviction that firms are no longer capable of considering the best interests of the public, over 6,000 economists worldwide signed a manifesto last year arguing that to save democracy, we must democratize firms. In early September, the European Parliament took up a report over a bold set of proposals to achieve that aim. If these proposals advance, U.S. democracy activists should take note.

What’s good for GM (or Google) is no longer good for America. If corporate decision-making continues to be limited to the narrow perspective and interests of firm leaders, national decision-making may follow suit. Positions on important policy matters are increasingly guided by calculations of short-term gains for a small handful of executives and investors.

With rising capital concentration, corporate executives and the political leaders they support are increasingly distanced from the pocketbook issues of most citizens. Sociological research suggests that people in positions of great wealth and power, such as corporate CEOs, may be subject to empathy deficits, preventing them from perceiving or taking seriously the harm their actions may cause to others. This suggests that the executive class are the wrong people to entrust with an expanded vision of “corporate purpose.” As Isabelle Ferreras, a leader of the Democratizing Work movement has put it, “Capitalism can no longer be left in the hands of capitalists alone.”

Yet CEOs have an outsized say in American democracy, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling protecting corporate political spending, while their own employees are deterred from participating in these same important policy debates. Some European polities are on the same trajectory. This is why revision of a little-known EU directive may be so important. As Ferreras put it, “The European vision for democracy needs to be rooted in the economy, where people experience most of their life.” In a recent interview, she praised the EU committee report, explaining:

“This is not the moment to be ‘realistic’ or engage in business as usual and politics as usual. We know we are not going to get out of this crisis without really ambitious thinking. If we can deal with this crisis successfully it will be because workers invest in their jobs no matter what service they are performing. There is momentum to recognize that, to align the way our economic system is structured, to grant workers the right to weigh in on the governance of their own work life. It is so important, so obvious that this will lead to an economic system that meets their needs and expectations.”

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Biden administration has made commitments not only to strengthen protections for workers at home, but to a foreign policy for the middle class. As the U.S. administration plans for an ambitious Summit for Democracy at the end of this year, engaging beleaguered allies in the EU and elsewhere, democratizing work ought to be on the table.

Unfortunately the administration may be hamstrung by its own base. The U.S. labor movement has been steadily losing ground in recent decades. And while other left-leaning groups are quick to call on workers to support progressive causes, they are slow to mobilize to support labor organizing. The result has been a weakening of organized labor to pre-World War II levels, even while more young Americans than ever say they would join a union at work. As a result, organized labor is not in a position to address the challenge of rising corporate capture of public policy.

Many within the labor movement are recognizing that old fashioned industrial union structures badly need a refresh. The Clean Slate Project has proposed several reforms fit for the 21st century economy, among them the idea of co-governance. These proposals have been given a boost from a new Aspen Institute report which attempts to reach a broad swath of the political spectrum. And it makes a compelling case for why what’s good for GM or Google’s employees may in fact be good for America.

For example, in January 2021, Twitter and Facebook employees were instrumental in convincing CEOs to de-platform President Trump due to incendiary speech in violation of the company’s terms. Employees are capable of providing important insights on critical issues. But they must risk losing their jobs if they bring those perspectives forward. The report also notes the case of 8,000 Amazon employees in 2019 who wrote to company shareholders to ask that company strategy be aligned with climate mitigation goals. The company issued a well-publicized climate pledge. But the organizers of the letter were fired.

And this brings us back to the case of the Google “Thanksgiving Four.” Google employees had pointed out contradictions between firm actions and U.S. human rights objectives prior to this case. In late 2018, thousands of Google employees protested against projects that enabled surveillance and repression, including the Dragonfly project enabling Chinese government censorship and surveillance. And prior to the actions that finally resulted in Facebook’s 2021 Trump ban, in 2019, hundreds of Facebook employees signed an open letter published in the New York Times urging the company to prohibit outright lies in political advertising.

Employees arguably are better positioned than chief executives or boards to understand what stakeholders and communities might perceive as ethical or unethical. What if these employees had had more explicit power to force corporate executives to engage in a serious governance decision at that time? Would events challenging U.S. election certification have unfolded differently in January 2021?

It’s long been the case that employees serve as an important first defense against safety hazards that can affect the general public. This is why whistleblower protections have been so important over the years. But protection of public interest would not rely so heavily on whistleblowers if workers had regular channels by which they could engage in management decisions. As the Aspen report argues, this would enhance the long-term decision-making ability of firms. Workers have a self-interest in flagging risk, particularly the sort of moral hazards that may be perfectly obvious to average working people, but less so to executives in their filtered bubbles.

Workers may also prove less likely than shareholders or CEOs to negotiate against the long-term interests of the company, since they have a stake in long-term, stable employment. In contrast, thanks to decades of fixation on quarterly returns, leading executives or board members may only be able to take a short-term and self-interested view of firm interests. An obvious example, recently documented in the Wall Street Journal, are executives’ decisions to push for excess overtime during a worker shortage. This has cost firms more even in the short term, let alone medium term, due to strikes and turnover. Making decisions with employees would likely have helped these firms achieve their targets more efficiently.

In the much bigger picture, workers and their representative organizations have a far greater interest in a sustainable economic recovery to the current, pandemic-induced crisis. Corporate leaders, on the other hand, are opposing an economically necessary stimulus bill, one which would surely benefit all firms by restoring purchasing power and consumer confidence. They are even continuing to support politicians who oppose raising the debt ceiling, threatening a national default.

And Facebook has famously refused to share data that would elucidate its role in perpetuating the ongoing Covid-19 crisis by enabling anti-vaccine disinformation, to the detriment of its own employees and the greater citizenry. If employees were involved in corporate governance they would likely force firms to reckon with solipsistic executive decision making, which may be providing short term windfalls to a limited few today, but no long term growth. At a minimum, firms would be having a more honest debate on the pros and cons of their positions on important policy matters.