My first job was at an employee owned company.
What you need to understand is employee ownership is not worker ownership. Ownership of the company is related to the amount of employee stock that a worker owns, which means management always has the most ownership because they are given stock options that the rest of the workforce isn't able to get or afford.
In the end it just turns managers into shareholders, with the rest of the workers disregarded in the decision making process.
Worker ownership has to be democratic. Equal shares for equal work. Otherwise it's just a dictatorship of management masquerading as meritocracy.