Could someone please comment on this from the free market perspective? I’m not sure what to make of this coming from an anarcho capitalist perspective. It seems the debate is between property and labor.
On one hand the workers should not be operating under property that is not their’s. On the other hand, the closing down of the factory would cease to produce valuable labor. This seems to be a working practice of anarcho syndicalism.
Worker-owned firms are just another possible business model on the market. Syndicalism is a bit more comprehensive than that, but I wouldn’t hesitate to call it “workers’ capitalism” as Mises did. So if socialists want to call this a “victory” let them, but in reality it’s just a form of organisation individuals can enact on the market (without depriving the rightful owner of the firm of their property; they’d have to buy it from them or form a new firm.)
But as Jon said, it is necessary that they acquire the property fairly.
Of course, if the current “owner” stole the property, there is a case that they might legitimately steal it.
Many big companies are at least partially owned by it’s workers. One I know of is Microsoft. Bill Gates owned and worked for Microsoft. What? Am I playing semantics? Is the CEO not a worker?