But the employees don't own a controlling share. For it to be a worker cooperative it really needs to be entirely owned and governed by the people working there.
Makes no sense to me.
Case in point example: SpaceX shares are very illiquid but also very very much up since SpaceX was founded.
If that company is a co-op in which only employees are allowed to own shares, the only people I can sell my shares to are other employees.
In general, more willing buyers (who in turn know they can they sell those shares unrestricted in the future to any buyer), increases the people willing to bid on those shares at any given moment in time. (It’s the same basic reason that you’d rather have $100 in cash than $100 gift card for Starbucks.)
That sounds like plain old profit sharing, not ownership.
Worker cooperatives are organizations that are governed by their workers for their workers, not owned as property to be traded or sold.
1: Lower liquidity usually goes hand in hand with higher transaction costs, which means a bigger gap between how much the buyer pays and how much the seller walks away with.
2: Time value of money: Suppose some liquid asset can be exchanged for $X right now, and an otherwise equivalent illiquid asset can be exchanged for $X by, let's say, a month from now. $X today is more valuable than $X in a month, so no one is going to buy the illiquid asset today for $X if they could get the liquid one instead.