At the Cheeseboard Collective on Shattuck Avenue, there are nearly 50 workers who do everything from clean toilets to sign paychecks. And almost every worker is also an owner.

The bakery, pizzeria and cheese maker is one of more than 10 worker-owned workplaces in Berkeley and around 40 in the Bay Area, which has one of the highest concentrations of worker cooperatives in the country.

The region’s liberal and progressive roots are largely responsible for the abundance of worker-owned businesses, said John Curl, author of a book on the history of worker cooperatives and member of Berkeley’s Heartwood Cooperative Workshop since 1974.

“People come to California looking for a better life, and part of a better life is not being trapped as an employee for the rest of your life,” he said.

Almost all of the area’s worker-owned workplaces belong to the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, which includes 30 businesses and more than 1,000 individuals.

For these members, the difference between their workplace and a traditional job is demonstrated in how they pronounce the organization’s acronym: “no boss.”

“There is no comparison—we own the business, we make the decisions, no one can fire you,” said Marvin Vinik, a 28-year member of Berkeley’s Juice Bar Collective, who during tax season works for the traditionally owned H&R Block. “It’s a whole different ballgame.”

Co-op members can also make more than double their industry’s average wage, though manufacturing sectors have struggled to keep pay up to the level of traditional businesses, said Melissa Hoover, executive director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives.

At Juice Bar, hourly wages plus year-end bonuses can add up to $17 an hour, while members at Arizmendi Bakery in San Francisco make nearly $15 an hour. Cheeseboard does not release its pay rate, but it is said to be among the highest of co-op pay rates in the area.

In contrast, the median hourly wage for food preparation and serving-related occupations in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont area is $8.86, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Unlike a traditional firm, in which profits are split between suppliers, workers and owners, co-ops benefit from an equal distribution between the latter two groups, said Steven Pitts, a labor specialist at UC Berkeley’s Center for Research and Education.

But the demands—including a wider set of base skills and greater commitment to the business—can limit the number of worker cooperatives.

“In a worker cooperative, it’s required that you understand the bigger picture,” said Dave Karoly, founder of the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives. “It requires more from people than just clocking in and clocking out.”

Worker cooperatives in Berkeley date back to the 1970s, when a number of the area’s most successful cooperatives were formed, including Cheeseboard and Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, the largest worker cooperative in the nation, Hoover said.

The success of those stalwarts has contributed to the high number of worker co-ops in the area, she said.

“The ones that survived, they didn’t just survive. In most cases, they prospered,” Hoover said. “They committed money and human resources to getting new co-ops started.”

For Cheeseboard, this effort began in 1997, when the restaurant provided worker training and recipes in helping get the first Arizmendi Bakery collective opened in Oakland.

Since then more Arizmendi locations have opened in both San Francisco and Oakland, each sharing Cheeseboard’s recipes for everything from sourdough to muffins to brioche.

To qualify as a cooperative, a workplace must have at least three members, each of whom generally owns an equal share of the company and gets a vote at meetings where business decisions are made, Karoly said.

But at Cheeseboard, where every motion is adopted by consensus, a decision can take multiple meetings—and as long as three months, Perez said.

“The process is really slow in moving, because we have to hear everybody’s voice—which is good,” he said. “It’s a double-sided sword, it’s good and bad.”