Employee stock options are not a new idea, obviously.
If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a good business plan. The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Your barista at Starbucks is not going to increase the stock price no matter how well he fills your order; at the same time, maybe he wants to know how much he takes home every day.
If the story is "it should be the law that every company offers stock options", then that would be a dumb law for the reasons above.
If the story is "all companies must be fully employee-owned workers' cooperatives", then first, note that you are calling for a restriction on workers' rights: they have to be given part of their pay as stocks, and they can't sell them freely. Second, that will probably make markets work worse. There's a large economics literature on this: worker-owned cooperatives have not taken over the market, although they are an available institutional form, because (a) they find it hard to raise capital (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit, e.g. they won't sack underperforming divisions or expand in ways that dilute existing workers' stake.
If the story is "every company should offer stock options to its employees", then sure, that's often a good business plan. The reason not every company does it to all its employees is probably that for those employees, it wouldn't affect incentives much and it would make payment subject to the vagaries of the stock market. Your barista at Starbucks is not going to increase the stock price no matter how well he fills your order; at the same time, maybe he wants to know how much he takes home every day.
If the story is "it should be the law that every company offers stock options", then that would be a dumb law for the reasons above.
If the story is "all companies must be fully employee-owned workers' cooperatives", then first, note that you are calling for a restriction on workers' rights: they have to be given part of their pay as stocks, and they can't sell them freely. Second, that will probably make markets work worse. There's a large economics literature on this: worker-owned cooperatives have not taken over the market, although they are an available institutional form, because (a) they find it hard to raise capital (b) they tend to make decisions that maximize worker welfare rather than profit, e.g. they won't sack underperforming divisions or expand in ways that dilute existing workers' stake.