In fact it's not a "known risk". It's an active area of research, with at least some findings contradicting your assumptions, e.g.:
> Our findings suggest that the traditional hold-up view whereby unions discourage innovation does not necessarily survive. When the voice effect is neither too strong nor too low, the unionized sector outperforms the market in terms of process innovation, while the effect on product innovation is strictly increasing in the voice power.
How about Richard D. Wolff, an economics professor with a relatively socialist area of study?
He has lots of material not just from his point of view but many guest interviews from many walks of life. Hosting his weekly 30-minute "current events" program, Economic Update, where all kinds of episodes are posted online, besides his lectures and books over the decades.
Here's a video lecture touching on worker coops and related theories that ended up being posted in a subreddit that is not specifically concerned with economics, socialism, nor coops:
Richard D. Wolff Lecture on Worker Coops; Theory and Practice of 21st Century Socialism:
Turns out there's been only one "parent" comment but it does say quite a bit in a much shorter time than it takes to listen to the entire lecture:
>POGO_POGO_POGO_POGO • 6y ago • Edited 6y ago
"Two problems I see with worker cooperatives:
If a capitalist enterprise were to be converted to a worker-owner enterprise, the workers would need to buy their "exploitation" up front (as that would be incorporated in the company price). This is a catch-22: they can either not buy the company and get exploited throughout their working life, or they can buy the present value of their exploitation up-front. This is much like telling a slave that they can buy their freedom, but the cost of their freedom is a full-life's worth of labour. (Obviously workers aren't "exploited" to the degree of a slave, but hopefully you get the picture.)
Instead of converting a capitalist enterprise to a worker cooperative, the enterprise could be a worker cooperative from the start - a worker cooperative start-up. The problem I see here is how many start-ups actually succeed? Not many. This means that the risk of funding start-ups is huge, and a huge risk needs a huge payoff when successful. E.g. suppose you are in the business of funding start-ups. If only one in ten start-ups succeed, then that one successful startup needs to return a lot to compensate for the other failed nine. The easiest way to achieve this return is simply if the party funding the start-up takes part-ownership. But that's against the principles of a worker-owned enterprise!
So it's hard to convert to a worker cooperative, and hard to start a worker cooperative. I don't see worker cooperatives taking off without some sort of government incentives (or "coersion" as libertarians would like to put it)."
I can't say I fully agree with Wolff or his detractors, but there's opinions I wouldn't want to be without when it comes to understanding a fuller economic picture,
(Before I get downvoted, I'm not saying unions are evil, and that this always happens, just that it's a known risk)