> Employee owned co-ops are more humane

Speaking as someone born in Yugoslavia.

That's almost how it was in Yugoslavia. Companies where "owned by society", but workers had voting rights. Whenever there was a vote to decide whether extra profit should be used for capital investments and/or operational improvements or assigned to salaries budget, everyone voted to increase their salaries.

Not every employ should be a co-owner, or at least not everyone should have voting rights.

Did you know that public market shareholders almost always vote for stock buybacks

You still need free market economics. If consumers have enough choices then the company with comfortable employees that refuse to invest profits into their operation will lose to the better organized competitor prioritizing a balance between the two.