If the stock an employee gets doesn't give voting rights, then it's not really even a sliver of ownership, it's just a form of profit-sharing. That's not at all bad, but a different thing.

Personally, I consider stock options to be a bit like lottery tickets. All things being equal, it doesn't hurt to have them, but I'm not going to count them as compensation and that I have them isn't going to make me work any differently.

All that said, as a customer, I tend to prefer to patronize businesses that are "employee-owned" to a significant degree.