The State of Employee Ownership Policies in the United States

In Having a Stake, a publication released today by Third Way, Joseph Blasi, Douglas Kruse, and Richard Freeman assemble the current state of research on all forms of employee ownership, making a case for changing public policy.

In the introduction, the authors summarize the article: "policies to expand capital ownership and profit sharing that the founders of the U.S. saw as the right way to address the inequality and economic problems of their day are as appropriate—or even more so—to the inequality and economic problems of our day. With the experience of the past to draw upon and a large and growing set of studies on how different forms of employee share ownership and profit sharing work in modern settings, it is time to examine how ownership and profit-sharing policies can help make U.S. capitalism more efficient and equitable in the current economic environment."

The article examines the data on profit sharing, ESOPs, broad-based equity compensation, and worker cooperatives, and concludes that four findings support stronger policy support for employee ownership:

1. It reduces inequality of wealth and income.
2. It improves company productivity.
3. It increases net employment by enhancing firm survival and employment stability.
4. It is associated with increased employee voice, access to information, and more satisfying work experience.