Loren Rodgers
The NCEO is delighted to announce six new members of its board of directors: Lori Atone, Jennifer Briggs, Haydee Caldero, Timothy Garbinsky, Susan Kildahl, and Dan Markowitz -- their bios are below. The three-year terms of the new directors will begin on April 1, 2023. Congratulations and thanks to our new directors!
Grace Dawson
We’re thrilled to announce that our new Recruitment and Retention toolkit is now live! The current labor market can be an interesting place to navigate these days, but this new addition to our member resources can help you use the advantage of being an ESOP to attract the talent you’re looking for. The Recruitment and Retention toolkit joins our ESOP Finance toolkit and Board Excellence toolkit in helping your ESOP thrive.
Scott Rodrick
We recently released three new ESOP-related books, two of them new editions and one entirely new title:
Madelyn Hammack
Last week, The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing announced the launch of its first massive open online course (MOOC), titled "Our Share: Employee Ownership as a Wealth Sharing Tool." The free Coursera course, which is delivered as a series of short, engaging videos that can be viewed at one's own pace, teaches viewers what employee ownership is, how it differs from traditional business ownership models, the forms it can take, and the benefits it can provide for employees, retiring business owners, and the economy.
NCEO
The NCEO’s 2023 ESOP Repurchase Obligation Survey is now live and accepting responses from ESOP companies.
Timothy Garbinsky
Across the U.S. there is a burgeoning and vibrant network of state centers for employee ownership that are working to get the word out about ESOPs, worker cooperatives, employee ownership trusts (EOTs), and other forms of broad-based ownership for businesses. Dating back to the 1980s with the founding of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC), these efforts have gathered steam in recent years. The Employee Ownership Expansion Network (EOX) has been assisting in setting up and operating these centers throughout the nation, helping bring the employee ownership message to business owners, economic developers, educators, and communities.
Corey Rosen
State legislation on employee ownership is gaining momentum, with bills passed in Colorado during 2021 and in Massachusetts and California during 2022. Two new bills have attracted important support in Washington and Tennessee, and bills will be introduced soon in Texas, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. The bills in Washington and Tennessee were introduced in the past week, as described below.
Jaymie Oviedo
The 2023 peer networking groups will start meeting soon!
Corey Rosen
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, an omnibus spending bill with many parts that was signed into law on December 29, contains major wins for employee ownership as part of the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022. (The original SECURE [Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement] Act of 2019 was signed into law in December 2019 and modified various retirement plan rules, such as changing the age for required minimum distributions from 70½ to 72.) Section references here are to the SECURE 2.0 Act, not the appropriations bill as a whole, which contains many laws (e.g., there are multiple “sec. 114” instances, and one of them is in the SECURE 2.0 Act, amending Section 1042).
