Employee Ownership Blog

Corey Rosen

U.S. Senator Says Link Employee Ownership to Government Aid

Only a handful of people in Congress have actually worked for an ESOP company, but Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is one of them. In an interview with Urban Milwaukee on July 3, Johnson suggested linking government assistance to employee ownership. “PPP on average probably provided a grant of around $11,000 per employee. So if we’re going to provide these grants, you know, restore capital, what I will say in exchange for the grant, a business that wants to reopen would then establish a new ownership structure, something like an employee stock ownership plan. I actually worked at one … and it’s a great form of ownership. Every employee participates. They participate in the earnings of the company, generally set up as a retirement type of plan. It’s a really good ownership structure for a capitalist society. I think it would also help alleviate the inequality gap as well.”

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Nancy Wiefek, Corey Rosen

New Research Highlights Potential Benefits of ESOPs for the Formerly Incarcerated

Timely research published by the American Economic Review conducted by Professor Robynn Cox at USC adds additional evidence of the potential for ESOPs to address income and wealth inequality. Her paper “The Role of Broad-Based Employee Ownership Opportunities in Prisoner Reentry” uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey that has followed a cohort of almost 9,000 individuals since 1997 through 17 waves of surveys. These data have previously been used by the NCEO to document the positive impact of ESOPs on lower wage workers and workers of color. (See our own research stemming from the same cohort at www.ownershipeconomy.org.)

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Loren Rodgers

The NCEO Captive Insurance Initiative: ESOP Companies Working Together to Reduce Costs

Here are three things I believe: ESOP companies are well-managed, they tend toward being open with information, and they are generous about sharing best practices with each other. If I’m right, then any group of ESOP companies is likely to have better-than-average risk profiles. And if that’s true, it should be possible to translate these characteristics into better insurance opportunities for ESOP companies.

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Timothy Garbinsky

Employee-Owned CA Bus Company Goes Electric

Vallejo, California-based Michael's Transportation Service, Inc., which has been employee-owned since 2009, announced that it will be adding all-electric Blue Bird school buses to its fleet, making it the first in the state to do so. Though the emissions-free buses won't hit the streets just yet due to the COVID-19 restrictions, the fact that Michael's has already received the delivery suggests that they are well ahead of the curve when it comes to environment-friendly transportation.

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Dallan Guzinski

Employee Survey Project: Asking Employee-Owners About the COVID Work Experience

With remote work, socially distanced production, new shift schedules, and virtual meetings, companies are beginning to head toward a new normal in their operations. The NCEO is developing a survey that will help gather your employee-owners' assessment of how well the new way of working is going and what their ideas are for improvements. It will also give you a chance to check in with how they're managing during these times of crisis.

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