The Evergreen Cooperative Laundry’s partnership with Cleveland Clinic is perhaps the best-known example of an “anchor institution” approach to economic development in the United States. The worker-owned business is the primary laundry vendor for the Cleveland Clinic’s entire northeast Ohio area. Their experience to date suggests that it is indeed possible for a health system … Read More
This case study examines Five Point Holistic Health, the Chicago health center organized as a worker cooperative. The center offers acupuncture, psychotherapy, and bodywork treatments and services. From its earliest days, the worker-owners of Five Point have prioritized making its services affordable and accessible to the community. After years of hard work, they have achieved … Read More
No other state has as many individual home care cooperatives in operation as Washington. Although small and limited to date to serving the private pay market, Washington’s home care cooperatives suggest that “another way is possible” for organizing home care provision in the state. The business model they are piloting breaks with dominant, extractive, models … Read More
This case study examines the only physical therapy practice in the country to be structured as a worker cooperative. Founded in 2010 by 12 coworkers who left their previous employer to start their own practice together, PT360 has grown to become the largest independent physical therapy practice in the state of Vermont. It now has … Read More
Can a nonhierarchical organization set its own rules? Can it avoid reproducing hierarchy and exploitation in order to better support its clients and workers? Can it survive, as a consensus-based organization, within the system of capitalism and within institutional settings that expect hierarchy? This case study examines Alliance Collective, an anti-authoritarian therapy collective of practitioners … Read More
In 2015, PayPal and new CEO Dan Schulman embarked on a new mission: using technology to democratize financial services. But when they assessed the financial wellness of their entry-level and frontline employees, they found that their own employees were struggling financially; 65% of respondents to a survey reported that they ran out of money between paychecks. … Read More
We continue to fail to adequately compensate most essential workers even as corporate profits remain high and wealth inequality and race and gender wealth gaps persist. Employee ownership has continued to emerge against this backdrop and across party lines as a potential strategy for building an economy where prosperity is more equitably shared. Awareness about … Read More
The purpose of these chapters (Parts 1 and 2) is to show why and how one firm integrated Servant Leadership, among other initiatives, into its growing socially responsible culture, through the eyes of its designing CEO. The firm is a 50-year-old, US nationwide environmental consultancy, which is now 100% employee-owned and a legal “public benefit … Read More
Wages don’t cover the bills. Wealth inequality is growing. Social trust is eroding. There are endless debates about what to do, but one key factor is inexplicably left out: who owns the companies that drive the economy? Ownership matters. Ownership by a few means benefits for a few. But if you spread ownership around, you … Read More
This Kent State University course is motivated by the broad question: what role can workplace democracy and employee ownership play in creating an economy that works for all? Workplace democracy and employee ownership take a multitude of forms and are receiving renewed attention from public officials, the business community, social movement leaders, and academics. Nearly … Read More
Purpose This study investigates whether broad-based employee ownership (BBEO), in isolation and in conjunction with cash profit sharing (CPS), can enhance labor productivity in family firms over nonfamily firms. Design/methodology/approach Hypothesis testing was conducted using cross-sectional time-series regression with a matched sample of 393 family and nonfamily firms listed on the US S&P 500 over … Read More
These resource slides are designed for teaching faculty who teach about organizational “alternatives” to dominant corporate and bureaucratic forms of organization. The slides include links to recommended books, films, organizational case studies, sample syllabi and other resources appropriate for a wide variety of college-level classes. Individual slides are tailored to specific classes, including Methods, Theory, … Read More
The global Covid pandemic and the Third Reconstruction and renewed labor activism within the U.S. challenge us to find more humane, sustainable, and egalitarian ways of living and working. Those in the labor movement and the cooperative movement, who have been working to build union cooperatives, offer a vision for one type of more humane, … Read More
In this inside look at worker cooperatives, Joan Meyers challenges long-held views and beliefs. From the outside, worker cooperatives all seem to offer alternatives to bad jobs and unequal treatment by giving workers democratic control and equitable ownership of their workplaces. Some contend, however, that such egalitarianism and self-management come at the cost of efficiency … Read More
The NCEO conducted a first-of-its-kind study to examine whether and how employee ownership affected firms and workers in the U.S. food system during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on an industry-focused survey of food businesses with employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and a comparison group of non-ESOP food businesses, along with retirement plan filing data and … Read More
This free video-based educational program is designed to help minority business owners learn about employee ownership strategies for business succession planning. Developed by the Rutgers University NJ/NY Center for Employee Ownership, with the support of the Kellogg Foundation, this program will help business owners assess the relevance of establishing one of two employee ownership models, based … Read More
There has been a great variety of employee ownership models in Europe. Some of the best examples are Marcora in Italy, Sociadades Laborales in Spain, Le FCPE de Reprise in France, and many unregulated ad hoc models set up by individual owners without any institutional support. None of those models, however, offers an effective and … Read More
Carta’s Equity 101 is a free, interactive course designed to help everyone learn the fundamentals of equity. The course breaks down the basics of equity into 10 interactive lessons, covering the fundamentals including receiving a grant, selling shares, and taxation. In about an hour, users can learn basic terms and useful information, beginning from the … Read More
What happens when the founder of a business retires? How can they keep their legacy in tact? If you’re a business owner or executive, and you’re looking at business succession options, consider selling your business to your employees and reap the benefits.
Worker cooperative practitioners and developers often claim that democratic worker ownership advances egalitarianism within and beyond the workplace, but most of the empirical evidence in the U.S. is based on ethnographic case studies or small-scale surveys. We leverage the first national survey about individuals’ experiences in these unique firms to ask if claims that co-ops … Read More
The concentration of ownership by the very wealthy is supported by a financial system that enables them to acquire income-producing capital basically on credit whereas no such financing strategy is available to the mass of the population. A solution lies in creating a system whereby every individual has the right and opportunity to acquire income-producing … Read More
From orphan to owner and then finally deciding to secure his legacy and transition his company to an ESOP, the founder of Mid South Building Supply, Norman Rales, had a monumental impact on the future of his company and the people who work there. Hear from the new owners (the employees) about how being an … Read More
In this video a group of professional advisors discuss how employee owned companies with an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) are structured.
You may recognize him from the cover of your favorite flour or oatmeal, Bob Moore, founder of Bob’s Red Mill, based in Portland, OR, tells the story of his company’s transition to employee ownership through an ESOP.
Free market capitalism is one of the great achievements of humankind, bringing prosperity and economic freedom to billions of people and contributing to a flowering of individual freedom and possibility that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors. Today, however, increasing global crises are posing the greatest threat this economic system has faced. Growing income … Read More