Marjorie Kelly & Karen Kahn – The case for investing in Employee Ownership

For many years now, conventional solutions to income and wealth inequality—minimum wage, unions, progressive taxation, or guaranteed income—have failed to gain enough momentum to reverse the trend of greater and greater accumulation among the already well-off. What if we added a new approach, focusing on a primary source of wealth, business ownership, and how to transfer that wealth directly to the workers struggling today?

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Carole Leslie – Employee ownership of Scotland’s businesses can make people happy in their work while also improving productivity

When McVitie’s ceased to be a family business, decisions to close the Glasgow factory were made by people hundreds of miles away looking at balance sheets and maximising financial returns, not the long-term health of business and the provision of jobs.

Despite the factory being a mainstay within its local community, and generations of families rooted to the business, nearly 500 members of staff were handed redundancy notices ending a 100-year relationship with the area.

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Clare Alexander – Employee ownership is less complex than you think… and more beneficial

Employee Ownership is an increasingly popular business model in Scotland, both as an effective succession option as well as a vehicle for engaging staff and boosting productivity. Co-operative Development Scotland (CDS), the arm of Scotland’s enterprise agencies which promotes economic growth through collaborative and employee ownership business models, reports that there are around 110 employee-owned companies in Scotland, with 7,500 employee-owners generating a combined turnover of around £950 million.

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This supermarket is the largest Employee-Owned Company in America.

Think about stock options and chances are, you picture the founders of successful startups whose shares are worth hundreds of millions on paper.

As it turns out, the largest employee-owned company in America is far from Silicon Valley. It’s Publix, a chain of more than 1,200 supermarkets based in the Southeast. The private company, which is based in Florida, employs more than 190,000 people.

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Simon Rogerson – The real benefits of employee share ownership

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘no man is an island’. It’s the same with CEOs, you can’t run all arms of your business by yourself, here’s where employee share ownership comes in. Entrepreneurs and business founders are a bright and optimistic bunch, but ask them to tell you what keeps them awake at night, and they’re usually not afraid to let rip. In the early stages, it’s all about survival. But once businesses are through that stage, two issues dominate all others.

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