Employee Ownership Blog
Corey Rosen

Corey Rosen

Funding for State Centers in Recent DOL Appropriations Bill

The 2026 appropriations bill for the Department of Labor (DOL), passed on February 3 by Congress, lacks line-item funding for state employee ownership offices authorized by the WORK Act. The Senate Appropriations Committee had recommended a specific appropriation last July. However, a joint explanatory statement from the House and Senate appropriation committees states that $2 million should be provided for the Employee Ownership Initiative. In general, the joint explanatory statement notes that its recommendations on spending (which cover a variety of issues) “should be complied with unless specifically addressed to the contrary in this explanatory statement.” 

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Corey Rosen

EU Parliament Legislation Boosts Employee Ownership

Thanks to Kosta Juri, director of operations at the Institute for Economic Democracy (IED), and Rachel Bachmann, head of strategic initiatives at IED, for helping draft this post.

Last week, the European Parliament (EP) plenary adopted (by 492 votes in favor, 144 against, and 28 abstentions) a resolution with recommendations to the European Commission to propose a harmonizing directive aimed at creating an EU-wide unified legal framework (the “28th Regime,” referring to an additional legal framework alongside those of the current 27 member states) for innovative companies.

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Corey Rosen

DOL Removes ESOPs from National Enforcement Project List

The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) at the US Department of Labor (DOL) announced today that it removed ESOPs from its national enforcement project list. ESOPs had been on that list since 2005 as one of five items on the list, which also included improper handling of various health plan issues, criminal abuse of defined contribution plans, plan investment conflicts, and benefit distribution violations.

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Corey Rosen

The Five Largest Majority and Broadly Employee-Owned Non-ESOP Companies

The vast majority of US companies owned broadly by employees have an ESOP. We recently released our yearly update to the Employee Ownership 100, the 100 largest companies owned by an ESOP or a worker cooperative. By the nature of these plans, most or usually all employees meeting a basic service requirement can become owners.

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