On July 25, the National Economic Council (NEC) hosted a meeting on employee ownership in the White House compound that gathered representatives from federal agencies, legislative offices, and the employee ownership community, including the NCEO’s Loren Rodgers. As Joseph Blasi, speaking as a representative of the Treasury Department, noted, never before has a presidential administration hosted such a prominent inter-agency meeting on employee ownership. 

Special Assistant to the President for Economic Development and Industrial Strategy Alex Jacquez welcomed participants on behalf of the NEC. Isabel Casillas Guzman, the administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA), summarized several ways in which the SBA has made changes to better support employee-owned businesses. Then Assistant Secretary of Labor Lisa M. Gomez talked about the projects the Department of Labor (DOL) has underway that are relevant to the employee ownership community, especially the hiring of Hilary Abell to run the division of employee ownership. (Here is a link to Assistant Secretary Gomez’s remarks at the NCEO’s 2024 annual conference in Tampa.)

The conversation primarily covered ESOPs and worker cooperatives, but both employee ownership trusts (EOTs) and direct employee ownership were also part of the conversation. The U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, the Democracy at Work Institute, and Apis & Heritage were all represented.

In his welcome, Joseph Blasi briefly discussed Treasury’s new program to make loans to ESOPs, worker coops, and EOTs for employee buyouts, which can be seen on a page on Treasury’s website. He also shared an overview prepared by the Rutgers University Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing of recent data from nine Federal agencies dealing with employee ownership.

The meeting included three panels, and the NCEO’s Loren Rodgers addressed the convening as part of a panel on the benefit of worker ownership for workers and communities. He and Adria Scharf of Rutgers University outlined research findings on a variety of benefits to individuals, companies, and communities. Loren described established research results as well as recent data on the resilience of defense contractors, the Employee Ownership in the U.S. Food System During COVID-19 study, and a preview of data recently collected by the NCEO on ESOP transactions and the attitude of business owners, neither of which are yet public. The panel also included Robert Witherell of the United Steelworkers and Terrell Cannon of the worker cooperative Homecare Associates and was facilitated by Alejandro Molina of the NEC.

Rodgers observed, “With 50 years of data, the case is closed that employee ownership improves economic well-being for individuals and makes companies and communities more resilient. Those advantages are partially hard-wired into employee ownership and partly the result of companies voluntarily embracing ownership culture, employee engagement, and business literacy. The groups gathered here today have the power to greatly increase how many workers in the US have the opportunity to become employee-owners.”

Another panel included the role of worker ownership in the Biden-Harris administration’s economic policy, often summarized as building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up. That panel included Assistant Secretary Gomez, the ESOP Association’s Jim Bonham, the SBA's Stacie Posey, the USDA's Meegan Moriarty, and Project Equity's Evan Edwards.

The final panel, on access to capital, included Leah Turnbull of BMO Bank, Sarah Keh of Prudential, and Ian Mohler of Mosaic Partners and was facilitated by Vaishant Sharma of the NEC.

The NCEO welcomes the opportunity to help advance the discussion about employee ownership and looks forward to working with the NEC, the DOL, the SBA, the Treasury Department, and all of our partners in the employee ownership community.