Timothy Garbinsky
Now that a month has passed since our annual conference in Seattle this past April, my colleagues and I have a renewed gratitude for just what it means to host these events. As you likely know, this past April saw us reunited with our members and the employee ownership community in Seattle for our first in-person conference since April 2019.
Corey Rosen
The bill would create a major federal program to provide funding and support for state-level outreach and technical assistance for employee ownership
Nancy Wiefek
The NCEO just completed a large grant-funded project examining whether and how employee ownership affected companies and employees in the U.S. food system during the COVID-19 pandemic. This project involved commissioning a national polling firm to collect original survey data from executives at ESOP and non-ESOP-owned companies. It speaks to important issues of workforce retention, business competitiveness, and the retirement security crisis. Namely:
Corey Rosen
A new study, “Contribution of S ESOPs to Participants’ Retirement Security and Employee-Owner Benefits,” prepared for the Employee-Owned S Corporations of America (ESCA) by EY (formerly Ernst & Young), finds that:
Corey Rosen
Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest HMOs, announced that it will be encouraging its 37,000 vendors to become employee-owned. The organization said that its “Business Resiliency through Employee Ownership” program “aims to educate the health system's suppliers about employee ownership and support those firms in transitioning to such a model, in which the majority of a company's shares are owned by employees.”
Corey Rosen
A new law in Maine, LD 1969, directs the Maine Public Utilities Commission to require that any renewable energy project in the state receiving $50,000 or more in state funding to meet certain labor standards, including paying prevailing wages. The law also provides that in soliciting bids for state support for renewable energy projects, the Public Utilities Commission should “consider whether a majority of the individuals working on an assisted project are members of an entity that is employee-owned, including but not limited to an entity that offers employee stock ownership plans.”
Corey Rosen
For an update on this bill, see our May 31, 2022, blog post Bipartisan Senate Draft of New Bill Moves WORK Act Closer to Passage.
Corey Rosen
Ownership Works is a new nonprofit funded by $50 million in donations from Pete Stavros, a partner at the investment firm KKR, and 60 other organizations. In an April 5 story on the launch, the Wall Street Journal reported that “among the founding partners are 19 private-equity firms, including Apollo Global Management Inc., Ares Management Corp., KKR & Co., Leonard Green & Partners LP, Silver Lake, TPG Inc., and Warburg Pincus LLC.” Others involved include United for Respect, which has led worker campaigns against private-equity-backed companies, Omidyar Network, and the Ford Foundation.
Corey Rosen
On March 29, the House passed the SECURE 2.0 Act (H.R. 2954) by a vote of 414-5. The bill will now go to the Senate. The bill makes two minor improvements for ESOPs plus a number of other changes aimed at making it easier for employers and employees to assure retirement plans work more effectively. Some of these will affect ESOPs.
