Employee Ownership Blog

Corey Rosen

11th Circuit Overturns Administrative Remedy Exhaustion Requirement for ERISA Plaintiffs

In an en banc decision, Bolton v. Inland Fresh Seafood Corp. of Am., Inc., No. 24-10084 (11th Cir. Oct. 13, 2026) (en banc), the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that required ESOP participants to exhaust all their administrative remedies before bringing fiduciary claims under ERISA in court. The decision brings the 11th Circuit in line with most of the other circuit courts. 

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Timothy Garbinsky

Do Employee-Owners Have More Purpose at Work?

Many people spend roughly a third of their weekday working, and if they commute to work, that can easily add another hour or more daily. You might have more, you might have less, but the result is roughly the same: many people spend a sizable portion of their adult lives working. And while there are a great many things people look for in their work, a paycheck chief among them, more and more workers are hoping to find purpose in their work.

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Eva Lianos

Rolling Up Our Sleeves in Detroit: Recapping the 2026 Repurchase Obligation Workshop

Nobody came to Detroit to sit back and listen. When NCEO members from across the country filed into the 2026 Repurchase Obligation Workshop, presented in partnership with Chartwell Financial Advisory, they brought their distribution policies, their plan documents, and a stack of questions they'd been saving up. For two days, the room worked.

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Timothy Garbinsky

The Power of Telling Your Story

It’s a refrain that’s worth repeating: the strength of employee ownership isn’t in valuation methodologies, repurchase obligation studies, succession plans, or finance terms. It’s not found in plan documents or committee meeting minutes or proactive governance. The strength of employee ownership is found in the way all those things work in concert with the workers themselves and the work they do to change lives. And the best way to make that impact, that strength clear to people, be they potential new hires or local business owners or economic developers or to family around the dinner table, is through storytelling.

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Corey Rosen

New Aspen Institute Report on State and Local Employee Ownership Policies

A new report by Matt Helmer of the Aspen Institute, Employee Ownership: An Economic and Workforce Development Strategy for State and Local Governments, provides a comprehensive look at how state and local governments can encourage more employee ownership. Ideas include outreach programs, funding for technical assistance, revolving loan funds to help finance transactions, worker training programs, contracting preferences, and removing regulatory barriers that make it difficult to form employee-owned companies in certain kinds of businesses. 

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Corey Rosen

Massachusetts to Cover Some Employee Ownership Feasibility Costs

The Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership, part of the Massachusetts Office of Business Development,  now offers partial stipends for pre-conversion technical assistance to explore or structure a transition to ESOP or worker cooperative ownership. The program will cover “50% of approved costs for services provided by a MassCEO-approved technical assistance provider, up to $25,000 for an ESOP project and $12,500 for a worker cooperative project.” The state has approved a very limited number of providers under the program: currently three for ESOPs and four for worker cooperatives. The funds are not just limited to feasibility studies. They can be applied to any of the legal, trustee, financial, or appraisal services a company chooses. Details are available on MassCEO’s website.

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Corey Rosen

PA Senate Passes Major Employee Ownership Bill

Bill would provide outreach support and feasibility funding 

On a 48-1 vote on October 5, the Pennsylvania Senate passed Senate Bill 478. The bill establishes an Office of Employee Ownership in the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED); creates an advisory board with representatives from business, labor, finance, legal, academia, and government; and establishes a grant and loan program to help fund feasibility studies and other preliminary activities. The bill requires the appointment of an Employee Ownership Advocate with the DCED to oversee the program. The bill does not authorize any specific amount of funding for the program but authorizes funding from several sources, including the Pennsylvania Small Business First Fund. 

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