Verse
Gaertner, Ken & Vito, E.B. de & Westerfield, Nancy G. & Nixon, John Jr. & Porter, Anne
Ownership is consonant with changes in workers themselves. According to a recent survey by the Public Agenda Foundation, today's more educated workers demand much more from a job than a good...
...The result cannot help but be an even less equitable distribution of wealth, coupled with considerable trauma for many workers...
...These investors are, rationally, interested 10 August 1984:437...
...Given the growth rate of the idea, it is not unreasonable to predict that by the turn of the century as many people will participate in employee ownership as now participate in unions, the other major force for worker equity in society...
...Some observers believe that the total amount of work needed to be done in the future may actually decline...
...According to a New York Stock Exchange report, if given these opportunities, productivity in the U.S...
...Moreover, the newly created wealth would be more equitably distributed, ~creating less of a demand on government to do the redistribution...
...While this is very controversial, there Seems little doubt that much of the traditional work in industry will disappear...
...The corporation has become a dominant institution in the American system, one that is not democratically organized...
...Finally, coming changes in the technology of work may make employee ownership especially appealing...
...When faced with a need to reduce total labor in a company, it might be possible for employees with ownership income to agree to work fewer hours or seek earlier retirement without suffering a loss of income...
...This inconsistency has been justified on the notion that democracy is inefficient...
...It provides the economic rewards and the sense of integration into the company that makes participation more practical, and it can provide a greater sense of meaning to the work itself...
...It is, after all, much more interesting to mow your own lawn than your neighbor's...
...Indeed, "supply-side economics" is based on the idea that we should provide extra incentives to the already wealthy to invest in new capital...
...Whether it will ever replace our current ownership system is impossible to say, but it is worth noting that in just a decade, approximately 5 percent of the work force has become covered by an employee ownership plan...
...Employee ownership is a fertile area for such participation programs...
...They want an opportunity to participate in the design and implementation of their work...
...Some, such as Albert Gallatin, argued "the democratic principle upon which this nation was founded should not be restricted to the political process but should be applied to the industrial operations as well...
...An alternative would be for this new wealth to be owned increasingly by the workers themselves...
...Employee ownership has grown very rapidly, and the many arguments for its use suggest the growth will continue...
...For all its economic and social benefits, employee ownership's ultimate importance may be even deeper...
...Our early economic policies were explicitly designed tO create as many capital (land then) owners as possible...
...Democratically organized firms create more new jobs than comparable conventional ones, and managers of these companies are unanimous in reporting that their approach contributes to company performance...
...Moreover, workers would be better shareholders than the large institutions and wealthy individuals who now own most corporate stock...
...Under our current ownership system, the new capital that will do this displacing will be owned by a relatively few people...
...According to a recent survey by the Public Agenda Foundation, today's more educated workers demand much more from a job than a good paycheck...
...Today there is a basic inconsistency with this belief...
...Research on employee ownership, however, suggests this assumption is incorrect...
...At the very least, the replacement of people by machines will cause considerable disruption, if not actual higher levels of unemployment...
...would soar...
...ESOPs, for instance, could be used to purchase new machinery (using the borrowing feature discussed earlier...
...Studies Of employee ownership on both productivity and profitability (referred to earlier) find that providing workers with full voting rights has no negative effect on company performance, and may have a slightly positive effect...
...Broadened ownership was the cornerstone of the very creation of this country, and was held by the founding fathers as essential to our system...
Vol. 111 • August 1984 • No. 14
