In this clip, Aspen Institute President and CEO Dan Porterfield and Vice President Maureen Conway (who also serves as executive director of the Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program) provide opening remarks at the 2024 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum. The Employee Ownership Ideas Forum is hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program and the Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing. Our 2024 Forum, “Employee Ownership on the Ground,” brought...

For almost twenty years, the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program has convened local and national academies that bring together senior leaders from across the workforce ecosystem to learn together about increasing economic opportunity for all. In this interview, we hear from Stephen Tucker, the founding president and CEO of the Northland Workforce Training Center in Buffalo, New York. Tucker is an alum of EOP's Sector Skills Academy and has served as a valued guest faculty member...

Farm workers play an essential role in feeding our nation’s families. Despite their key role in our food system, these workers are largely underpaid, receive little time off, and have little recourse when subjected to dangerous working conditions. Half of the households in this majority-Latino workforce of more than two million earn less than $30,000 a year – and many struggle to put food on their own tables. Immigrant workers also face the risk of having their immigration status exploited,...

As the world continues to confront inhumane levels of poverty, widening inequality, and environmental degradation, a growing number of individuals, including academics, business owners, and policy entrepreneurs, are calling for a new moral economy. These leaders are rejecting the conventional economic myths that free markets are more efficient and that enormous inequalities are unavoidable; instead, they’re embracing ethical and socially responsible economic models that prioritize moral...

Workplace benefits can provide workers with economic stability in their lives, opportunities for personal and professional growth, and the chance to build wealth in the long term. Yet the field of benefits offered is incredibly diverse. Deep inequalities in access exist, administration tends to be complex for both employers and workers, and there is little shared knowledge about what benefits are most important for workers’ well-being. In this conversation, hosted by the Aspen Institute...

Hear from a new wave of business leaders who understand the need to reimagine their relationship with organized workers and from the leader of the biggest federation of unions, who is ready to innovate and work together with business to achieve shared prosperity. American workers are reevaluating their working conditions and rallying for change, driving a surge in worker organizing that affects businesses across sectors and regions. While many business leaders are unprepared for and...

While the holiday season is a time of joy and celebration for many across the United States, it brings uncertainty and stress for workers facing unpredictable schedules. Workers in the service sector in particular are often on call and can have their schedules changed with very little notice. Research by The Shift Project, for example, shows that in fall 2021, a staggering 64% of workers in the service sector received less than two weeks’ notice of their schedule. Unpredictable and unstable...

Employee ownership can take many forms: employee stock ownership plans, worker cooperatives, broad-based equity sharing plans, and more. A less common approach in the US, but one that is gaining attention, is employee ownership trusts (EOTs). While research has demonstrated the benefits of employee ownership for business performance, business resilience, and job quality, the growth in the number of employee-owners has plateaued. The leveling off is not because fewer businesses are choosing...

Today, as a complement to our regular event series, we’re pleased to present a special conversation between our executive director, Maureen Conway, and Michael Lastoria, founder and CEO of the pizza chain &pizza. The core of our work here at the Aspen Institute rests on increasing the number of good jobs in our economy, and Michael has been a leader and an innovator in this space for many years. In this conversation — which took place in March of this year — we learn how the desire to...

Wealth inequality has worsened over the last several decades, with the US having some of the highest inequality among industrialized countries. The top 20% of US households by income hold 70% of the wealth — over $96 trillion — according to the Federal Reserve. Households in the bottom 20%, by comparison, hold just 3% of the wealth, or $4 trillion. In her new book, “Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drives Today’s Crises,” Marjorie Kelly of the...

App-based short-term work, often called gig work, has been around for more than a decade. As use of app-based services has grown and become part of many people’s daily lives, so has awareness of the risks and challenges it presents to workers. During the pandemic, attention on gig work surged as thousands of unemployed service workers turned to apps for an income, and millions relied on these workers to deliver food and other essentials to their homes. Coming out of the pandemic, what is the...

Government has played a critical role throughout the history of the US in launching and supporting employee ownership. Today, the US Departments of Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, and Labor and the Small Business Administration support employee ownership through financing and lending, regulatory reform, technical assistance, market development, and more, as they help business owners, workers, and local governments across red and blue states to grow worker ownership. In this conversation,...

US businesses and workers are currently at a critical crossroads. Millions of baby boomers will soon retire and sell their businesses, transitioning trillions of dollars of wealth in the process. This transition, along with the continued strength and profit growth of large corporations in the US, has created a once-in-a-generation opportunity for millions of workers to share in the profits of their labor and become business owners. Many barriers, however, stand in the way of the US realizing...

Congress has taken important steps in the last couple of years to support the growth of employee ownership in the US. Bipartisan legislation such as the Main Street Employee Ownership Act and the WORK Act have recently passed and hold great potential for helping more businesses to become employee-owned through ESOPs and worker-owned cooperatives. In this conversation, speakers discuss the implications of recent legislation and what more needs to be done to help more workers become owners....

A disproportionate share of women and people of color are employed in the lowest paying jobs in the US, struggling to meet basic needs, much less build any wealth. Long-term trends show households of color face a widening wealth gap when compared to white households. Employee ownership offers a potential tool to address the wealth divide, improve job quality and agency in the workplace for women and people of color, and help to build a more inclusive and fair economy. In this conversation,...

Employee ownership empowers workers to have greater freedom over their economic future and provides them with a greater return on their hard work. By giving workers a stake in the business, workers in employee-owned firms become more invested in the business’s success, which in turn helps drive productivity, innovation, and profitability. In this conversation, speakers highlight the benefits of employee ownership and the experiences and important contributions of employee-owned businesses to...

In 2022, the Fortune 500, the largest publicly traded companies in the US, collectively generated nearly $16 trillion in revenues and over $1.6 trillion in profits. Large public and private companies — those with more than 1,000 workers — employ more than 40% of the US workforce. Though a sizable percentage of these companies offer profit sharing programs or equity compensation, many workers, particularly front-line employees, do not participate or have access to these programs, resulting in...

Americans have long-held values around dignity, hard work, and the promise of the American dream. These values, however, are often divorced from our discourse and policies around the health and competitiveness of our businesses and our economy. And too often, it is believed that we must sacrifice the well-being of our workers in favor of growth and a higher GDP. Employee ownership, which is good for businesses, workers, and our economy, is one strategy for helping us break this false choice...

Stagnant wages, the rising cost of living expenses, and other factors have led to a shrinking middle class and growing income and wealth inequality in recent decades. Workers in employee-owned businesses, however, have often fared better than their peers on a range of measures related to economic well-being.  In this conversation, speakers discuss the latest research on wealth inequality and the potential of employee ownership to help rebuild the middle class. It features opening remarks...

From healthcare facilities to call centers, from fulfillment centers to factories, and from restaurants to retail stores, companies are struggling to find or keep workers — because the jobs they offer are low-paying, they’re stressful, and they provide little chance for growth and success. In “The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone’s Work,” Zeynep Ton, MIT professor and co-founder of the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute, lays out plainly what...

Economic inequality and lack of good jobs have left many workers, particularly women and people of color, without a fair share of the US’s economic prosperity. Despite the significant rise in corporate profits, front-line workers continue to experience low wages and see little returns for their contributions. Research shows that employee ownership, such as employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), can be a valuable tool in creating better jobs, building wealth for workers, and increasing...

Most households in the US primarily support themselves through the income they earn from work. As a result, businesses have a significant influence on the economic security and opportunities for economic advancement available to individuals, families, and communities across the US. Often issues of wages and working conditions experienced by working people are framed in business discussions as a function of market conditions and considered separately from issues of household or community...

Guaranteed income is gaining increasing momentum across the US. The bipartisan idea, which has roots in the nation’s founding, the New Deal, the Nixon Administration, and the Civil Rights Movement, is being piloted in more than 100 demonstration sites across the country. The expanded Child Tax Credit — a guaranteed income for children — and stimulus payments during the pandemic were the largest unrestricted cash payments to families ever on a federal scale. Research shows that guaranteed...

The US is often described as a nation of immigrants, and immigrant workers have played a critical role in building the country and our economy. While countless immigrant workers have found the US to be the land of opportunity and achieved the American dream through hard work, countless others have not had their hard work and labor rewarded, but instead have been subject to exploitation and abuse. This is as true for immigrant workers today as it was centuries ago. What do the experiences of...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 75 years ago by the United Nations, set forth a set of civil, social, and economic rights that inspired the development of human rights’ laws around the world. The declaration has been a north star for those working to build an equitable and fair society for all people ever since. But over the intervening decades, our economic agenda and policymaking have often focused on economic growth and business success metrics at the expense of human...