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This article examines the role of ESOPs in transfering wealth to employees and the financial impact of ESOP legislation.

This report quantifies the economic impact of S corporations that sponsor employee stock ownership plans on the US economy in terms of jobs, income, output, and tax revenue.

The Alliance to Develop Power (ADP) and Nuestras Raíces (Our Roots) are two longstanding community organizations growing in the fertile social soil of the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.

Philadelphia is the site of an innovative program, which promises to have profound effects on the future of the employee ownership movement in the United States. The program is led by a union. United Food and Commercial Workers, but that in itself is not unique. Local 46 of the same union was the precedent setter with Rath Packing Company in 1980; United Automobile Workers (UAW) Local 736 followed in 1981; establishing employee ownership for Hyatt-Clark Industries, a former General Motors plant. The pathbreaking features of the Philadelphia program are these:

EE embarked on its pioneering efforts to sell Fair Trade products in the United States with coffee from Nicaragua. From the beginning, EE paid the producers an above market price for their products out of a desire to help provide a better, more stable income and to more equitably distribute the proceeds of the final sales. The producers are typically small farmers indigenous to their region. On each product the company slogan -- “Small Farmers, Big Change” -- is prominently displayed.

The employee-owned sector – where companies are wholly or substantially owned by their staff – is estimated to be worth £25 billion annually, equivalent to 2% of UK GDP. Employee-owned businesses (EOBs) operate in a wide range of sectors, from retail, manufacturing and engineering to financial services. Employee-owned organisations also operate in the public sector, delivering services such as health and community care.

PACE of Philadelphia has used an extremely "targeted" strategy for developing worker-owned enterprises in the food business. Our results include a food-brokerage company, a lobster plant and distribution warehouse and a network of supermarkets (the O&O Store) in the Philadelphia area. The O&O stores are formally linked through a second-degree co-operative which sets standards for use of the trademark and tradename, establishes requirements for technical assistance, facilitates deals for goods and services for all stores and serves as a locus for discussion of common problems.

The cooperative ownership model is used in a wide variety of contexts in the United States, ranging from the production and distribution of energy to delivery of home health care services for the elderly. Although cooperative businesses have been responsible for many market innovations and corrections of market imperfections, little is known about their impact as an economic sector. Until this project, no comprehensive set of national-level statistics had been compiled about U.S. cooperative businesses, their importance to the U.S.

This report will provide historical evidence and current empirical evidence that proves that the cooperative model of enterprise survives crisis, but more importantly that it is a sustainable form of enterprise able to withstand crisis, maintaining the livelihoods of the communities in which they operate. It will further suggest ways in which the ILO can strengthen its activity in the promotion of cooperatives as a means to address the current crisis and avert future crisis.

Many cooperative studies scholars and co-op practitioners believe that successful cooperative businesses create wealth and help their members accumulate wealth and/or assets. Individual asset building or wealth accumulation is assumed to be an outcome from cooperative ownership, in addition to individual and community benefits such as job creation, education and training, income generation, affordable quality products, social capital development, and economic stability.