REPORT TO THE FORD FOUNDATION
GRANT #1010-0121
on its
October 7-11, 2002
Washington, D.C.
“Fix Globalization: Make it more inclusive,
democratic, accountable and sustainable”
Submitted by Deborah Groban Olson & John Logue
Ohio Employee Ownership Center
Kent State University
November 26, 2002
“The
financial bubble that we experienced in the United States was, in fact,
worldwide…If we get past this moment without great wreckage, then I think we do
have a great opening. That’s why this
conference is laying groundwork for a lot of new engagement in politics and in
the society…. You are dealing with
ideas that have a potential to change the social arrangements in societies that
have the nerve and the wit and the energy to begin to work on them that
literally will make organic changes in how capitalism functions globally and at
home…Democracy is a transcendental story... and I do believe that ownership is
a crucial ingredient....The road to democratizing this country and the global
system begins at work.”
- William Greider in his keynote speech “Who
wins and loses when wealth and decision making are concentrated in large global
companies? How can we humanize globalization?” at the COG Policy Conference on
10/9/02
I.
Executive Summary
We are pleased to report to the Ford
Foundation on the success of the COG International Policy conference in
Washington, DC, on October 7-11. It succeeded beyond our expectations. It achieved
the groundbreaking purposes for which it was intended: to be the most
international meeting ever focused on employee ownership as a response to globalization
and to put this subject on the agenda for a number of Washington organizations.
It launched a very timely global discussion of the role of employee ownership
in continuing viable community-centered businesses in a global economy. We expect it to give rise to several major,
new practical policy initiatives.
The COG international policy conference
included three back-to-back meetings in Washington.
The first was a two-day meeting (October 7-8)
establishing what we hope will be a continuing European-American working group
on employee ownership. This session,
funded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and hosted by
the National Cooperative Business Association, brought together twenty-seven invited
European and American employee ownership leaders and scholars to discuss
national initiatives and best practices, the European Commission’s July 2002
communication on employee financial participation (including ownership) in
enterprise results, and the new ILO Recommendation # 193 on cooperatives. The
group brainstormed key research projects with clear policy implications and
created an agenda for additional meetings.
The second was the main event: the Capital
Ownership Group International Policy Conference, “Fix Globalization: Make It
More Inclusive, Democratic, Accountable and Sustainable” (October
9-10). It began with a half-day
legislative briefing at the Hart Senate Office Building and continued at the
Four Points Sheraton Hotel. Author Bill
Greider and the International Labour Organization’s Mark Levin keynoted the
conference. The conference was co-sponsored by an amazingly wide range of
organizations. In addition to the Ford
Foundation funding, eleven other organizations helped finance the session;
these included three labor organizations, a socially responsible mutual fund,
three law firms, and several small foundations.
The conference attracted 122 participants
from six continents, by far the most international group ever assembled in
North America to discuss employee ownership. They included Congressional staff and two members of Congress
from both sides of the aisle (who spoke, of course); former members of the
Australian and Belgian parliaments; local American elected officials, labor
leaders from the United States, South Africa, and Europe; corporate executives;
staff from several UN agencies; think tank staff from both ends of the
political spectrum; academics; cooperative organizations; and community
development organization leaders; as well as representatives of all American
employee ownership organizations. We
were delighted by the breadth of representation and support.
The third session was a day-long strategy
meeting (October 11), attended by 50, aimed at forging a “Fix Globalization”
coalition and developing future goals and programs for COG. This Strategy
Meeting successfully generated the roots of a coordinated strategy and concrete
projects for execution by COG, its evolving coalition and active coalition
partners.
The COG coalition and working groups are
poised to build practical, positive, community centered policies and practices
to ameliorate the negative aspects of globalization and the destabilizing
effects of recent corporate malfeasance. They need resources to realize their
goals.
II. The COG
International Policy Conference
The COG international policy conference
included three back-to-back meetings in Washington, D.C., on October 7-11,
2002.
The premises underlying the conference were
these: (1) Economic globalization is inevitable. (2) Although it has some
aspects that are beneficial to both developed and developing countries, as
presently organized, globalization primarily benefits large corporations at the
expense of communities and citizens. (3) Broadening ownership to include
employees is one important strategy to anchor productive assets locally. (4)
There at least eight major positive strategies[1] currently being implemented to fix
globalization, each embraced by a different constituency, but the diverse
constituents employing these strategies do not coordinate their resources and
programs, and frequently are completely unaware of one another. (5) Long-term
success requires a coordination of
their efforts in order to reach the scale and strength required to
change global corporate behavior. (6) Fair solutions to the problems of
globalization must be developed by joint work of people in both the developed
and developing world.
With the COG international policy conference,
we sought to be inclusive in co-sponsorship and participants, and to bring
together diverse organizations that interact too rarely to discuss common
issues and, possibly, a common agenda.
Within our resource constraints – and we were ultimately able to raise
another $45,000 from other sources to supplement the $45,000 used from our Ford
grant – we sought substantial international representation including
significant European and Latin American groups as well as participants from
Africa and Asia. Of course our resources were earmarked for speakers, and our
small scholarship pool for Developing World participants was too quickly
exhausted.
The first of the back-to-back meetings that
comprised the conference was a two-day session (October 7-8) establishing what
we hope will be a continuing European-American working group on employee
ownership. It was attended by twenty-seven invited European and American
employee ownership leaders and scholars, funded by the German Marshall Fund,
and hosted by the National Cooperative Business Association. Participants
swapped information on new policy initiatives in each country, discussed the
July 2002 European Commission Communication on Employee Financial Participation
in Enterprise Results, the new ILO Recommendation # 193 on cooperatives, and
argued best practices. They brainstormed a series of necessary research
projects and created an agenda for additional meetings to share successful
strategies for encouraging good employee ownership policies and best practices,
and to determine and exploit opportunities for policy implementation (see
Appendix I, section B). The European-American Conference enabled COG to
bring a number of Europeans to the Fix Globalization Conference, thus
permitting us to use more of the Ford Foundation and other funds to bring
participants from the other continents.
The second was the main event: the Capital
Ownership Group International Policy Conference, “Fix Globalization: Make It
More Inclusive, Democratic, Accountable and Sustainable” (October 9-10,
2002). It began with a half-day
legislative briefing at the Hart Senate Office Building and continued at the
Four Points Sheraton Hotel. Author Bill
Greider and the International Labour Organization’s Mark Levin keynoted the
conference. The conference had the co-sponsorship of an amazingly wide range of
organizations; thirty-five cosponsors included a major United Nations agency,
the International Labor Organization; two important academic research centers;
four national and international labor unions; several companies, a mutual fund,
and two law firms; the national umbrella cooperative federation; roughly a
dozen community development corporations, think tanks, and NGOs; the Colombian
employee pension fund association; and an American Catholic religious order; as
well as the European employee ownership organization and three of the four
national employee ownership organizations in the US.
The conference attracted 122 participants
from six continents, by far the most international group ever assembled in
North America to discuss employee ownership.
They included Congressional staff and two members of Congress from both
sides of the aisle (who spoke, of course) as well as one tied up as floor
leader in that day’s session who had his remarks read, former members of the Australian and Belgian
parliaments, local American elected officials, labor leaders, corporate
executives, staff from several UN agencies, think tank staff from both ends of
the political spectrum, academics, cooperative organizations, and community
development organization leaders, as well as representatives of all American
employee ownership organizations.
In addition to the Ford Foundation funding,
eleven other organizations helped finance the session; these included three
labor organizations, a socially responsible mutual fund, three law firms, and
several small foundations.
We were delighted by the breadth of
representation and support.
The Fix Globalization conference program,
presentations and papers are provided in the attached binder. They are also available on the COG
website. The program is located at and the papers and presentations at
The third was a day-long strategy meeting, on
October 11, attended by 50 of those who had participated in the previous
meetings, aimed at forging a “Fix Globalization” coalition and developing
future goals and programs for COG. The Strategy Meeting successfully generated
the roots of a coordinated strategy and concrete projects for execution by COG,
its evolving coalition and active coalition partners. For the results of the
strategy meeting, see Appendix I, section A.
Participants in the three components of the
COG meeting were diverse by geography, gender, age, organizational affiliation
and sector, with participants from six continents, co-sponsorship by major
international institutions such as the International Labor Organization,
important academic institutions, the AFL-CIO and other national and
international labor federations, businesses and NGOs. The conference began on
Capitol Hill due to the interest in and participation of members of the US
Senate and Congress. The attached conference program (Appendix II) shows
diverse speakers on a broad range of proposals for fixing globalization, and
co-sponsors. Using the Ford grant, we
supported five COG Scholars, all from different continents, who have produced
scholarly papers for discussion online and presentation at the Fix
Globalization Conference.[2]
Those papers were presented at the conference and are included in the
attached conference notebook (Appendix III).
Despite difficulty in finding adequate
funding to bring all who wished to come, we were able to bring to the events
enough articulate representatives from developing countries to persuade the
strategy meeting attendees that the relevance of COG’s work in the developing
world requires a focus on job creation in the informal economy in addition to
its current work in the formal economy.
Both the European-American Working Group
meeting and the Fix Globalization conference contributed heavily to
COG’s strategy and goals going forward.
The coalition and working groups, which
created the October 2002 COG conferences and strategy meeting on Fixing
Globalization, are poised to build practical, positive, community centered
policies and practices to abate the negative aspects of globalization and the
destabilizing effects of recent corporate malfeasance. They need resources to
realize their goals.
III.
Organizing Impact of the Fix Globalization Conference
The process of organizing and publicizing the
Fix Globalization conference provided an important opportunity to spread
the message that there are many paths to fixing globalization, and that the
participants on these paths must work together to be effective. Most of the
target organizations were quite receptive to the message and agreed to
participate in the events. We were particularly pleased to have 50 participants
in the Strategy Meeting. We contacted hundreds of organizations (including 238
think tanks) worldwide. Thirty-five agreed to co-sponsor our event and many
more sent speakers. We distributed 15,000 brochures using contact lists from
many of our co-sponsors who also listed our events in their electronic
newsletters and calendars. We created a small scholarship program for
developing country participants, funded primarily by donations from individuals
and companies, which enabled us to bring a few of those who applied, but also
brought us in contact with a number of worker cooperatives and cooperative
organizers in developing countries.
The Fix Globalization conference was
unique and timely. It occurred in the fall of 2002, immediately after
anti-globalization demonstrations at IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington,
DC, and shortly after the Enron, WorldCom and accounting firm scandals. By this
time, not only were left and right wing activists concerned about the negative
effects of globalization and corporate accountability, but mainstream
journalists and politicians were also
raising concerns about the need for more corporate accountability from
large corporations and more oversight by government. The Fix Globalization
conference filled that need. Its purpose was to highlight positive policy
initiatives to protect local community interests including a robust economy.
Three members of Congress spoke or presented remarks at the event. Authors
William Greider and Gar Alperovitz declared that the event was an important
step in launching a new movement based on community-centered economics.
The Fix Globalization conference did
not pit the developed against the developing world. COG has insisted from its
inception that any fair solution to globalization’s ills requires a joint
solution. At this conference, COG had significant representation from both
groups to develop a meaningful dialogue on creating such solutions. The
concrete outcome of the Fix Globalization conference and the Strategy
Meeting is a set of goals and projects for COG’s next two years; see Appendix
1.
IV. Conclusion
The Fix Globalization Conference, Strategy
Meeting and European-American Conference were successful beyond our
expectations.
1.
The
group of participants was larger and more centrally placed than we
expected. We were, however, unable to
attract International Monetary Fund participation.
1.
The
discussions were lively throughout; it was clear that they could have continued
usefully.
1.
The
process of organizing and publicizing the Fix Globalization Conference
provided an important opportunity to spread the message that there are many
paths to fixing globalization, and that the participants on these paths must
work together to be effective. Most of the target organizations were quite
receptive to the message and agreed to participate in the events. We were
particularly pleased to have 50 participants stay for the Strategy Meeting.
1.
Our
conference had truly global representation from the developed and developing
worlds enabling a meaningful dialogue for development of jointly acceptable
strategies.
1.
The
conference and strategy meeting generated a number of significant projects.
1.
The
research agenda generated by the European-American Working Group could shape
the research work of a generation of scholars in this area. It has already
impacted the development of at least two new joint projects: a special issue of
the Swedish journal Economic and Industrial Democracy, to appear next
year, and a small volume that is likely to be published and distributed by the
International Labour Organization.
Thus the COG international policy
conference’s three events produced concrete positive steps towards global
economic justice and toward the development of a new global coalition to move
them forward. The COG on-line working group structure established and operated
over the past three years fostered the relationships and joint work that
enabled such positive and meaty progress at these events. COG has demonstrated
its ability to outperform its promised deliverables. With the necessary
resources, we can continue to foster and build this important infrastructure
for fixing globalization, making it more inclusive, democratic, accountable and
sustainable.
Attachments
Appendix I. Conference outcomes
Appendix II. Conference Program
Appendix III. Conference papers and presentations (conference notebook)
Jl.COG2002 conference.Report to Ford on 2002 policy
conference
Appendix I. COG
International Policy Conference Outcomes:
New Programs,
Goals and Examples
Here are the outcomes of the “future
directions” brainstorming for the COG strategy meeting and for the
European-American working group meeting.
A. Outcomes
from the Strategy Meeting
The Strategy Meeting was a structured process
of brainstorming, prioritization and commitment to work on various projects
aimed at creating an organized body of sufficient scale and depth to contend
with global corporations. The results: new working groups organized around the
projects and goals developed during the Strategy Meeting on which people
committed to work and to go back to their organizations seeking further support
for the work. (A list the newly created
working groups, a preliminary list of projects and members can be provided.) A
few highlights include:
1) Use of the “Fair Exchange” proposal by
consumer groups, labor and good government groups as a wedge strategy to open a
concrete debate on using ownership to enforce accountability in transactions
between governments and private companies.
2) Develop a book on broad ownership
strategies for publication and use by the ILO.
3) Convene an international coalition on
broad ownership and seek consultative status as an international NGO with ILO
and other international institutions.
4) Develop ongoing outreach to faith based
organizations, labor, think tanks and academics, providing speakers, conferences
and materials on broad ownership focused to the needs of those organizations.
Possibly rerun the Fix Globalization Conference for a group of
faith-based organizations.
5) Education on several levels:
a. Create a graduate business school
curriculum on managing employee owned and participative businesses, and
teaching social audit skills to labor organization staff. Versions of this
proposal arose out of several workshops, due to the clear need for these skills
in employee owned companies, the need for social audit skills within unions, an
understanding that COG staff and participants already have or can easily locate
or create the necessary curricula; and the university and community college
position of several key network participants.
b. Create a university-based distance
learning mechanism to offer the above curriculum simultaneously at institutions
in diverse locations.
c.
Create a community college level curriculum on the same subjects for
lower levels of management or union staff also to be offered at diverse
locations or on-line.
d.
Create curriculum for middle and/or high school to provide ownership
literacy and knowledge of forms of ownership other than individual or
corporate.
6) Develop a funding proposal for a broad
ownership technical assistance center for a developing country – probably
China.
7) Disseminate the Community
Investment Code idea to local governments and community economic development
corporations.
8) Research uses of broad
ownership in developing countries; develop a bibliography on it; and work with
developing country participants on broad ownership strategies and models useful
in the informal economy.
To pursue these efforts, new working groups
have been formed, some of which are already on-line. They are planning action
on several fronts. Following are some examples.
1) John Médaille, a lay Catholic activist,
recruited Dr. Andrew Abela, marketing professor at Catholic University, to
assist in a marketing survey to identify faith-based organizations (FBOs) and
points of entry for COG and its message. Médaille is pursuing FBO venues to
rerun the Fix Globalization Conference in some form, and has undertaken
coordination of the COG outreach to FBOs in conjunction with Sr. Mary Ellen
Gondek of the Sisters of St. Joseph.
2) Mark Levin of the International Labour
Organization (ILO) Cooperative Branch staff, proposed an ILO published book
based on the Fix Globalization Conference papers. He has proposed
a book outline that is currently under discussion in a new COG working group.
3) Kent State University (KSU) is organizing
a symposium on globalization and democracy for April 2003 for which many COG
participants and scholars have been tapped as possible speakers.
4) Terry Lewis, Vice-President for
Cooperative Development of the National Cooperative Bank, became very excited
about the possible uses of the “Fair Exchange” (stock in exchange for
government largesse to corporations) proposal as a concrete way to raise, in
the post-Enron environment, the issues of local control and ownership in the
relationship of government to business. She offered to bring the idea to major
consumer organizations. She thinks they will embrace the idea and move it
forward.
5) Michigan State Senator
Martha Scott and local newspaper publisher from Highland Park, Michigan,
Margaret Lewis are working with Australian author and businessman, Shann
Turnbull, to see whether Turnbull’s Community Investment Code (CIC) idea might
be implemented in Michigan to help communities like the bankrupt City of
Highland Park, which was formerly world headquarters for Chrysler Corporation
and had the original Ford Motor Company headquarters and the first Model T
plant. The companies received many concessions from this community that they
have now left.
6) Ravi Naidoo, director of
the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (NALEDI), the labor
think tank of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and advisor
to South Africa’s Minister of Finance, was one of our COG scholars. He wrote a
conference paper providing a developing country perspective on the uses of
employee ownership to deal with globalization. His primary concerns were that:
(1) most employee ownership is in the formal sector and thus irrelevant to the
majority of developing country workers, except in the form of cooperatives; (2)
ESOPs of the American or British style were too skewed toward management to be
meaningful to the mass of workers; and (3) that there was a type of
participative employee ownership particularly in the unionized sectors of the
US and other countries that held promise as a preliminary model for developing
countries such as South Africa. During the course of the conference and
strategy meetings it became clear that South Africa provides a unique set of
political and economic circumstances in which a new, market driven, union and
worker friendly type of ownership structure could be created in South Africa
that might serve as a powerful model for the developing world.
7) Chinese participants,
Situ Gongyun of the Chinese Institute for Reform and Development and George
Tseo, Pennsylvania State University, decided to work for the creation of a
Chinese employee ownership technical assistance agency that could provide
workers with assistance to get a fairer deal in Chinese employee ownership
schemes, and to provide legislation and model ESOP plans with workers’ rights
built in. COG will provide whatever experience it can offer from its members
and support it can find to help make this proposal a reality.
8) Per Åhlström, a very experienced Swedish
labor consultant and former labor leader, came to the conference as a skeptic,
and left after offering to organize an international employee ownership to fix
globalization coalition.
9) The Education/Curriculum post conference
working group [3] has been very actively seeking materials
from and histories on related programs to teach managers how to manage employee
owned and participative companies. These include:
a. a
curriculum created by Prof. Logue and regularly utilized by OEOC at KSU, which
was organized as a certificate program several years ago, but not implemented;
b. a
program on participative management at the University of Manitoba;
c. a
similar course at Mondragon University;
d. the
now defunct program at the Yale School of Organization and Management which
produced excellent managers for employee owned companies; and
e. a
current postgraduate certificate program at Cambridge in England on
Cross-Sector Partnerships.
Ray Carey is interested in providing some
course material and his foundation is interested in providing some funding. KSU
has a distance learning program that may be a logical vehicle through which to
bring together these institutions to offer one or more joint programs. In the
past it has been difficult to find a sufficient market for this type of course
in a single location, although
employee-owned companies frequently and persistently express a need for this
type of management training. So there is a clear market. It is not heavily
concentrated in one geographic locale. However, with the on-line capacities of
COG, the KSU distance learning center, and a cooperative agreement between some
of the institutions mentioned above, it seems highly likely that a program
could be created for this very needy and distinct market.
10) The European Federation
of Employed Shareholders (EFES) is holding a companion meeting to the Fix
Globalization Conference in Bilbao, Spain November 19-23, 2002. At that
time we will discuss with Adrian Celaya, General Secretary of the Mondragon
Cooperative Corporation (MCC), who was a speaker at the COG meetings, the
possibility that Mondragon University might help us establish the above
mentioned program.
B. Outcomes from the European-American Conference
(1) Joint research and future meeting topics
The group spent much of the final afternoon
brainstorming and discussing possible collaborative research and policy
development ideas as well as topics worthy of focus at future meetings.
Research topics ran the gamut from basic
research (how does broadened ownership impact the micro level, such as rates of
reinvestment; the community, such as health and civic participation; and the
macro level, such as rates of growth) to comparative policy analysis and
development. Several of the topics discussed at the working group meeting have
been added to the agenda for a European-American issue of the Swedish journal Economic
and Industrial Democracy to be edited by NijmegenUniversity
(Netherlands) professor Erik Poutsma.
The discussion of future meeting topics
generated enough subjects for several additional meetings, and there seemed to
be a strong interest in continuing the trans-Atlantic dialogue on broadening
ownership of productive assets.
The results of the brainstorming of possible
collaborative research topics and future meeting agenda topics follow in
sections 2 & 3.
(2) Collaborative research ideas and policy
development projects
Brainstorming is an excellent method to put
ideas on the table, not to flesh them out. This brainstorming list of research ideas is presented with that
caveat.
a. Theory
Create a discussion framework on theoretical
and practical approaches to empowerment of ordinary working men and women: what
is the utility of the ownership-based approach compared and contrasted to a
democracy-based approach?
b. How
does broadened ownership impact macro-economic performance?
This would include:
1. a cross national analysis that
uses
(A) the University of Texas Inequality project data
(B) the Australian report on inequality
(C) the
study funded by the MacArthur Foundation on the impact of inequality on growth
(D)
new
data collection as necessary
The inverse impact of the maldistribution of
wealth on growth is also worthy of study.
As part of this area of research, effects of merger and acquisition
activity leading to increased absentee ownership deserve analysis. A particular concern is what happens to technology companies, which
are supposed to be foci for future employment growth, when control passes from
local to absentee ownership?
c. How
does employee ownership affect communities?
1. Replicate
findings of David Erdal with additional studies of the impact of cooperatives
on community health, both physical and emotional. Compare matched communities with and without
cooperatives/employee ownership.
2. Analysis
of the impact of where decisions are made, especially through broadened,
locally anchored ownership, on the community: on measures of community economic
performance and social indicators.
d. Corporate
governance
1. What can Americans, in the
post-Enron debate on corporate governance,
learn from German corporate governance and
co-determination?
2. From other European countries
experience?
3. From
the recent EU decisions on worker representation in corporate governance in the
European corporations?
e. Economic
development
1. Study
Canadian regional development and labor venture funds for lessons for Europe
and the U.S.
2. Compare
use and impact of company networks among cooperatives and other employee-owned
companies.
3. Explore
trends in new economic institution development/employee ownership and develop
policies to encourage ownership.
4. Compare
national policies on what governments get in return for providing subsidies and
supports to private companies.
5. Compare
local economic development agencies and what they get in return for providing
subsidies and supports to or involvement with cooperatives and employee
ownership.
f. Training
and education
1. Compare
management training designed for cooperatives, employee-owned companies and
participative management. Examples:
Mondragon University (Spain); Nijmegen University (Netherlands) School of
Business Conference on Social Responsibility; College of Notre Dame of Maryland
(US); University of Manitoba (Canada); abandoned program at the Yale University
School of Organization and Management (US). Develop model program.
2. Develop and promote training for
worker directors
3. What
do we know about the impact of school programs that teach principles of
cooperatives, sometimes as early (as in rural Ohio) as the 4th grade
curriculum?
g. Trade
unions
1. Compare trade-union experiences
in worker-owned companies
2. Bring
the trade union leaderships together for education and exchange of experience
on employee ownership (EFES)
3. Comparative
union experience with participation systems and corporate governance
h. Investment
issues
1. Identify
mechanisms that facilitate savings (and funnel them into worker ownership)
2. What
is the impact of tight money policies on financing employee ownership across
nations?
3. Investment
of trade union pension funds in the U.S. and Europe: focusing them more on
employee ownership
4. Compare
investment patterns in worker-owned and conventionally owned companies
5. Are
there successful asset building systems that work in advanced industrial
democracies? How do they work? Can they be replicated?
6. Can
Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) be successfully linked to employee
ownership?
3) Possible topics for future meetings
Here is the list of topics brainstormed for
future working group meetings.
a. Continuing
mutual national updates
There
was general agreement that the national updates were extremely useful.
b. Identify
and explore central theoretical issues
1. What is the role of employee
ownership in system change?
2. What are effective strategies for
spreading employee ownership?
3. Why is it important to promote
employee ownership?
4. Identify
distinctive cultural approaches, for example French-German style vs. Spanish
vs. Anglo-Dutch vs. U.S.
c. Develop
standards for
1. ownership impact statements
2. reporting
employee ownership in public companies which could be applied in both North
America and Europe
d. Cooperatives
and Mondragon
1. What are the limits of the Mondragon
model?
2. Consolidate and compare what we know about the
economic performance of worker-owned and cooperative companies
3. Comparative law on cooperatives
and worker ownership
e. Discussion
of employee ownership in privatization and deregulation
f. Trade
unions
1. What local trade unions can do
with worker ownership
2. Education of senior trade union leaders in employee
ownership basics, perhaps with visits to unionized employee-owned firms
g. Discussion
of new openings in the public debate for broad ownership
1. The failure of Enron, etc., demonstrates failure of
current approach to corporate governance.
2. Collapse of Argentina’s economy, the outcome of the
elections in Brazil, and the subsequent presidential election results in
Ecuador call into question the viability of the Washington Consensus
3. Employee pension funds were among the primary groups
that lost out. How should they invest
instead?
4. How has short-term thinking
failed?
5. The expansion of the European Union to include as many
as ten new member states offers impressive opportunities as well as challenges
(Cyprus)
6. Rethinking privatization and
deregulation
h. Sustaining
local economies in economic globalization
1. Responding to dislocations caused
by plant shutdowns
2. Reconstructing local financial
institutions
3. What is the impact of local vs.
absentee ownership?
4. Creating new institutions for
community economic development
i. Continuing
the dialogue between meetings
1. How do we best share experience
on an ongoing basis (the web?)
2. How can we assist each other and
on what issues?
Jl.COG2002 conference.Report to Ford on 2002 policy conference
[1] The 8 major strategies for humanizing globalization include:
1.
broadening ownership of productive assets,
2. international financial institution
reform for economic development that gives developing countries the tools to develop internally,
3.
trade reform which includes adequate, enforceable labor and environmental
standards,
4.
international labor rights,
5.
sovereignty protection for governments,
6.
business accountability standards, such as those Good Jobs First promotes, and
those Congress just passed,
7.
environmental standards and
ecologically sound development methods, and
8.
pension investment for corporation accountability, labor & social wage
standards.
[2] Under this same grant COG created an on-line conference center, think tank and library which can be accessed at both and www.capitalownership.org. It has had approximately 1,434,000 information requests from more than 25,000 people in 128 countries. The think tank includes 15 working groups. COG has also hosted other conferences, and its initial book manuscript, Ownership for All, is currently under review for publication.
[3] These include John Logue of KSU, Jessica Nembhard of the University of Maryland, Mary Landry of the Community College of Baltimore, Ray Carey of the Carey Center for Democratic Capitalism, Ravi Naidoo of the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (South Africa), Maria Oliveros of the Roberto Oliveros Foundation (Mexico) and representatives of several other educational institutions, businesses and government agencies, Vic Thorpe of Just Solutions, and Deb Olson of COG.