RE: HOMESTEAD: Do trusts make workers second class owners?

["Landry, Mary" <mlandry@ccbc.cc.md.us>]

Lynn,

Always good to have your insight into employee ownership matters.  Hope
you're well. 

Mary

-----Original Message-----
From: LynnRWilliams@aol.com [mailto:LynnRWilliams@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2001 5:25 PM
To: EOsubnat@cog.kent.edu
Subject: Re: HOMESTEAD: Do trusts make workers second class owners?


I have just a few comments on this subject which relate to my understanding 
of our, that is the United Steelworkers' experience with trustees and our 
ESOPs.  There are others who could articulate the issues involved in this 
more clearly and more accurately, but it is an interesting issue an I would 
like to say a little about it.

Our intention from the beginning, leaving aside West Bend Lathe, was that 
worker ownership should be real, employees should have membership on the 
board and should have voting rights, should be fully reported to by the 
management in terms of the business, should have access through collective 
bargaining as well, in terms of maintaining the rights of worker-owners.  

This emphasis on worker owner rights or empowerment picked up momentum and 
intensity during the years when we were most active in employee ownership.  
The package of employee rights became the sine qua non of the Steelworkers' 
initiatives in this field.

My understanding is that the law has improved in the U.S., so that much that

we required in terms of pass through voting rights is now contained in the 
law.

I am not arguing against Shaun's concerns so much as commenting.  One of the

downsides it seems to me of a more traditional, individual type of stock 
ownership is that it paves the way to employees simply selling their stock 
and bringing worker-ownership to an abrupt halt, as happened so frequently, 
as I understand it, in eastern Europe to the brave new schemes undertaken in

the glow of the falling wall.

All of our systems are of course the result of applicable laws.  Of course 
it's not impossible to change them, but change doesn't come easily, in 
America partcularly, so that there is a great deal of effort, activity and 
imagination devoted to ensuring that existing laws ae administered as fairly

as possible.