Re: Vermont Employee Ownership Center funded

[John Logue <jlogue@kent.edu>]

Don -

When it comes to anchoring jobs and capital in our communities,
Democrats, Republicans, and I'm sure our one (Vermont) Socialist member
of Congress all line up on the same side: protect the livelihoods of
their constituents.  

But more than that, employee ownership is deeply rooted in the
overarching American norm that family farmers are the best stewards of
our agriculture and home owners are the bulwark of our
neighborhoods.  So it is with employee owners in our
companies.  Mark Twain's comment that "Any man will fight to
defend his home, but nobody but a fool will fight to defend his boarding
house" rings as true for family farmers and employee owners as it
does for homeowners.

It's worth noting that the VEOC also got funding from the Nationwide
Foundation -- the foundation set up with the large mutual insurance
company established 8 decades ago by the Ohio Farm Bureau. 
Congratulations on that as well as on the Federal funding!

John 

At 01:33 PM 11/29/2001, you wrote:

Dan and Cecile --
 
     Thanks for the encouraging words...  Being out in public entails a continual political balancing act, I suppose.  I should get used to it.
 
Don
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Cecile G. Betit <cgbetit@sover.net>
To: EOsubnat@cog.kent.edu <EOsubnat@cog.kent.edu>
Date: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 11:27 AM
Subject: RE: Vermont Employee Ownership Center funded

Dear Dan, your response encouraged me to resend the private message
that I sent to Don to the list...For those outside Vermont, Bryant and
McLaughrey are known for both for their conservative views and love of Vermont....
Best wishes,
Cecile

  -----Original Message-----
From: Cecile G. Betit [mailto:cgbetit@sover.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 11:14 AM
To: 'donjam@together.net'
Subject: RE: Vermont Employee Ownership Center funded

Dear Don,

If I may add some ideas to your ideas re the dilemma (from two different pieces of my own writing). 

(Civic humanism comes from Bryant and McLaughrey's *Vermont Papers*.  Rokeach used the word

socialism but given that our culture sees it as a synonym for communism, in my dissertation, I

credited Bryant and McLaughrey with the term civic humanism.)...Let me know if I can be of

support to you in your new work....Cecile

1.  In The Capitalist Manifesto, Louis Kelso presented a vision of employee-ownership and a compass for change of the partly capitalistic and partly laboristic economy to a well-balanced and completely capitalistic economy within a democratic framework (Kelso and Adler 1958:  252). In this view, employee-ownership not only changes stakeholder citizenship relationships, it provides an offset to the requirement of the mass-production economy for mass consumption to maintain a high standard of living. In 1973, inspired by Kelso s dogged efforts to promote populism, Senator Russell Long introduced ESOP legislation with tax incentives to further employee-ownership. There was broad support for the idea that employees owning their companies would balance some of the deficiencies growing within the United States economic system (Rockefeller III: 1973).  Two decades later, such thinking has contemporary advocates.  Jeff Gates, for example, addresses the challenge of capitalism in the context of changing stakeholder citizenship relationship and stewardship.  He sees the dilemma as fashioning a social contract that can channel financial capital s return-seeking properties in a way that balances financial with other goals social, fiscal, political, cultural, environmental. He offers The Ownership Solution as a means of meeting that challenge within a people-based, feedback-intensive, self-organized, self-designed system (1998: 292-293) thus joining employee-ownership with full participation of its stakeholder citizens. Participation has been found to be critically important.  Early efforts to mount employee-ownership had disappointing results in those areas involving productivity.  For improvements in production, it appears that employee participation must accompany employee-ownership. Multi-faceted approaches for increasing participation (W. Smith 1992; J. R. Blasi 1990) similar to those being implemented within the Carris Companies, seemed to be most effective.  For example, Marens et al. found that ESOPs can be a useful mechanism for building a stakeholder relationship.   That usefulness might be in anchoring participation programs in a tangible and credible manner (1999: 73). Employing meta-analysis  (a statistical technique for distilling a single estimate from a number of studies) of 43 studies, Doucouliagos estimated the average correlation between productivity and various forms of participation.   He found that profit sharing, worker ownership and worker participation in decision making are all positively associated with productivity.   All the observed correlations are stronger among labor-managed firms (firms owned and controlled by workers) than among participatory capitalist firms (firms adopting one or more participation schemes involving employees, such as ESOPs or quality circles).  (1995: 58)

Rockefeller III, J.D. (1973) The Second American Revolution:  Some Personal Observations. (New York:  Harper and Row).   

2. In 1974, Rokeach described how the values of freedom and equality might be organized as values orientations within certain political ideologies. He then assigned values orientations to each of the world s four major political ideologies which he named as a Freedom-Equality Model of Political Variations: high freedom and high equality to socialism (as we have observed the emotional response to this word, it would seem more appropriate to use terms like civic humanism or social democracy and therefore the former is used); low freedom and low equality to fascism; high freedom and low equality to capitalism and low freedom and high equality to communism (in its early ideals).

A Freedom-Equality Model of Political Variations

                                                         Equality High

Communism

 

 

Civic Humanism

 

Freedom low

 

Fascism

Freedom high

 

Capitalism

                                                         Equality Low

 

In "Value Changes and Stabilities," Rokeach (1974) reported that from 1969-1972, there was no significant difference in the ranking for Freedom, considered in these studies a personal value. Equality, a social value (among other values) became significantly more important. Neither education nor income were determinants of values change (this specific finding has not been replicated in several values studies). Feather (1979) reported conservatism to be negatively related to the relative importance of values of "equality, freedom, love, and pleasure." Inglehart s study in 1985 used a time series design, generated from representative national samplings taken in 1968, 1971, 1974 and 1981. The highest six items in 1968 were the same in 1981. Freedom was ranked third throughout. The middle range changed the most and the findings on Equality are telling. In 1968, it was ranked 7. In 1971 it was ranked 4 in order of importance; and in 1974 and 1981, the ranking was 12.

-----Original Message-----

From: owner-eosubnat@cog.kent.edu [mailto:owner-eosubnat@cog.kent.edu]On

Behalf Of Don Jamison

Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 10:35 AM

To: EOsubnat@cog.kent.edu

Subject: Re: Vermont Employee Ownership Center funded

Thank you for posting the article, Cecile.  We should talk sometime!

The news about the funding is indeed good, but after the press conference,

I'm feeling a little burned -- it's pretty much impossible to avoid

offending considerable numbers of people when one's initiative is embraced

by a "socialist."  I have a bit of damage control to do...  Oh well!

Don Jamison

donjam@together.net

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-eosubnat@cog.kent.edu [mailto:owner-eosubnat@cog.kent.edu]On
Behalf Of Dan Bell
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 10:38 AM
To: EOsubnat@cog.kent.edu
Subject: Re: Vermont Employee Ownership Center funded


Don,

The Ohio Employee Ownership Center's funding includes money
from Ohio's Republican administration and federal funding
initiated under a Democratic administration.

Employee ownership transcends party lines. The fact that a
Socialist supports it too, should not be seen as a problem.
You can just tell your non-Socialist supporters that they
have succeeded in taking a step towards converting their
Socialist colleague to broad-based Capitalism...

Good luck and congratulations!

:)

Dan

At 10:35 AM 11/28/01 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm feeling a little burned -- it's pretty much impossible to avoid
>offending considerable numbers of people when one's initiative is embraced
>by a "socialist."  I have a bit of damage control to do...  Oh well!

--
Dan Bell
International Program Coordinator
Ohio Employee Ownership Center
Kent State University
Kent, OH 44242
(330) 672-0333 << Direct number!
(330) 672-3028 general office number
(330) 672-4063 fax
dbell@kent.edu
http://www.kent.edu/oeoc/
http://cog.kent.edu