When we look into the field of employee ownership three major models come to mind, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), worker cooperatives, and employee-owned trusts. But practitioners are always looking to improve existing models and in some rare cases develop new ones. In this first episode of season five we speak with David Ellerman and Tej Gonza of the Institute for Economic Democracy about a new model they have developed which combines features of the ESOP and worker cooperative models – what they term the “European ESOP”. Thier hope is this model that can drive the expansion of broad-based employee ownership in Slovenia – the country where they both live – as well as the European Union more generally. We talk about what features of worker cooperatives and ESOPs were retained and why, how the model functions, and the process for getting supportive legislation passed in Slovenia to encourage the adoption of this model.
David Ellerman has written about the theory and practice of worker co-operatives and democratic employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) for about a half century. After being educated at M.I.T. and Boston University, he taught Economics for about twenty years before spending a decade in the World Bank. He is now retired and living in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he is a co-founder of the Institute for Economic Democracy. His writings can be found on his website: www.ellerman.org.
Tej Gonza is a Co-Founder and a Director of the Institute for Economic Democracy (Slovenia), which is engaged in legislation, policy consulting, support to businesses, and research on employee ownership and workplace participation. He is a Research Fellow at Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing (Rutgers University) and a Researcher at University of Ljubljana. Gonza is a co-author of the European ESOP model and is actively engaged in EU, national, and municipal research and policy aiming to support broad-based employee ownership.
This episode of the Owners At Work podcast is sponsored by GBQ. Headquartered in Columbus, OH, GBQ Capital Advisors provides a full range of valuation and ESOP advisory services to clients nationwide, including pre-ESOP planning, feasibility studies, formations, valuations, and transactions.
The Owners at Work Podcast is a continuation of the biannual Owners at Work Newsletter which ran for 19 years (1990-2019). We are hoping to continue the same conversations and focus on providing updates on everything employee ownership. We plan to interview practitioners with expertise in different facets of employee ownership, academics doing new and interesting research, and most importantly, individuals who have a personal experience with employee ownership, including current and former employee-owners, mid-level to C suite management, and selling owners.
We want to produce a show that engages with relevant questions and provides practical lessons and information. We want this podcast to include the voices of those who practice employee-ownership each and every day. To that end we want to hear from you! We want to highlight what you are doing, whether you are an employee-owned company, a practitioner, or researcher.
***Please reach out via email: oeoc@kent.edu
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