Word: ownership
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Disillusioned liberals, take heart. On Labor Day, President Barack Obama appointed Ron Bloom—former United Steel Workers executive who has devoted much of his career to promoting worker ownership of the means of production—as his manufacturing czar. Then again, this is the same Ron Bloom who holds a Harvard MBA and once served as an executive vice president of the investment bank Lazard Freres & Co. And no, he sees no contradiction between his business career and his pro-worker activism...
...should he. Bloom is a pioneer when it comes to worker buyouts, in which the employees of a faltering firm buy an ownership stake to prevent plant closings or job losses. The idea of an economy of worker cooperatives may seem utopian, and the notion of using the tools of modern finance to do so absurd. But Bloom and his mentor at Lazard, Eugene Keilin, helped prove it possible—and did so with no less than the largest airline in the nation: United...
...which United employees, through their unions, bought a 55 percent stake in the company. The results were staggeringly positive. Worker grievances plummeted while the firm’s productivity and profit margins soared. Previous skeptics appeared to be swayed. BusinessWeek devoted a cover story to the success of worker ownership, including praise from sources as unlikely as a Merrill Lynch analyst and an executive at a rival airline...
...this success are clear enough. When workers own their own companies, they have an obvious incentive to protect their own salaries and benefits and to create a friendly work environment. But they also have an incentive to protect the profits and overall success of their employers. After all, ownership in a bankrupt firm is worthless. Thus, worker ownership results in firms where the needs of workers come first, but where necessary cutbacks can be achieved as well...
...signal? His job encompasses a broad range of industries, from the steel mills he has helped organize in his position with the United Steel Workers to the Big Three automakers—Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler—in Detroit. Bloom and Keilin have already proven that worker ownership can work—since, before the United deal, they made their reputation by advising steel workers in buying out their employers...