72% Of Republicans and 74% of Democrats Agree on This: They Prefer to Work for an Employee-Owned Company

Rutgers analysis finds workers in firms with employee share ownership
build greater wealth and they are six times less likely to be laid off

PISCATAWAY, N.J.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/ESOP?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#ESOPlt;/agt;–In a rare and overwhelming consensus among Democrats, Republicans, and
Independents, nearly three-fourths of respondents in a national survey
said they would rather work for an employee-owned company than for
shareholders or the government. The Rutgers Institute for the Study of
Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing proposed the question for the
General Social Survey (GSS) and announced the results today at the ESOP
Association National Conference in Washington.

“Americans disagree about a lot of things, but this is not one of them,”
said Beyster Distinguished Professor Joseph Blasi, Director of the
Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing.
“Democrat or Republican, female or male, black or white, union or
non-union, a majority of respondents said they prefer to work for a
company with employee share ownership. It is rare to find such a
national consensus on anything.”

The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago
administers the GSS to study trends in American society. Blasi, Douglas
Kruse (Rutgers), and Richard Freeman (Harvard) designed the original
employee share ownership questions that have been asked every four years
since 2002. They added several new questions in 2018 to measure the
popularity of shares across the political spectrum.

The survey of 1,500 working Americans finds:

• The vast majority of respondents (72 percent) said they prefer to work
  for an employee-owned company over one owned by investors (19 percent)
  or the state (9 percent).
• The findings transcended ideological and partisan divides, with 74
  percent of Democrats, 72 percent of Republicans, and 67 percent of
  Independents opting for the employee share ownership model.
• Among respondents who cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election,
  76.5 percent of Trump voters and 75.5 percent of Clinton voters
  selected employee share ownership.
• Given a choice between two similar jobs, 61 percent of respondents
  said they prefer to work for a company that shares ownership or
  profits over one that does not.
• More than a third of respondents, 38 percent, said they are more
  likely to purchase goods or services from a firm with employee share
  ownership. Only 8 percent were less likely to do so.

The survey findings align with recent bipartisan support for employee
share ownership on Capitol Hill. In 2018, the Republican chairs and
Democratic ranking members of the Senate and House Committees on Small
Business co-sponsored the Main Street Employee Ownership Act. Signed by
President Trump as part of the national defense bill, the new law makes
it easier for retiring business owners to sell to their employees
through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) or worker co-op.

Shares Increasing

The Rutgers analysis of the GSS survey finds 47 percent of private
sector employees (59 million) have ownership or profit shares where they
work, up from 45 percent (52 million) in 2014. There is some overlap.
For instance, nearly 70 percent of workers in an ESOP company also have
profit sharing.

While the dollar value is modest for some employees, it can be sizable
for many others.

• The average worker who holds company stock has $75,205 in shares.
• For ESOPs alone, the average worker has a $134,000 stake.
• The average, annual profit sharing and gain sharing bonuses are just
  over $13,000.
• The information/communications industry has the highest concentration
  of equity and profit shares.
• Close to 20 percent of all blue collar, clerical, and sales workers
  own some company stock.

Job Security

In addition to enabling workers to build wealth and save for retirement,
employee share ownership also brings greater job security. Among workers
who spent at least one year in a firm with employee share ownership, 0.6
percent were laid-off in the last year compared to 3.7 percent of
workers without employee share ownership.

“Employee share owners are six times less likely to be laid off,” said Distinguished
Professor Douglas Kruse, Associate Director of the Rutgers Institute for
the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing and former Senior
Economist on the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “Employee
share ownership may help to stabilize communities and the larger economy
by maintaining employment and consumer purchasing power.”

The Employee Ownership Foundation, an affiliated foundation of the ESOP
Association, contracted with the National Opinion Research Center to
administer the survey as part of the GSS. Professors Blasi and Kruse
proposed the questions and analyzed the results on a volunteer basis.

About the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations

The
Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) is the
world’s leading source of expertise on managing and representing
workers, designing effective organizations, and building strong
employment relationships. The
Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing
at SMLR is the first academic institute dedicated to researching
broad-based capital shares and their impact on the economy.

Contacts

Press / Interview Requests
Steve Flamisch, Rutgers School of
Management and Labor Relations
848.252.9011 (cell), [email protected]