While world leaders ponder how to make
the hole deeper that they’ve been getting the world into since governments
began controlling money and credit for their own political purposes instead of
the economic needs of actual people, there are a few bright spots on the
horizon (if that’s not mixing metaphors or something). They are only tiny points of light at this
point, but still it’s something::
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| Dr. Norman G. Kurland |
• South Africa Goes Worker Owned?
Last month the African National Congress (ANC) released its “election
manifesto” (party platform — sort of). The
manifesto calls for the party to “[i]ntroduce legislation for the extension of
company ownership to a broad base of workers through an employee ownership
scheme and similar arrangements to supplement workers' incomes and build
greater partnerships between workers and owners to build these businesses.” Some time back, CESJ president Dr. Norman
Kurland recommended worker ownership in South Africa. It has taken a few decades, but it seems they
are finally getting around to it.
• Presidential Candidate for Ownership?
Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has announced she is
running for president, and in her “announcement video” mentions her support for
employee ownership and the Main Street Employee Ownership Act. Of course, if she really wanted to come out
like another Lincoln, she would support ownership for every child, woman, and
man, not just those fortunate enough to find a wage system job.
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| 'Tis the other Starbuck yer wantin', shipmate. |
• Starbuck for President? Another
presidential possibility, Howard Schultz, founder and past CEO of the Starbucks
coffee house chain, has generated a lot of media buzz over the possibility of
his running for President as an independent. Schultz was a proponent of
employee ownership — sort of. Schultz wanted to give stock options with a face
value of 10% of pay to all employees, including part-timers, who worked for six
months or more. Starbucks asked us for data to support the idea that
broad-based ownership worked, and that may have helped mollify the bankers. The
program now uses “restricted stock units.” The units vest over two years at 50%
per year. Grants are awarded to all employees annually. Since inception, the
program has awarded over $1.2 billion in shares to employees. While this does spread a little ownership, it
is in the nature of a gift that can be taken away, not a right exercised by the
workers.
• Maryland Worker Ownership.
Although it’s a bit tokenistic and doesn’t get to the main problem
(access to money and credit so anybody can purchase self-liquidating assets), A
bill introduced in the Maryland House would exempt from taxes a portion of income
from a transfer of stock in a corporation or LLC to workers. The bill, introduced by Eric Luedtke, builds
on similar legislation introduced last session in the Maryland Senate.
• Scotland the Brave. In a
bold move that breaks with Labour’s Fabian traditions, the leader of the Labour
Party of Scotland has called for more emphasis on employee ownership in
Scotland, including giving workers a statutory preferential right to buy a
company when it is put up for sale. Derek McKay, Finance Minister of the ruling
Scottish National Party, said, “We will intervene where we can when there’s [’re?]
ways we can support companies and the workforce and we do have that desire, as
Richard Leonard [party leader] has set out, for more employee-owned companies.” Again, why just workers? But at least it’s a step in the right
direction.
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| "Even I like it." |
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 41 different
countries and 48 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this
blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada,
Brazil, Kenya, and Australia. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were “The
American Chesterton,” “Fulton
Sheen and the Problem of Savings,” “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” “New
Things, Part I,” and “Ronald
Reagan . . . Communist?”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
