June 12, 2025 • 54 mins
American workers have faced numerous setbacks in the 21st century, including the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, continued wage stagnation, and an escalated cost of living. While workers made some gains following the pandemic, thanks to a tight labor market and because of a spike in organizing, many still feel their needs are unmet, a major theme of the recent election. Too many workers still live in precarity — a situation that could be exacerbated by the rise of artificial intelligence and new technological developments. In the face of these challenges, a bipartisan consensus has formed around the need for a new form of economics that recognizes and meets the needs of working people and families. In this discussion from the 2025 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, panelists discuss the role of employee ownership in helping create a brighter future and better jobs for the American worker.
For additional resources, visit our website: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/videos/employee-ownership-and-the-future-of-the-american-worker/
Or subscribe to our podcast and listen on the go: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/aspeneop/
For other session videos, visit the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aspeneop
The 2025 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum took place on April 9-10, 2025, virtually and in Washington DC. The Forum is proudly co-hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program and the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University.
This year’s theme, “From Workers to Owners,” highlights how the experience of ownership changes the reality of work for workers. The forum highlights companies in a range of business sectors and explores how employee ownership fits their business strategy and approach to business leadership. We also discuss the particular role employee ownership can play in supporting business success, and we consider the role institutional investors can play in improving capital access for employee ownership conversions and expansions.
For more information about the Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, including our speakers, agenda, and additional resources, visit our website: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/events/employee-ownership-ideas-forum-2025/
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Episode Transcript
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(00:04):
Welcome back. We're going to get started with
this with this next panel, whichis my pleasure to introduce.
This is about the future of the American worker.
I think a lot of us have heard this term probably too many
times over the past decade, right, about the future of work.
And I think that conjures up different images for different
people, right? A lot of people might think
about scary robots and automation.
(00:28):
Some people think about care work.
And I think that's rightfully soas well.
Because from my perspective, a lot of the future of work is
care work. And then increasingly, I think
people are also starting to think about the future of work
and as it relates to onshoring and reshoring of, of
manufacturing. But whatever image it kind of
conjures up from your perspective, I think we're all
(00:49):
here in part because we're worried about the future of work
and and and the future of the American worker in particular in
this context. It's a shared concern.
You know, we've seen decades of what wage stagnation, We've seen
rising inequality of the declineof unionization and workers
bargaining power, the rise of temporary and non stable non
(01:12):
standard labor arrangements and gig work.
There's just been a lot working against working people over the
last few decades. And, you know, just in in recent
years, you know, there's even more 'cause for concern.
And then in the past few months in particular, because we're
starting to debate some of the things I think a lot of us
(01:33):
thought we were in agreement on,right?
There's this renewed debate around child labor, around
whether we need an Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, whether we should be enforcing
discrimination laws in the workplace.
So we're here today to kind of unpack some of those issues and
talk about what employee ownership maybe can help solve
(01:56):
for and maybe what it can't helpsolve for, but kind of
discussing what role employee ownership can play in creating
the future of work, which I think we all want to see, which
is one that's built on shared prosperity and really human
dignity. So it's my pleasure to introduce
this great panel that we have. I'm going to start down there on
(02:18):
the the far right with Chris Griswold, who's the policy
director of the American Compass.
Chris was with us yesterday and is back again pulling double
duty for us. Next to Chris, we have Audrea
Powell, who's president and CEO of Cooperative Home Care
Associates. Audrey's colleague Juan Carlos
was on our employee owner panel yesterday and really knocked it
(02:38):
out of the park, so we're glad to have him there too.
Next to Adria, we have Zab de Souza Briggs.
He is senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.
And next to Zab we have Michael Corey, who is Vice President of
Corporate Development at Web Industries.
At the end of the today's panel,we're going to invite up
(02:58):
Christos Macredas. Christos is a Associate Press
professor at Arizona State University, amongst many hats
that he wears, and he'll providesome closing reflections.
But guiding today's conversation, we're so grateful
and privileged to have Emma Goldberg from The New York
Times. She's a business writer at The
Times, where she reports on cultural, societal and economic
(03:21):
change. She looks at the cultural and
economic shifts affecting how welive and work.
She's covered so much during hertime there and has just a wide
breadth of expertise, ranging from things like coverage in
coverage on the workplace, reporting on generational shifts
at work. I think she had a health and
medical beat for a while. She's written a book called Life
on the Line, young doctors coming of age in the pandemic,
(03:44):
and we're just really grateful to have him here to help guide
this conversation. So I'll turn it over to her.
Can you guys hear me? Yes.
OK. Well, this is an amazing group
of panelists, so I'm extremely excited to be here for this
conversation. And I wanted to start out just
by saying, I think in particularin a week like this, when news
(04:07):
about the economy feels so head spinning, it's all the more
important to carve out space forbig picture visioning about
economic change, but also about economic change that amplifies
the voices of workers and takes their experiences into account.
And everyone on this panel is someone who has been at the
forefront of doing that thinkingand doing that work about
(04:30):
building economic models and worker models that support
workers experiences and amplify their voices.
So I think this is going to be areally wonderful conversation.
Audrey, I wanted to start with you because you run at the
largest worker owned cooperativein the country and it is in a
sector that, you know, as Matt was saying, when we think about
(04:52):
what is the future of work, it is care work.
It's one of the fastest growing parts of the economy and one of
the most complex where it comes to workers experiences because
there's so much people are vulnerable to from exploitation
to, you know, low wages. So I wanted you to tell us a
little bit about your work and Iasked you this before, but if
(05:14):
you could just give us a little bit of color on what is being
part of the largest worker ownedCo-op in the country look like
for the day-to-day experience ofworkers?
What does that mean for their job quality?
So thank you, Emma. I'm really pleased and excited
to be here. Good morning, everyone.
So yes, my name is Andrea Powelland I for the last eight years
(05:38):
have been the President and CEO of Cooperative Home Care
Associates. Though I've been connected to
the cooperative for a very long time, my mother was one of the
original founders of the cooperative and so I've been
there pretty much since the beginning.
But Cooperative Home Care Associates is a 40 year old
workforce development training and home care provider based in
(06:02):
New York State. And so we basically train
workers to go in the community and serve people who have
disabilities and have chronic conditions so that they can stay
in those communities. And we do that in like a really
innovative way in terms of investing in the workforce and
investing in the job quality. And I think, you know, Emma, you
(06:25):
talk about the future of care work and it is care work is I
think universal and, and home care and long term care in
particular. I just want to lift up a quote
that Rosalynn Carter said. There are four kinds of people
in this world, those who have been caregivers, those who are
(06:45):
currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who
will need caregivers. So it's, it's a universal
experience that will happen. And it's really important that
we do this right, because we're in a time in our country where
we have people aging at a staggering mind blowing rate.
And at the same time, we don't have people who can care for
(07:07):
them because we have not invested in these jobs.
And we're facing the largest like crisis in terms of
workforce because we have not invested in these jobs.
And so at CHCA, we try to do it a different way.
We look to see how can we get higher wages, make sure that
(07:30):
workers have benefits, invest intraining, have career
advancement opportunities withinthe sector and sort of wrap that
in a culture of ownership by being a worker owned cooperative
and having the workers really centered and on the board and
involved in decision making. And you know, when I think about
(07:54):
it, Emma asked me to talk about a like a story and I want to
bring one of our workers into the room who is a woman who came
from the Dominican Republic. She moved to the US and she was
leaving a situation in which shewas experiencing domestic
violence. She moved to this country with
(08:15):
her two young children, started working first in a factory
because that was the work that she could get.
It was horrible. Obviously she couldn't earn a
lot of money, so all kinds of exploitation, similar to things
that go on in the home care sector.
And then she found our training program and she took our four
(08:36):
week program, was certified as ahome care worker, was prepared
to go into the field and just deliver essential services and
has worked with CHCA for 30 years, has served on the board,
is one of our biggest advocates when we go lobbying about why
these jobs matter and why we need to invest in them.
(09:00):
And she talks about coming to cooperative and being part of
cooperative home care really changed her life and her
children's lives. So.
Yeah, that's wow. It's amazing to hear what it
means for a worker to actually move through that experience and
how that can transform their working conditions.
(09:20):
So if if anyone in this room hasflown on an airplane or taken a
COVID rapid test, you might haveexperienced the products of the
workforce at web. And so we have Michael here to
tell us a little bit about beingpart of this company that has
been in ESOP since 1985, fully since 2000.
(09:40):
But what I want Michael to also talk a little bit about is that
web went through a period of, you know, crisis if, if it's
fair to call it that during the early days of COVID and, and
whether that really impressively.
And so I wanted to hear a littlebit about what was it like when
the pandemic hit web and what did the employee ownership model
(10:02):
mean for how your company was able to weather that challenge?
Yeah. So Web industries, we, we, we're
a manufacturing company. We make products that are made
from flexible materials. And you don't often think of an
airplane as being made of flexible materials unless you
know this. But in fact, the large Twin Isle
(10:22):
planes these days are actually made from very thin and very
narrow tapes of carbon fibers that are embedded in a in an
epoxy resin. And these tapes are unwound
around a big model of a plane, like 80 layers thick and they go
in an oven and get cooked and outcomes a super lightweight,
(10:43):
super strong plane. And this was a is part of the
business that web is in, we're also in.
You won't be tested on that. Baby diapers and garbage bags.
And it turns out medical devicesthey're also made from little
strips like a diabetes test strip is a limited of many
layers and so on. So in the tooth the early 2000s
(11:05):
through about 2020, our businesswas growing very rapidly as
Boeing and Airbus adopted this technology for their largest
twin Isle aircraft. And that was wonderful for web,
certainly and for our employee owners until, you know, March of
2020 and shutdowns and people stop traveling and everybody
(11:26):
thinks that's going to be a couple of months.
And then is that lingers. All of a sudden, not only are
the airlines in crisis, but they're not buying airplanes.
And our business dropped in thatlargest part of our company by
about 90%. And that's obviously something
that's any company would find challenging.
(11:48):
We were really lucky that our medical device business was in,
We were the only contract manufacturing company in the
United States making what we used to call lateral flow
immunoassays. But we now all know of as like a
rapid test, right? And Becton Dickinson came to us
(12:08):
and said, would you make all ourCOVID tests for North America?
And we were really excited aboutthat.
And we had to pivot. We're in eight locations around
the world. And this was a operation that we
had in Massachusetts that had 50employees.
And from the time we got that inquiry in April to getting
(12:29):
qualified by the FDA in June, starting production in July, we
began pivoting and ramping our medical device business as we
were ramping down our aerospace business, our global aerospace
business. That plant went from 50 to 650
people over the course of six months.
We started shipping in July. We were shipping a million tests
(12:53):
a week in November and 2 milliontests a week in February.
So it was this extraordinary transformation, our German
employees, so our international employees, we can't be in the
ESOP, but we create plans that mirror the ESOP that include our
international employees and our German employee owners during
(13:14):
COVID pre vaccine, got on airplanes, moved to hotels in
Massachusetts away from their families during this crazy
medical global crisis and ran our third shift making tests.
Our corporate office employees would work in Marlboro right
(13:35):
down the street from this plant during the day and do their
accounting and finance and legalwork and whatever, and then
would come and work at night andpack COVID tests.
Family members of our employees would show up and pack like, you
know, I know I'm an expert and Iwas stationed 5 in the kidding
(13:57):
life and in station 5, my job was to take a bunch of swabs and
put them in the kit, right? Like just over and over and over
again all night long. I was very good.
That was the only station that Iwas allowed to do.
But you know, the put me on another station.
It wasn't a good, it wasn't a good outcome, but the, you know,
this is, this is what like when it's your business, when your
(14:21):
company is at stake, when, when your company won't be there if
you don't do this, this is what happens, right?
So our business was saved in this crisis by the fact that we
had a great employee ownership culture.
Right. It's a a lot easier to ask
someone to fly across the world and pivot their what they're
(14:42):
doing when they're an employee owner it sounds like.
Yeah, It wasn't just to make youknow, Mr. Webb.
There was no Mr. Webb, but it wasn't just to make Mr. Webb.
We're all Mr. Webb. We're all Mr. Webb.
Exactly right. It was, it was.
It was for everyone's benefit. That's really interesting.
Thank you. Zab.
You have written about a really incredible range of aspects of
(15:03):
how the economy is transforming,including generative AI and the
30% or so of jobs that it could transform, gig work, the minimum
wage, so many different economictopics.
Can you tell us a little bit about your recent research and
how employee ownership fits intothe work you've been doing on
(15:24):
job quality? Sure.
Emma, thanks for the question and thanks to Aspen and and
Rutgers for having me. You know, a couple of things
stand out for me, and I'll just weave in a little bit of where
the research is pointing, as yousaid #1 the movement for job
quality. Thank you to my friends at Aspen
for being such an important partof that, the good job champions
(15:46):
and so on. I'm going to put it this way,
The movement to improve the quality of work, not just
maximize the number of jobs in our economy has been quietly
winning. And the quietly part is actually
been a positive in many ways because it's not hyper partisan
chum. And may it not become that,
please. But as one example of this, the
(16:09):
minimum wage movement has been winning, including in the Deep
South latest election. You may remember Missouri also
up in Alaska prior election, Florida by a significantly
greater margin than President Trump won in that state.
I could give you other examples that tells us something.
A very, very broad base of voters and taxpayers is
(16:31):
literally voting for job quality, right?
In important ways. At the same time, major labor
reform in this country of the kind advocates have sought for a
long time is not on the horizon for the foreseeable, at least
not at the national level. States are a different story,
and they have lots of Labor muscle and labor power and lots
of power that to affect change. The other thing that's going on
(16:53):
that we're doing a lot of work on, as we mentioned a few times
so far this morning, is industrial strategy, industrial
policy. We know that the big drivers are
not sorry for all of us who've been promoting a different kind
of paradigm for the economy. They're not sort of it's time to
rewrite the rules because it's just, and it's about human
dignity. The drivers are national
(17:15):
security number one, and national competitiveness #2 and
in particular, the foot race with China, right?
These are the things that drove the Chips and Science Act over
the line, for example, on a strongly bipartisan basis, and
other things as well. And in that context, what I
would highlight is the the bets on the future, if you will, are
(17:37):
amazing. And they are incredibly
important at the regional level,including in regions that need
to revitalize. They've been looking for their
next economic engine for a long time, Central, Upstate New York,
the Syracuse area, and many others I could name for you
outside Columbus, Cleveland. But this push to promote
(17:58):
excellence in industry and quoteUN quote, own advanced
industries and sort of win the future economic nationalism, if
you will, it is putting a brightspotlight on all kinds of
unfinished business. I mean, our workforce
development system is not what it should be.
We should not be in the 21st century using phrases like train
and pray. That's gone from being a joke to
being a national disgrace. We just do not perform at a
(18:22):
level that we should. We're way behind the other
advanced economies and doing that.
So, you know, these big bats, the strategy is putting a bright
light on that and the need and opportunity to change that.
And my advice to regions across the country is don't wait for
the federal government to come and save you.
And I'm not saying that about this current political moment.
I'm saying that's been true for quite a while.
You need to show what it looks like to lead.
(18:43):
And if anything, the federal government will follow you and
you can show what you need in the way of enabling support.
I'll be very brief about generative AII know we'll get a
chance to get a bit deeper into it, but we looked at 1000
occupations of the American economy, Everything you can
think of, screenwriter, plumber,care worker, neurologist,
architect, finance professional,the most exposed to AI
(19:07):
disruption are the least unionized.
That will not surprise you. So mostly white collar jobs,
right? Who've been spared a lot of the
prior waves of automation or at least spared the worst effects
of the most serious disruptions.The public sector is an
important exception. It's more highly unionized if
you ask me to bet. I would say healthcare and
(19:28):
public education are probably the two industries or the two
sectors with the most promise right now to show us what good
looks like in the deployment of AI to make work better, to
minimize disruptions and harms and to create value for
customers, for the economy and ensure good jobs in a very
(19:49):
different kind of future. But it won't just happen.
We have to create that future and we're moving too slowly.
And I'd say that the country as a whole, this is true of regions
as well. It's true of organizations as
well, or by and large not AI ready.
And they're underestimating how rapidly this technology is
(20:09):
evolving and just how far it's disruptive effects will go.
And I'll land on that bright thought.
Thank you so much for for that very cheery thought, Chris.
I am also really excited that wehave you on this panel.
I you've done such fascinating research on worker voices.
(20:29):
You had a great paper a few years ago on declining trust in
institutions across the board, and particularly what that means
for the workplace and how we canhelp workers feel a sense of
agency and voice in their jobs and in their work.
I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what
what launched that research. And then also right now, in this
(20:51):
moment of economic flux, what you're seeing as some of the
possibilities emerging of changes that can be made to
boost workers voices and to giveworkers more of a sense of
agency in their jobs. Yeah.
Thank you so much. I guess for me, the starting
(21:12):
premise of this conversation is the demonstrable fact that the
American worker feels disenfranchised.
And any of you all that have worked with me, you know, that's
my hobby horse. I'm sorry to keep, you know,
beating that drum, but it's true.
And it's important to start there, I think just with the the
fundamental fact that American workers feel voiceless.
(21:34):
And if you ask them if they feelthat way, they will tell you
they do. There is a a measurable what
Thomas coaching at MIT calls just voice gap between the voice
workers say they want at work and the voice they understand
themselves to actually have at work.
And it's about, you know, wages and benefits primarily, but not
just about that. It's about across a whole range
(21:56):
of issues where workers wish they had more agency and and
voice in the workplace on how they're how they're treated,
what their employers value system and is and how they
express it on the adoption of new technology, which I'm sure
we'll get into. Across this whole range, there's
this massive voice gap. And that has to your big, really
(22:19):
big picture question that has enormous political consequences.
And I think is one of the drivers of the, the populisms of
the left and right that are ascendant and honestly ascendant
for good reason, because people are, are, are desperate to, to
find a new Ave. into, you know, enfranchisement.
(22:42):
I think that's right. And so the, the, the, the
voicelessness that I'm describing, in my view, is a
function of the economic model that we've been pursuing in this
country for at least several decades of, I mean, call it
neoliberalism, call it free market fundamentalism, call it
what you want. But this obsession with market
(23:04):
efficiency, this obsession with the idea that allowing the
market to optimize will, will produce what is best for society
and for the people in it. That's what we've been doing.
And it hasn't worked well, in myopinion, for, for working people
and all of us. I think it's true for all of
(23:25):
anyone who has a job is fully aware of like what economic
model they're participating in and what that model has to say
about who you are. And then this model, if you're a
working person, the message you are receiving and being told
loud and very clearly is that you are a widget, You are a unit
of production. You're a factor input of
(23:47):
production to be economized and subject to efficiency measures
and laid off and downsized and off, outsourced and offshored
where possible as opposed to being like a Co creator of
economic value, which is what workers actually are along with
management along with capital. So that's the message we're
(24:10):
sending. It has political consequences,
also has economic consequences. Just a bad way to do economics
in my opinion, because workers really do have something
important to say. You see that in innovation and
in the in the context of just the last week and debates about
global trade and the right and wrong ways to try and
reindustrialize the country. I mean, one of the points that's
(24:31):
being made rightly by people on both sides of the aisle is that
trying to design things here andmake them elsewhere doesn't work
because you lose, you lose that innovative capacity over time,
innovation. And I appreciate your point.
Station 5, right? So much insight happens on the
floor, on the factory floor. That's, that's, that's where so
much of the seat of our industrial Commons, of our
(24:53):
shared industrial knowledge comes from.
And so that's, that's a broken model.
Workers have something to contribute.
So what does that all mean? It, it means that I think the,
the, the most promising political leaders at the moment
are those who are trying to offer new models of, of giving
workers voice and say in the workplace.
(25:16):
And we can spend all day kind oftalking about the whole menu of
things. They're out there.
Obviously trade is one of them. Labor policy is quite obviously
one of them. I maybe have a little, a little
more hope than you at the national level.
I won't, I won't say it's likely, but I do think there are
seeds of hope. There are multiple reasons for
the decline of organized labor. Part of it is a legal regime
(25:41):
that's hostile to it. You see Senator Josh Hawley and
the Teamsters union working now on a labor framework to punish
employers who abuse our current laborers.
Never have seen that kind of alliance from a leading
Republican and a leading labor union in decades.
It's, I think it's very heartening.
And there and he's bringing somefellow Republicans along with
them. I think on the left, you see
(26:03):
openness to maybe depoliticizingunions to open, you know, their
their appeal to a wider, wider, you know, scope of potential
members. So there's a lot going going on.
And I think employee ownership needs to be part of the
conversation because it's such an elegant way of communicating
(26:25):
and in fact making true the ideathat we are in this together and
that this is a shared enterpriseand that you are not just a
factor of production. You are a Co creator of value
and this is in fact your enterprise.
And I just part of my hope in this moment is that employee
ownership kind of takes its rightful place alongside some of
(26:48):
these bigger political conversations as part of the
solution. I want to stay with you for a
minute because that issue of worker voice is so critical.
I speak with a lot of workers about their feelings on the
rollout of AI and their companies.
And just what I hear across so many industries is fear and also
a sense of voicelessness of, youknow, the AI is coming in, being
(27:12):
thrown into the workplace without a lot of conversation
with workers about how they wantto see it implemented into their
jobs and how they want to be trained to use it.
And so I wondered if you could stay on that topic for a little
bit. What does amplifying worker
voice and giving workers a senseof agency specifically look like
where it comes to roll out an implementation of new
(27:34):
technologies? And also, how do you see
employee ownership fitting into that conversation?
Yeah. Well, I think it's, I think it's
a bunch of things, but let's focus in on the the broad kind
of Labor movement question. I think we just, we need a more
robust labor movement in the country that will help.
But I think and the the longshoremen dispute is a really
(27:54):
interesting like case study on this, where the longshoremen had
enough power to, you know, disrupt, potentially disrupt
our, you know, import system to try and protect their jobs and
resist the potential automation of those jobs.
(28:15):
That is good for those workers. I'm glad they won.
But it is also indicative of this, of the problem that
emerges when workers and technology are perceived to be
in conflict with each other. Because the other side of that
story is that we really do need to, like, embrace advanced
manufacturing. When you're talking about
reindustrialization, we're not talking about like.
(28:37):
The the the. Jobs of times gone by, We're
talking about leading industrial, you know, you know,
processes. That's what we should be doing.
And one of the consequences of of automating and embracing
productivity enhancing technology is that you might
need fewer people in that given factory.
And that's not a bad thing on the national economic scale.
(29:00):
That's what we should be doing. So you have this tension and we
talked a little bit about this yesterday, so I apologize for
for repeating the point. But you have this tension
between workers who rightly wantto resist being replaced and an
economic imperative that we embrace the best manufacturing
processes we can. And one of the ways we might be
able to square the circle on that is just not to accept that
(29:24):
dichotomy of workers as a an input factor in competition with
other input. Factors.
Could I just jump in and say I know employee owners?
I could name employee owners wholove robots because robots will
work all night and they don't take any profit sharing.
Yes, no. And, and honestly, I'd defer to
(29:46):
you and your expertise on this, but the, the research that I've
seen suggests exactly that, thatif employees have a stake and if
employees relate to the enterprise in a different way,
they're not only OK, but enthusiastic about some of this
technology. And it doesn't have to lead to
(30:09):
layoffs. It can lead to just enjoying the
fruits of more productivity. We can do more stuff now or
maybe we get to like slightly reduce the workload and spend
time with families in a way thatincreases employee satisfaction
and makes them more loyal to the, to the business.
I mean, like there's the set of assumptions that we bring into
(30:29):
how this has to work. I don't think it's not the only
option set available. And so I really appreciate the
point. I see you nodding Michael.
Is there anything you can share from your first hand experience
of seeing how employee ownershipaffects the roll out and
implementation of new technologies and particularly
worker voice in that process? Yeah.
(30:51):
So there are a whole bunch of connections here, of course,
right. So I love this.
We've had a lot of conversation over the last two days and and
Chris, you're making me think about like the danger of
everything being financialized, right?
That and, and even enthusiastic supporters of employee
(31:15):
ownership. Like I want to get up and talk
about how many millionaires we've created or how much more
our ESOP accounts are than the average 401K and they're great
numbers related to that. And your question, we spend a
lot of time at web structuring employee voice, right?
(31:38):
So the way to get the competitive advantage that to
maximize the competitive advantage that employment
ownership can give you is to create systems and structures
for a high engagement culture. That's been a mantra at web for
decades. So we have all of these very
formal programs, so where everyone, for example, is
(31:59):
involved in an ideas team every week.
And we count not the financial benefit of the ideas, but how
many ideas we implement. And you can implement an idea in
your department, you can spend money without any approval and
so on. And we've got like four or five
highly structured ways that we create employee voice.
(32:20):
And we find then that people areout adopting technology and
looking for improvements and driving improvements.
But they're not all, not all of these ideas.
And I think this gets to your point.
They're not always the ones we celebrate and they're exciting.
People are finding ways that andthey'll talk about, oh, I see
(32:41):
this idea every day that when I come in and I see it, I know it
saved $25,000 a year. And I feel really proud about
that. But not all the ideas are
financial. They may be safety, they may be
just about the quality of work, right?
We are, we are more than financial creatures.
(33:02):
And one of the wonderful things about employee ownership is that
it like it creates the opportunity to make our
companies more whole more human.So anyway, that's, that's my
thought about that. So we embrace technology and
we're more human right in the process.
Interesting. Zab, could you talk a little bit
(33:24):
about what lessons can be learned from the rise of the gig
economy in thinking about workerexperiences and worker voices in
periods of economic transformation?
Sure. I mean, there's a lot to learn
from efforts by the Workers Lab,by other organizations to engage
with gig workers across a tremendous spectrum, to
(33:46):
understand their lives, their work, their ideas for making
work better. I'm just echoing everyone here
on the panel when I under score that.
I have to add, though, I also see it from the perspective of
job quality as something of a failure example.
So far, many worker advocates chose to approach the gig
(34:07):
platforms, Uber and the other big ones as fundamentally
controlling the classification of workers right as independent
contractors versus employees. This sound familiar, whether you
were touching it directly or youwere following it in your
community or in the news. Major ballot measures in
California and then a counter ballot measure by the other side
(34:29):
and and big expensive political fights over that regulatory
question. It's an important question, But
to some extent the genie was already out of the bottle.
I mean, consumers and small businesses and others really
value gig work of many kinds. And we don't have something like
a gig worker's Bill of Rights, ameaningful one in America.
(34:52):
A couple of states have made some headway.
So, you know, gig work in our inour recent past and in our
present is also a cautionary tale about how to approach the
issue of job quality. And by and large, it did not
engage with what everyone has said here on the panel so far.
Number one, organized labour does have a role to play.
(35:13):
And I don't mean to shortchange it.
IA 1000% agree with Chris. We have the screenwriters and
they're amazing example a littleover a year ago negotiating a
landmark deal that includes AI and I love it and we wrote it
up. I also have to say those are
unusual workers. They have access to a union.
They negotiated with all the major studios at one time.
(35:34):
Almost no worker in America is in that sort of position,
so-called sectoral bargaining, right, which is much more the
European way. But there are lessons in what
they created. The AFL has a technology
institute. It's encouraging labor
management partnerships. It's making the case that we're
making today about AI especiallyand new technologies.
But it's not going far enough inmy view.
And I'm not critiquing labor, asthey say this employee ownership
(35:56):
strikes me as an enormously powerful and timely mechanism
for the reasons we're exploring today.
First, Chris is right, There's the innovation case for it.
Workers are far more worried about losing their jobs or
having work downgraded and losing wages or losing hours
than they are, by the way, aboutprivacy and surveillance and the
(36:18):
other things that have gotten way more attention in the AI
space, for example. Those are important concerns
too, obviously. But workers are far more
concerned about their core livelihoods and their ability to
survive these coming transitions.
They feel like their employers are not talking to them, they
feel that it's sort of going to be rolled out in a stealthy way
and they're suddenly going to find themselves without
opportunity. And they're very afraid of that.
(36:39):
In that context, engaging workervoice to improve deployment,
informed by the lessons of the world's leading manufacturers.
And the Japanese were much quicker to adopt this approach
than we were. The workers councils, the
quality circles, all of that. There's also the local economic
development opportunity in this.I'm thrilled that we have a
(36:59):
panel this afternoon on small business.
That's where a lot of the conversation also lives when you
go regional with this. And finally, the investment
opportunity. I spent a number of years doing
impact investing both in my daysin government and what I call
the prehistory of impact investing.
So government as a de risker, government credit programs of
many kinds. And when I served at the Ford
(37:22):
Foundation and you know, as you look across asset classes with
different sort of levels of riskand return and whatnot, it's not
as though you have that many that can absorb a lot of capital
that have a crystal clear, easy to explain unequivocal social
return, namely the impact on workers lives and the quality of
(37:43):
work along with the financial return, right.
So that positions this, I would say, given the scale it already
has and the quality of the evidence that's getting better
and better with all the researchwe hear about positions in a way
that's really attractive from aninvestment point of view.
And I'm glad that we're going tohave a conversation this
(38:03):
afternoon and sort of look at the frontier of that and where
that can go. Thank you so much for that,
Audrey. I think people are sometimes
surprised by just how exposed home care, health care and all
care work is to technology as well and how much those jobs are
already being transformed, including by AI and generative
AI. And you are daily and weekly in
(38:26):
this in conversation with workers.
Can you tell us a little bit about what it looks like when
workers voices are part of decision making processes around
technology in your sector? Sure.
I'll start with the fact that technology and AI really should
be about supporting workers and the care that they're delivering
(38:49):
to the clients. You're not going to replace home
care workers with robots in the home.
It's just it's not going to happen.
But what should happen is ways in which it can help facilitate
the home care worker delivering the care that the client needs
in their home. And I think for us in our in our
(39:10):
organization, it's really everything centers around the
fact that we need to recruit andretain home care workers for
this job. And the way to do that is
through job quality. So the investments that we make
really are around getting people, getting the workforce to
be involved in the decision making in the cooperative when
(39:34):
we're rolling out training programs, beta testing it with
the home care workforce and getting the feedback from them
about how these programs are working, how they're what what
do they need in order to deliverbetter care in in to their
clients. I think we also are reliant on
(39:59):
the home care workers and the board members to to.
Promote CHCA and to be involved.We do a lot of initiatives
around worker appreciation. We do things that help them feel
connected to the organization and to the work that they're
doing and feel valued and respected.
(40:22):
Thank you so much for that. I know we're we are running out
the clock a little bit, but you all have so many interesting
insights to share. I wanted to go to you, Michael,
to hear a little bit about, there's a chapter 2 to the story
you started out this panel with about how employee ownership has
played a role in the crises thatweb has weathered.
(40:42):
I know it's meant facing some, some challenges.
And I was wondering if you couldtell us about how web has faced
recent turbulence in, in, in itsmanufacturing?
Yeah, life isn't as simple as we'd like it to be with just a
happy ending, right? So this pivot in the
organization, saving the business by making COVID tests,
(41:03):
obviously that was a roller coaster in and of itself.
It did let us bridge the gap from like making no airplanes to
the beginning of an aerospace recovery.
But that recovery isn't full yet.
We're only at about half the rate of production and
commercial aviation that we werein 2020, even though the demand
(41:23):
is there. And we had built this wonderful
business with a lot of promise. You know, imagine a world where
we could walk down to the drugstore this afternoon and
pick up a rapid test and see if we have cancer or if we, you
know, have AIDS or if we have whatever, right?
Those tests are coming. They were all in our pipeline.
(41:44):
We had an amazing pipeline, but we had no business in our
medical manufacturing operation.And after building this
wonderful team and saving employee owned company, we
weren't successful enough in therecovery of the rest of our
business to keep that business open.
And in 2023, we closed the business.
(42:04):
We offered jobs to anyone who would move.
We moved part of the business toanother nearby plant, but
ultimately there were layoffs inthat business.
And I think if I just try to tietogether some of what we've been
talking about, right? The way that played out in an
organization where we had had a real genuine amazing culture of
(42:32):
employee ownership, where peopleworked so closely together in
high performance teams had pulled off such a tremendous,
amazing result. When they all knew what was
happening. They all had helped build this
pipeline. They could see that it was too
far away to come to reality. And the day that I stood up in a
(42:56):
room like this and said that we were going to close the
business, what I asked is over the next few months as we wind
it down and then you have your severance, can we still love
each other, right? Like it wasn't just about the
money. And that's what we did, right.
(43:18):
And I think that that that's what life is too, right?
It isn't always a Field of Dreams.
So anyway, that was that's chapter 2.
Now chapter 3 is we're diversifying the business.
Like we, we have 550 employee owners who are very focused on
not being so dependent on one ortwo market segments.
(43:40):
And like, you know, my corporatedevelopment role exists now and
we're like we've got this reallyfor a different panel create
process for how we're going to diversify the business and not
get in that situation again. And how what?
How does employee ownership fit into that?
Well, so we, we, yeah, we, we pull people out of it.
(44:00):
You know, we have this cool process where we pull people out
of their jobs for a 90 day market development Sprint.
And you know, and we have a nicelittle structured process and we
say, hey, go out into the world and learn everything you can.
Talk to everybody at every pointin the supply chain in this
market, figure out what the needs are.
(44:20):
How might a company like web fitthose needs and come back with a
little mini business case. We've done seven of those in the
last year. Three of them are in
implementation. One of them is generating
revenue. Several of them, you know, I
mean, they're the kinds of things that will, we're finding
(44:41):
things that are, will be, you know, twenty, 3040% of the size
of the whole company in, you know, in the next decade.
So and, and, and the we're sending owners out into the
world, right? Like these are young
entrepreneurs, they own the business, they're having a ball
doing it. They're learning a lot.
So it's very much connected to the idea of a high engagement
(45:04):
culture. Fascinating.
And since we're talking about looking forward, Adria, can you
tell us, being in one of the corners of the economy that's
growing the fastest, what can care workers across the country
learn from looking at CHC as model?
So first I want to follow up because Michael said twice this
piece about it's not all about financial.
(45:26):
And I think that is so importantto under score in home care
because there is no money in home care.
Like we are not going to have home care workers that are
getting dividends, you know, in the 10s of thousands of dollars.
Although we're actually going tobe able to give a dividend this
year, which we haven't been ableto do in a long time.
So I'm really, really excited about that.
(45:48):
Yeah, but it just makes it so much more important to center
the job around the workers and have them feel valued and, and
really the core of the organization.
We're fortunate enough to be working with a researcher and a
primary care Doctor Who is helping us to really identify
(46:11):
what are the main ingredients and the key ingredients of the
cooperative difference. And, you know, the themes that
are emerging, not surprisingly, are things like community
feeling, you know, a culture of respect, being valued,
compensation even when we don't have the ability to, you know,
pay extraordinary amounts. The fact that we are
(46:33):
consistently trying to find waysto increase wages for the
workforce to, you know, have benefits for the workforce.
Those things come, come through in the competitive in the
cooperative, you know, at the difference of what leads to
workers feeling valued so that they can go out and deliver
(46:54):
quality care. The, the, the home care
cooperatives also have things like better retention rates.
So when you look at CHCA and other home care cooperatives,
the conventional agencies have turnover rates that are
somewhere just a little north of80%.
(47:17):
Can you imagine 80% of the workforce being turned over
compared to worker cooperative numbers at like 30%?
You can leave that down there. So if we have 30% turnover when
we're, we have people in the jobstaying in the jobs, right, That
(47:40):
means that we have less of a workforce shortage.
We can bring more people in and retain them longer.
And that has an impact on the client's care as well.
You have the continuity of the worker knowing this person.
And, you know, I'm, I'm thinkingabout the work that this
researcher was doing with us. And one of the quotes that a
(48:00):
home care worker said was, you know, feeling like the
organization has her back, right?
She's like, one of the things that's really important in terms
of feeling like a, a community is that I feel like my
organization has my back. If something happens in the
(48:21):
client's home, they're going to have my back.
And I think that's so important that workers feel like we have
their back and are not standing on their backs, you know?
Absolutely. So both of you just brought up
this point about, you know, it's, it's not just about the,
the money and, and you brought up turnover, Chris, right now
(48:43):
there's obviously a, a lot of talk about efficiency, what
sometimes also talk about what that means for workers.
Can you just reflect a little bit about how employee ownership
fits into the current policy making discourse and where where
you see the cracks work and sortof fit in?
Yeah, I love this question because it lets me talk about
Elon Musk. I, I, I wrote a piece in the
(49:08):
fall about why I thought if President Trump was reelected,
he should not appoint Elon to a government efficiency panel.
I, I was, I was, I was not heated.
And, and the argument I was making is that efficiency is a
is a dangerous word in the current political climate
(49:29):
because it's used to mean more than one thing.
And people play fast and loose with which what which meaning
they're using at any given time.If by efficiency at least let's
talk about the government context first, then we talk
about business. If by that you mean eliminating
fraudulent payments and duplicative, you know,
operations. And of course, no, no sane
(49:51):
person of goodwill disagrees with that.
Everyone's on board with that. But what we often actually mean
by the term is this market fundamentalist idea that the
most efficient thing you can do is get out of the markets way,
let it optimize as it will, and that will be best.
(50:13):
Even Adam Smith didn't believe that.
That is not what he meant by theinvisible hand.
For what it for what it's worth,we have a whole sidebar about
that anytime. But the, the, the, the function
of the market is not to be gotten out of the way of it is
to support and promote human thriving.
And that is a fundamental, just a tremendously important shift
(50:38):
from, again, this economic modeland the philosophy undergirding
that model that we've been pursuing for the last several
decades. And the American public is quite
clearly very, very hungry for that.
So when politicians come out andsay, at long last, like we're
not an economy with a country, we're a country with an economy,
economies should serve us, not us serving market.
(51:02):
That is really important. And efficiency, I think it's
just it, it gets to because everyone agrees with the common
sense meaning of that word. I think it gets deployed in this
other way very effectively. And you see the destruction that
Elon has wrecked our state capacity, for example, as a
(51:22):
result of a misuse of the idea of, in my opinion, of the idea
of efficiency. If you believe that the purpose
of the market is to support human thriving, then you can't
treat workers. You can only treat workers a
certain set of ways and you can't treat them another set of
ways. And one of the implications of
that, again, is that they are Cocreators of value.
(51:46):
And so if the question is like what policy frameworks can
support economic models that affirm that?
Well, employee ownership is quite clearly one of them and is
again, I think a special one because of the, the efficiency
with which it communicates the point that we are all in this
(52:07):
together, that this is a shared endeavor and that you matter
beyond just the again, like the,the, the kind of financialized
unitized, you know, view of, of traditional economics.
Thank you so much for that. Do we have time for an audience
(52:28):
question? Do this is such a rich
conversation, Does that does anyone in the audience have
questions with Yes? I have a question for Audrey.
You had mentioned that as an employee owned cooperative, you
(52:48):
have much lower rates of turnover within your company
which then results in better care for your customers.
Can you also comment on whether or not that has improved your
succession planning and the growth of the company in the
future may be creating a stronger base for the future?
I yeah, I mean, I the, the fact that we have the lower turnover
(53:12):
rates really means that we have,we have a lot of tenure in terms
of our workforce and we have a lot of historical knowledge.
And so when you know, new workers, whether they're coming
into the office or whether they're coming in through the
training program to become, you know, home care workers and
(53:33):
deliver the care we have, you pass that knowledge along.
And so then the next group that is coming in, we're able to hold
on to them because they feel like they're connected and
committed to the organization. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I've,
(53:54):
I've been there since like the beginning.
But even on like my senior leadership team, I mean, we've
got folks who have 2520 years inand then we have the next set
of, you know, JC is one of our managers and JC has like 15
years. And then there's people behind,
(54:14):
you know, the next layer. And we just work to like do
different kinds of trainings andsupport so that we continue to
make sure that folks understand the importance of the qualities
that lead or importance of the investments that lead to people
feeling that that they're valuedand they're connected and stay
(54:37):
in the jobs. Great question.
Do we have time for one more probably go to Christos?
OK, well, thank you so much. That was an amazing
conversation. I feel like this group really
came at this from every different perspective and every
level of experience. So this was this was really
fascinating and I learned a lot.Thank you.
Welcome back. We're going to get started with
this with this next panel, whichis my pleasure to introduce.
This is about the future of the American worker.
I think a lot of us have heard this term probably too many
times over the past decade, right, about the future of work.
And I think that conjures up different images for different
people, right? A lot of people might think
about scary robots and automation.
(00:28):
Some people think about care work.
And I think that's rightfully soas well.
Because from my perspective, a lot of the future of work is
care work. And then increasingly, I think
people are also starting to think about the future of work
and as it relates to onshoring and reshoring of, of
manufacturing. But whatever image it kind of
conjures up from your perspective, I think we're all
(00:49):
here in part because we're worried about the future of work
and and and the future of the American worker in particular in
this context. It's a shared concern.
You know, we've seen decades of what wage stagnation, We've seen
rising inequality of the declineof unionization and workers
bargaining power, the rise of temporary and non stable non
(01:12):
standard labor arrangements and gig work.
There's just been a lot working against working people over the
last few decades. And, you know, just in in recent
years, you know, there's even more 'cause for concern.
And then in the past few months in particular, because we're
starting to debate some of the things I think a lot of us
(01:33):
thought we were in agreement on,right?
There's this renewed debate around child labor, around
whether we need an Occupational Safety and Health
Administration, whether we should be enforcing
discrimination laws in the workplace.
So we're here today to kind of unpack some of those issues and
talk about what employee ownership maybe can help solve
(01:56):
for and maybe what it can't helpsolve for, but kind of
discussing what role employee ownership can play in creating
the future of work, which I think we all want to see, which
is one that's built on shared prosperity and really human
dignity. So it's my pleasure to introduce
this great panel that we have. I'm going to start down there on
(02:18):
the the far right with Chris Griswold, who's the policy
director of the American Compass.
Chris was with us yesterday and is back again pulling double
duty for us. Next to Chris, we have Audrea
Powell, who's president and CEO of Cooperative Home Care
Associates. Audrey's colleague Juan Carlos
was on our employee owner panel yesterday and really knocked it
(02:38):
out of the park, so we're glad to have him there too.
Next to Adria, we have Zab de Souza Briggs.
He is senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.
And next to Zab we have Michael Corey, who is Vice President of
Corporate Development at Web Industries.
At the end of the today's panel,we're going to invite up
(02:58):
Christos Macredas. Christos is a Associate Press
professor at Arizona State University, amongst many hats
that he wears, and he'll providesome closing reflections.
But guiding today's conversation, we're so grateful
and privileged to have Emma Goldberg from The New York
Times. She's a business writer at The
Times, where she reports on cultural, societal and economic
(03:21):
change. She looks at the cultural and
economic shifts affecting how welive and work.
She's covered so much during hertime there and has just a wide
breadth of expertise, ranging from things like coverage in
coverage on the workplace, reporting on generational shifts
at work. I think she had a health and
medical beat for a while. She's written a book called Life
on the Line, young doctors coming of age in the pandemic,
(03:44):
and we're just really grateful to have him here to help guide
this conversation. So I'll turn it over to her.
Can you guys hear me? Yes.
OK. Well, this is an amazing group
of panelists, so I'm extremely excited to be here for this
conversation. And I wanted to start out just
by saying, I think in particularin a week like this, when news
(04:07):
about the economy feels so head spinning, it's all the more
important to carve out space forbig picture visioning about
economic change, but also about economic change that amplifies
the voices of workers and takes their experiences into account.
And everyone on this panel is someone who has been at the
forefront of doing that thinkingand doing that work about
(04:30):
building economic models and worker models that support
workers experiences and amplify their voices.
So I think this is going to be areally wonderful conversation.
Audrey, I wanted to start with you because you run at the
largest worker owned cooperativein the country and it is in a
sector that, you know, as Matt was saying, when we think about
(04:52):
what is the future of work, it is care work.
It's one of the fastest growing parts of the economy and one of
the most complex where it comes to workers experiences because
there's so much people are vulnerable to from exploitation
to, you know, low wages. So I wanted you to tell us a
little bit about your work and Iasked you this before, but if
(05:14):
you could just give us a little bit of color on what is being
part of the largest worker ownedCo-op in the country look like
for the day-to-day experience ofworkers?
What does that mean for their job quality?
So thank you, Emma. I'm really pleased and excited
to be here. Good morning, everyone.
So yes, my name is Andrea Powelland I for the last eight years
(05:38):
have been the President and CEO of Cooperative Home Care
Associates. Though I've been connected to
the cooperative for a very long time, my mother was one of the
original founders of the cooperative and so I've been
there pretty much since the beginning.
But Cooperative Home Care Associates is a 40 year old
workforce development training and home care provider based in
(06:02):
New York State. And so we basically train
workers to go in the community and serve people who have
disabilities and have chronic conditions so that they can stay
in those communities. And we do that in like a really
innovative way in terms of investing in the workforce and
investing in the job quality. And I think, you know, Emma, you
(06:25):
talk about the future of care work and it is care work is I
think universal and, and home care and long term care in
particular. I just want to lift up a quote
that Rosalynn Carter said. There are four kinds of people
in this world, those who have been caregivers, those who are
(06:45):
currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who
will need caregivers. So it's, it's a universal
experience that will happen. And it's really important that
we do this right, because we're in a time in our country where
we have people aging at a staggering mind blowing rate.
And at the same time, we don't have people who can care for
(07:07):
them because we have not invested in these jobs.
And we're facing the largest like crisis in terms of
workforce because we have not invested in these jobs.
And so at CHCA, we try to do it a different way.
We look to see how can we get higher wages, make sure that
(07:30):
workers have benefits, invest intraining, have career
advancement opportunities withinthe sector and sort of wrap that
in a culture of ownership by being a worker owned cooperative
and having the workers really centered and on the board and
involved in decision making. And you know, when I think about
(07:54):
it, Emma asked me to talk about a like a story and I want to
bring one of our workers into the room who is a woman who came
from the Dominican Republic. She moved to the US and she was
leaving a situation in which shewas experiencing domestic
violence. She moved to this country with
(08:15):
her two young children, started working first in a factory
because that was the work that she could get.
It was horrible. Obviously she couldn't earn a
lot of money, so all kinds of exploitation, similar to things
that go on in the home care sector.
And then she found our training program and she took our four
(08:36):
week program, was certified as ahome care worker, was prepared
to go into the field and just deliver essential services and
has worked with CHCA for 30 years, has served on the board,
is one of our biggest advocates when we go lobbying about why
these jobs matter and why we need to invest in them.
(09:00):
And she talks about coming to cooperative and being part of
cooperative home care really changed her life and her
children's lives. So.
Yeah, that's wow. It's amazing to hear what it
means for a worker to actually move through that experience and
how that can transform their working conditions.
(09:20):
So if if anyone in this room hasflown on an airplane or taken a
COVID rapid test, you might haveexperienced the products of the
workforce at web. And so we have Michael here to
tell us a little bit about beingpart of this company that has
been in ESOP since 1985, fully since 2000.
(09:40):
But what I want Michael to also talk a little bit about is that
web went through a period of, you know, crisis if, if it's
fair to call it that during the early days of COVID and, and
whether that really impressively.
And so I wanted to hear a littlebit about what was it like when
the pandemic hit web and what did the employee ownership model
(10:02):
mean for how your company was able to weather that challenge?
Yeah. So Web industries, we, we, we're
a manufacturing company. We make products that are made
from flexible materials. And you don't often think of an
airplane as being made of flexible materials unless you
know this. But in fact, the large Twin Isle
(10:22):
planes these days are actually made from very thin and very
narrow tapes of carbon fibers that are embedded in a in an
epoxy resin. And these tapes are unwound
around a big model of a plane, like 80 layers thick and they go
in an oven and get cooked and outcomes a super lightweight,
(10:43):
super strong plane. And this was a is part of the
business that web is in, we're also in.
You won't be tested on that. Baby diapers and garbage bags.
And it turns out medical devicesthey're also made from little
strips like a diabetes test strip is a limited of many
layers and so on. So in the tooth the early 2000s
(11:05):
through about 2020, our businesswas growing very rapidly as
Boeing and Airbus adopted this technology for their largest
twin Isle aircraft. And that was wonderful for web,
certainly and for our employee owners until, you know, March of
2020 and shutdowns and people stop traveling and everybody
(11:26):
thinks that's going to be a couple of months.
And then is that lingers. All of a sudden, not only are
the airlines in crisis, but they're not buying airplanes.
And our business dropped in thatlargest part of our company by
about 90%. And that's obviously something
that's any company would find challenging.
(11:48):
We were really lucky that our medical device business was in,
We were the only contract manufacturing company in the
United States making what we used to call lateral flow
immunoassays. But we now all know of as like a
rapid test, right? And Becton Dickinson came to us
(12:08):
and said, would you make all ourCOVID tests for North America?
And we were really excited aboutthat.
And we had to pivot. We're in eight locations around
the world. And this was a operation that we
had in Massachusetts that had 50employees.
And from the time we got that inquiry in April to getting
(12:29):
qualified by the FDA in June, starting production in July, we
began pivoting and ramping our medical device business as we
were ramping down our aerospace business, our global aerospace
business. That plant went from 50 to 650
people over the course of six months.
We started shipping in July. We were shipping a million tests
(12:53):
a week in November and 2 milliontests a week in February.
So it was this extraordinary transformation, our German
employees, so our international employees, we can't be in the
ESOP, but we create plans that mirror the ESOP that include our
international employees and our German employee owners during
(13:14):
COVID pre vaccine, got on airplanes, moved to hotels in
Massachusetts away from their families during this crazy
medical global crisis and ran our third shift making tests.
Our corporate office employees would work in Marlboro right
(13:35):
down the street from this plant during the day and do their
accounting and finance and legalwork and whatever, and then
would come and work at night andpack COVID tests.
Family members of our employees would show up and pack like, you
know, I know I'm an expert and Iwas stationed 5 in the kidding
(13:57):
life and in station 5, my job was to take a bunch of swabs and
put them in the kit, right? Like just over and over and over
again all night long. I was very good.
That was the only station that Iwas allowed to do.
But you know, the put me on another station.
It wasn't a good, it wasn't a good outcome, but the, you know,
this is, this is what like when it's your business, when your
(14:21):
company is at stake, when, when your company won't be there if
you don't do this, this is what happens, right?
So our business was saved in this crisis by the fact that we
had a great employee ownership culture.
Right. It's a a lot easier to ask
someone to fly across the world and pivot their what they're
(14:42):
doing when they're an employee owner it sounds like.
Yeah, It wasn't just to make youknow, Mr. Webb.
There was no Mr. Webb, but it wasn't just to make Mr. Webb.
We're all Mr. Webb. We're all Mr. Webb.
Exactly right. It was, it was.
It was for everyone's benefit. That's really interesting.
Thank you. Zab.
You have written about a really incredible range of aspects of
(15:03):
how the economy is transforming,including generative AI and the
30% or so of jobs that it could transform, gig work, the minimum
wage, so many different economictopics.
Can you tell us a little bit about your recent research and
how employee ownership fits intothe work you've been doing on
(15:24):
job quality? Sure.
Emma, thanks for the question and thanks to Aspen and and
Rutgers for having me. You know, a couple of things
stand out for me, and I'll just weave in a little bit of where
the research is pointing, as yousaid #1 the movement for job
quality. Thank you to my friends at Aspen
for being such an important partof that, the good job champions
(15:46):
and so on. I'm going to put it this way,
The movement to improve the quality of work, not just
maximize the number of jobs in our economy has been quietly
winning. And the quietly part is actually
been a positive in many ways because it's not hyper partisan
chum. And may it not become that,
please. But as one example of this, the
(16:09):
minimum wage movement has been winning, including in the Deep
South latest election. You may remember Missouri also
up in Alaska prior election, Florida by a significantly
greater margin than President Trump won in that state.
I could give you other examples that tells us something.
A very, very broad base of voters and taxpayers is
(16:31):
literally voting for job quality, right?
In important ways. At the same time, major labor
reform in this country of the kind advocates have sought for a
long time is not on the horizon for the foreseeable, at least
not at the national level. States are a different story,
and they have lots of Labor muscle and labor power and lots
of power that to affect change. The other thing that's going on
(16:53):
that we're doing a lot of work on, as we mentioned a few times
so far this morning, is industrial strategy, industrial
policy. We know that the big drivers are
not sorry for all of us who've been promoting a different kind
of paradigm for the economy. They're not sort of it's time to
rewrite the rules because it's just, and it's about human
dignity. The drivers are national
(17:15):
security number one, and national competitiveness #2 and
in particular, the foot race with China, right?
These are the things that drove the Chips and Science Act over
the line, for example, on a strongly bipartisan basis, and
other things as well. And in that context, what I
would highlight is the the bets on the future, if you will, are
(17:37):
amazing. And they are incredibly
important at the regional level,including in regions that need
to revitalize. They've been looking for their
next economic engine for a long time, Central, Upstate New York,
the Syracuse area, and many others I could name for you
outside Columbus, Cleveland. But this push to promote
(17:58):
excellence in industry and quoteUN quote, own advanced
industries and sort of win the future economic nationalism, if
you will, it is putting a brightspotlight on all kinds of
unfinished business. I mean, our workforce
development system is not what it should be.
We should not be in the 21st century using phrases like train
and pray. That's gone from being a joke to
being a national disgrace. We just do not perform at a
(18:22):
level that we should. We're way behind the other
advanced economies and doing that.
So, you know, these big bats, the strategy is putting a bright
light on that and the need and opportunity to change that.
And my advice to regions across the country is don't wait for
the federal government to come and save you.
And I'm not saying that about this current political moment.
I'm saying that's been true for quite a while.
You need to show what it looks like to lead.
(18:43):
And if anything, the federal government will follow you and
you can show what you need in the way of enabling support.
I'll be very brief about generative AII know we'll get a
chance to get a bit deeper into it, but we looked at 1000
occupations of the American economy, Everything you can
think of, screenwriter, plumber,care worker, neurologist,
architect, finance professional,the most exposed to AI
(19:07):
disruption are the least unionized.
That will not surprise you. So mostly white collar jobs,
right? Who've been spared a lot of the
prior waves of automation or at least spared the worst effects
of the most serious disruptions.The public sector is an
important exception. It's more highly unionized if
you ask me to bet. I would say healthcare and
(19:28):
public education are probably the two industries or the two
sectors with the most promise right now to show us what good
looks like in the deployment of AI to make work better, to
minimize disruptions and harms and to create value for
customers, for the economy and ensure good jobs in a very
(19:49):
different kind of future. But it won't just happen.
We have to create that future and we're moving too slowly.
And I'd say that the country as a whole, this is true of regions
as well. It's true of organizations as
well, or by and large not AI ready.
And they're underestimating how rapidly this technology is
(20:09):
evolving and just how far it's disruptive effects will go.
And I'll land on that bright thought.
Thank you so much for for that very cheery thought, Chris.
I am also really excited that wehave you on this panel.
I you've done such fascinating research on worker voices.
(20:29):
You had a great paper a few years ago on declining trust in
institutions across the board, and particularly what that means
for the workplace and how we canhelp workers feel a sense of
agency and voice in their jobs and in their work.
I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what
what launched that research. And then also right now, in this
(20:51):
moment of economic flux, what you're seeing as some of the
possibilities emerging of changes that can be made to
boost workers voices and to giveworkers more of a sense of
agency in their jobs. Yeah.
Thank you so much. I guess for me, the starting
(21:12):
premise of this conversation is the demonstrable fact that the
American worker feels disenfranchised.
And any of you all that have worked with me, you know, that's
my hobby horse. I'm sorry to keep, you know,
beating that drum, but it's true.
And it's important to start there, I think just with the the
fundamental fact that American workers feel voiceless.
(21:34):
And if you ask them if they feelthat way, they will tell you
they do. There is a a measurable what
Thomas coaching at MIT calls just voice gap between the voice
workers say they want at work and the voice they understand
themselves to actually have at work.
And it's about, you know, wages and benefits primarily, but not
just about that. It's about across a whole range
(21:56):
of issues where workers wish they had more agency and and
voice in the workplace on how they're how they're treated,
what their employers value system and is and how they
express it on the adoption of new technology, which I'm sure
we'll get into. Across this whole range, there's
this massive voice gap. And that has to your big, really
(22:19):
big picture question that has enormous political consequences.
And I think is one of the drivers of the, the populisms of
the left and right that are ascendant and honestly ascendant
for good reason, because people are, are, are desperate to, to
find a new Ave. into, you know, enfranchisement.
(22:42):
I think that's right. And so the, the, the, the
voicelessness that I'm describing, in my view, is a
function of the economic model that we've been pursuing in this
country for at least several decades of, I mean, call it
neoliberalism, call it free market fundamentalism, call it
what you want. But this obsession with market
(23:04):
efficiency, this obsession with the idea that allowing the
market to optimize will, will produce what is best for society
and for the people in it. That's what we've been doing.
And it hasn't worked well, in myopinion, for, for working people
and all of us. I think it's true for all of
(23:25):
anyone who has a job is fully aware of like what economic
model they're participating in and what that model has to say
about who you are. And then this model, if you're a
working person, the message you are receiving and being told
loud and very clearly is that you are a widget, You are a unit
of production. You're a factor input of
(23:47):
production to be economized and subject to efficiency measures
and laid off and downsized and off, outsourced and offshored
where possible as opposed to being like a Co creator of
economic value, which is what workers actually are along with
management along with capital. So that's the message we're
(24:10):
sending. It has political consequences,
also has economic consequences. Just a bad way to do economics
in my opinion, because workers really do have something
important to say. You see that in innovation and
in the in the context of just the last week and debates about
global trade and the right and wrong ways to try and
reindustrialize the country. I mean, one of the points that's
(24:31):
being made rightly by people on both sides of the aisle is that
trying to design things here andmake them elsewhere doesn't work
because you lose, you lose that innovative capacity over time,
innovation. And I appreciate your point.
Station 5, right? So much insight happens on the
floor, on the factory floor. That's, that's, that's where so
much of the seat of our industrial Commons, of our
(24:53):
shared industrial knowledge comes from.
And so that's, that's a broken model.
Workers have something to contribute.
So what does that all mean? It, it means that I think the,
the, the most promising political leaders at the moment
are those who are trying to offer new models of, of giving
workers voice and say in the workplace.
(25:16):
And we can spend all day kind oftalking about the whole menu of
things. They're out there.
Obviously trade is one of them. Labor policy is quite obviously
one of them. I maybe have a little, a little
more hope than you at the national level.
I won't, I won't say it's likely, but I do think there are
seeds of hope. There are multiple reasons for
the decline of organized labor. Part of it is a legal regime
(25:41):
that's hostile to it. You see Senator Josh Hawley and
the Teamsters union working now on a labor framework to punish
employers who abuse our current laborers.
Never have seen that kind of alliance from a leading
Republican and a leading labor union in decades.
It's, I think it's very heartening.
And there and he's bringing somefellow Republicans along with
them. I think on the left, you see
(26:03):
openness to maybe depoliticizingunions to open, you know, their
their appeal to a wider, wider, you know, scope of potential
members. So there's a lot going going on.
And I think employee ownership needs to be part of the
conversation because it's such an elegant way of communicating
(26:25):
and in fact making true the ideathat we are in this together and
that this is a shared enterpriseand that you are not just a
factor of production. You are a Co creator of value
and this is in fact your enterprise.
And I just part of my hope in this moment is that employee
ownership kind of takes its rightful place alongside some of
(26:48):
these bigger political conversations as part of the
solution. I want to stay with you for a
minute because that issue of worker voice is so critical.
I speak with a lot of workers about their feelings on the
rollout of AI and their companies.
And just what I hear across so many industries is fear and also
a sense of voicelessness of, youknow, the AI is coming in, being
(27:12):
thrown into the workplace without a lot of conversation
with workers about how they wantto see it implemented into their
jobs and how they want to be trained to use it.
And so I wondered if you could stay on that topic for a little
bit. What does amplifying worker
voice and giving workers a senseof agency specifically look like
where it comes to roll out an implementation of new
(27:34):
technologies? And also, how do you see
employee ownership fitting into that conversation?
Yeah. Well, I think it's, I think it's
a bunch of things, but let's focus in on the the broad kind
of Labor movement question. I think we just, we need a more
robust labor movement in the country that will help.
But I think and the the longshoremen dispute is a really
(27:54):
interesting like case study on this, where the longshoremen had
enough power to, you know, disrupt, potentially disrupt
our, you know, import system to try and protect their jobs and
resist the potential automation of those jobs.
(28:15):
That is good for those workers. I'm glad they won.
But it is also indicative of this, of the problem that
emerges when workers and technology are perceived to be
in conflict with each other. Because the other side of that
story is that we really do need to, like, embrace advanced
manufacturing. When you're talking about
reindustrialization, we're not talking about like.
(28:37):
The the the. Jobs of times gone by, We're
talking about leading industrial, you know, you know,
processes. That's what we should be doing.
And one of the consequences of of automating and embracing
productivity enhancing technology is that you might
need fewer people in that given factory.
And that's not a bad thing on the national economic scale.
(29:00):
That's what we should be doing. So you have this tension and we
talked a little bit about this yesterday, so I apologize for
for repeating the point. But you have this tension
between workers who rightly wantto resist being replaced and an
economic imperative that we embrace the best manufacturing
processes we can. And one of the ways we might be
able to square the circle on that is just not to accept that
(29:24):
dichotomy of workers as a an input factor in competition with
other input. Factors.
Could I just jump in and say I know employee owners?
I could name employee owners wholove robots because robots will
work all night and they don't take any profit sharing.
Yes, no. And, and honestly, I'd defer to
(29:46):
you and your expertise on this, but the, the research that I've
seen suggests exactly that, thatif employees have a stake and if
employees relate to the enterprise in a different way,
they're not only OK, but enthusiastic about some of this
technology. And it doesn't have to lead to
(30:09):
layoffs. It can lead to just enjoying the
fruits of more productivity. We can do more stuff now or
maybe we get to like slightly reduce the workload and spend
time with families in a way thatincreases employee satisfaction
and makes them more loyal to the, to the business.
I mean, like there's the set of assumptions that we bring into
(30:29):
how this has to work. I don't think it's not the only
option set available. And so I really appreciate the
point. I see you nodding Michael.
Is there anything you can share from your first hand experience
of seeing how employee ownershipaffects the roll out and
implementation of new technologies and particularly
worker voice in that process? Yeah.
(30:51):
So there are a whole bunch of connections here, of course,
right. So I love this.
We've had a lot of conversation over the last two days and and
Chris, you're making me think about like the danger of
everything being financialized, right?
That and, and even enthusiastic supporters of employee
(31:15):
ownership. Like I want to get up and talk
about how many millionaires we've created or how much more
our ESOP accounts are than the average 401K and they're great
numbers related to that. And your question, we spend a
lot of time at web structuring employee voice, right?
(31:38):
So the way to get the competitive advantage that to
maximize the competitive advantage that employment
ownership can give you is to create systems and structures
for a high engagement culture. That's been a mantra at web for
decades. So we have all of these very
formal programs, so where everyone, for example, is
(31:59):
involved in an ideas team every week.
And we count not the financial benefit of the ideas, but how
many ideas we implement. And you can implement an idea in
your department, you can spend money without any approval and
so on. And we've got like four or five
highly structured ways that we create employee voice.
(32:20):
And we find then that people areout adopting technology and
looking for improvements and driving improvements.
But they're not all, not all of these ideas.
And I think this gets to your point.
They're not always the ones we celebrate and they're exciting.
People are finding ways that andthey'll talk about, oh, I see
(32:41):
this idea every day that when I come in and I see it, I know it
saved $25,000 a year. And I feel really proud about
that. But not all the ideas are
financial. They may be safety, they may be
just about the quality of work, right?
We are, we are more than financial creatures.
(33:02):
And one of the wonderful things about employee ownership is that
it like it creates the opportunity to make our
companies more whole more human.So anyway, that's, that's my
thought about that. So we embrace technology and
we're more human right in the process.
Interesting. Zab, could you talk a little bit
(33:24):
about what lessons can be learned from the rise of the gig
economy in thinking about workerexperiences and worker voices in
periods of economic transformation?
Sure. I mean, there's a lot to learn
from efforts by the Workers Lab,by other organizations to engage
with gig workers across a tremendous spectrum, to
(33:46):
understand their lives, their work, their ideas for making
work better. I'm just echoing everyone here
on the panel when I under score that.
I have to add, though, I also see it from the perspective of
job quality as something of a failure example.
So far, many worker advocates chose to approach the gig
(34:07):
platforms, Uber and the other big ones as fundamentally
controlling the classification of workers right as independent
contractors versus employees. This sound familiar, whether you
were touching it directly or youwere following it in your
community or in the news. Major ballot measures in
California and then a counter ballot measure by the other side
(34:29):
and and big expensive political fights over that regulatory
question. It's an important question, But
to some extent the genie was already out of the bottle.
I mean, consumers and small businesses and others really
value gig work of many kinds. And we don't have something like
a gig worker's Bill of Rights, ameaningful one in America.
(34:52):
A couple of states have made some headway.
So, you know, gig work in our inour recent past and in our
present is also a cautionary tale about how to approach the
issue of job quality. And by and large, it did not
engage with what everyone has said here on the panel so far.
Number one, organized labour does have a role to play.
(35:13):
And I don't mean to shortchange it.
IA 1000% agree with Chris. We have the screenwriters and
they're amazing example a littleover a year ago negotiating a
landmark deal that includes AI and I love it and we wrote it
up. I also have to say those are
unusual workers. They have access to a union.
They negotiated with all the major studios at one time.
(35:34):
Almost no worker in America is in that sort of position,
so-called sectoral bargaining, right, which is much more the
European way. But there are lessons in what
they created. The AFL has a technology
institute. It's encouraging labor
management partnerships. It's making the case that we're
making today about AI especiallyand new technologies.
But it's not going far enough inmy view.
And I'm not critiquing labor, asthey say this employee ownership
(35:56):
strikes me as an enormously powerful and timely mechanism
for the reasons we're exploring today.
First, Chris is right, There's the innovation case for it.
Workers are far more worried about losing their jobs or
having work downgraded and losing wages or losing hours
than they are, by the way, aboutprivacy and surveillance and the
(36:18):
other things that have gotten way more attention in the AI
space, for example. Those are important concerns
too, obviously. But workers are far more
concerned about their core livelihoods and their ability to
survive these coming transitions.
They feel like their employers are not talking to them, they
feel that it's sort of going to be rolled out in a stealthy way
and they're suddenly going to find themselves without
opportunity. And they're very afraid of that.
(36:39):
In that context, engaging workervoice to improve deployment,
informed by the lessons of the world's leading manufacturers.
And the Japanese were much quicker to adopt this approach
than we were. The workers councils, the
quality circles, all of that. There's also the local economic
development opportunity in this.I'm thrilled that we have a
(36:59):
panel this afternoon on small business.
That's where a lot of the conversation also lives when you
go regional with this. And finally, the investment
opportunity. I spent a number of years doing
impact investing both in my daysin government and what I call
the prehistory of impact investing.
So government as a de risker, government credit programs of
many kinds. And when I served at the Ford
(37:22):
Foundation and you know, as you look across asset classes with
different sort of levels of riskand return and whatnot, it's not
as though you have that many that can absorb a lot of capital
that have a crystal clear, easy to explain unequivocal social
return, namely the impact on workers lives and the quality of
(37:43):
work along with the financial return, right.
So that positions this, I would say, given the scale it already
has and the quality of the evidence that's getting better
and better with all the researchwe hear about positions in a way
that's really attractive from aninvestment point of view.
And I'm glad that we're going tohave a conversation this
(38:03):
afternoon and sort of look at the frontier of that and where
that can go. Thank you so much for that,
Audrey. I think people are sometimes
surprised by just how exposed home care, health care and all
care work is to technology as well and how much those jobs are
already being transformed, including by AI and generative
AI. And you are daily and weekly in
(38:26):
this in conversation with workers.
Can you tell us a little bit about what it looks like when
workers voices are part of decision making processes around
technology in your sector? Sure.
I'll start with the fact that technology and AI really should
be about supporting workers and the care that they're delivering
(38:49):
to the clients. You're not going to replace home
care workers with robots in the home.
It's just it's not going to happen.
But what should happen is ways in which it can help facilitate
the home care worker delivering the care that the client needs
in their home. And I think for us in our in our
(39:10):
organization, it's really everything centers around the
fact that we need to recruit andretain home care workers for
this job. And the way to do that is
through job quality. So the investments that we make
really are around getting people, getting the workforce to
be involved in the decision making in the cooperative when
(39:34):
we're rolling out training programs, beta testing it with
the home care workforce and getting the feedback from them
about how these programs are working, how they're what what
do they need in order to deliverbetter care in in to their
clients. I think we also are reliant on
(39:59):
the home care workers and the board members to to.
Promote CHCA and to be involved.We do a lot of initiatives
around worker appreciation. We do things that help them feel
connected to the organization and to the work that they're
doing and feel valued and respected.
(40:22):
Thank you so much for that. I know we're we are running out
the clock a little bit, but you all have so many interesting
insights to share. I wanted to go to you, Michael,
to hear a little bit about, there's a chapter 2 to the story
you started out this panel with about how employee ownership has
played a role in the crises thatweb has weathered.
(40:42):
I know it's meant facing some, some challenges.
And I was wondering if you couldtell us about how web has faced
recent turbulence in, in, in itsmanufacturing?
Yeah, life isn't as simple as we'd like it to be with just a
happy ending, right? So this pivot in the
organization, saving the business by making COVID tests,
(41:03):
obviously that was a roller coaster in and of itself.
It did let us bridge the gap from like making no airplanes to
the beginning of an aerospace recovery.
But that recovery isn't full yet.
We're only at about half the rate of production and
commercial aviation that we werein 2020, even though the demand
(41:23):
is there. And we had built this wonderful
business with a lot of promise. You know, imagine a world where
we could walk down to the drugstore this afternoon and
pick up a rapid test and see if we have cancer or if we, you
know, have AIDS or if we have whatever, right?
Those tests are coming. They were all in our pipeline.
(41:44):
We had an amazing pipeline, but we had no business in our
medical manufacturing operation.And after building this
wonderful team and saving employee owned company, we
weren't successful enough in therecovery of the rest of our
business to keep that business open.
And in 2023, we closed the business.
(42:04):
We offered jobs to anyone who would move.
We moved part of the business toanother nearby plant, but
ultimately there were layoffs inthat business.
And I think if I just try to tietogether some of what we've been
talking about, right? The way that played out in an
organization where we had had a real genuine amazing culture of
(42:32):
employee ownership, where peopleworked so closely together in
high performance teams had pulled off such a tremendous,
amazing result. When they all knew what was
happening. They all had helped build this
pipeline. They could see that it was too
far away to come to reality. And the day that I stood up in a
(42:56):
room like this and said that we were going to close the
business, what I asked is over the next few months as we wind
it down and then you have your severance, can we still love
each other, right? Like it wasn't just about the
money. And that's what we did, right.
(43:18):
And I think that that that's what life is too, right?
It isn't always a Field of Dreams.
So anyway, that was that's chapter 2.
Now chapter 3 is we're diversifying the business.
Like we, we have 550 employee owners who are very focused on
not being so dependent on one ortwo market segments.
(43:40):
And like, you know, my corporatedevelopment role exists now and
we're like we've got this reallyfor a different panel create
process for how we're going to diversify the business and not
get in that situation again. And how what?
How does employee ownership fit into that?
Well, so we, we, yeah, we, we pull people out of it.
(44:00):
You know, we have this cool process where we pull people out
of their jobs for a 90 day market development Sprint.
And you know, and we have a nicelittle structured process and we
say, hey, go out into the world and learn everything you can.
Talk to everybody at every pointin the supply chain in this
market, figure out what the needs are.
(44:20):
How might a company like web fitthose needs and come back with a
little mini business case. We've done seven of those in the
last year. Three of them are in
implementation. One of them is generating
revenue. Several of them, you know, I
mean, they're the kinds of things that will, we're finding
(44:41):
things that are, will be, you know, twenty, 3040% of the size
of the whole company in, you know, in the next decade.
So and, and, and the we're sending owners out into the
world, right? Like these are young
entrepreneurs, they own the business, they're having a ball
doing it. They're learning a lot.
So it's very much connected to the idea of a high engagement
(45:04):
culture. Fascinating.
And since we're talking about looking forward, Adria, can you
tell us, being in one of the corners of the economy that's
growing the fastest, what can care workers across the country
learn from looking at CHC as model?
So first I want to follow up because Michael said twice this
piece about it's not all about financial.
(45:26):
And I think that is so importantto under score in home care
because there is no money in home care.
Like we are not going to have home care workers that are
getting dividends, you know, in the 10s of thousands of dollars.
Although we're actually going tobe able to give a dividend this
year, which we haven't been ableto do in a long time.
So I'm really, really excited about that.
(45:48):
Yeah, but it just makes it so much more important to center
the job around the workers and have them feel valued and, and
really the core of the organization.
We're fortunate enough to be working with a researcher and a
primary care Doctor Who is helping us to really identify
(46:11):
what are the main ingredients and the key ingredients of the
cooperative difference. And, you know, the themes that
are emerging, not surprisingly, are things like community
feeling, you know, a culture of respect, being valued,
compensation even when we don't have the ability to, you know,
pay extraordinary amounts. The fact that we are
(46:33):
consistently trying to find waysto increase wages for the
workforce to, you know, have benefits for the workforce.
Those things come, come through in the competitive in the
cooperative, you know, at the difference of what leads to
workers feeling valued so that they can go out and deliver
(46:54):
quality care. The, the, the home care
cooperatives also have things like better retention rates.
So when you look at CHCA and other home care cooperatives,
the conventional agencies have turnover rates that are
somewhere just a little north of80%.
(47:17):
Can you imagine 80% of the workforce being turned over
compared to worker cooperative numbers at like 30%?
You can leave that down there. So if we have 30% turnover when
we're, we have people in the jobstaying in the jobs, right, That
(47:40):
means that we have less of a workforce shortage.
We can bring more people in and retain them longer.
And that has an impact on the client's care as well.
You have the continuity of the worker knowing this person.
And, you know, I'm, I'm thinkingabout the work that this
researcher was doing with us. And one of the quotes that a
(48:00):
home care worker said was, you know, feeling like the
organization has her back, right?
She's like, one of the things that's really important in terms
of feeling like a, a community is that I feel like my
organization has my back. If something happens in the
(48:21):
client's home, they're going to have my back.
And I think that's so important that workers feel like we have
their back and are not standing on their backs, you know?
Absolutely. So both of you just brought up
this point about, you know, it's, it's not just about the,
the money and, and you brought up turnover, Chris, right now
(48:43):
there's obviously a, a lot of talk about efficiency, what
sometimes also talk about what that means for workers.
Can you just reflect a little bit about how employee ownership
fits into the current policy making discourse and where where
you see the cracks work and sortof fit in?
Yeah, I love this question because it lets me talk about
Elon Musk. I, I, I wrote a piece in the
(49:08):
fall about why I thought if President Trump was reelected,
he should not appoint Elon to a government efficiency panel.
I, I was, I was, I was not heated.
And, and the argument I was making is that efficiency is a
is a dangerous word in the current political climate
(49:29):
because it's used to mean more than one thing.
And people play fast and loose with which what which meaning
they're using at any given time.If by efficiency at least let's
talk about the government context first, then we talk
about business. If by that you mean eliminating
fraudulent payments and duplicative, you know,
operations. And of course, no, no sane
(49:51):
person of goodwill disagrees with that.
Everyone's on board with that. But what we often actually mean
by the term is this market fundamentalist idea that the
most efficient thing you can do is get out of the markets way,
let it optimize as it will, and that will be best.
(50:13):
Even Adam Smith didn't believe that.
That is not what he meant by theinvisible hand.
For what it for what it's worth,we have a whole sidebar about
that anytime. But the, the, the, the function
of the market is not to be gotten out of the way of it is
to support and promote human thriving.
And that is a fundamental, just a tremendously important shift
(50:38):
from, again, this economic modeland the philosophy undergirding
that model that we've been pursuing for the last several
decades. And the American public is quite
clearly very, very hungry for that.
So when politicians come out andsay, at long last, like we're
not an economy with a country, we're a country with an economy,
economies should serve us, not us serving market.
(51:02):
That is really important. And efficiency, I think it's
just it, it gets to because everyone agrees with the common
sense meaning of that word. I think it gets deployed in this
other way very effectively. And you see the destruction that
Elon has wrecked our state capacity, for example, as a
(51:22):
result of a misuse of the idea of, in my opinion, of the idea
of efficiency. If you believe that the purpose
of the market is to support human thriving, then you can't
treat workers. You can only treat workers a
certain set of ways and you can't treat them another set of
ways. And one of the implications of
that, again, is that they are Cocreators of value.
(51:46):
And so if the question is like what policy frameworks can
support economic models that affirm that?
Well, employee ownership is quite clearly one of them and is
again, I think a special one because of the, the efficiency
with which it communicates the point that we are all in this
(52:07):
together, that this is a shared endeavor and that you matter
beyond just the again, like the,the, the kind of financialized
unitized, you know, view of, of traditional economics.
Thank you so much for that. Do we have time for an audience
(52:28):
question? Do this is such a rich
conversation, Does that does anyone in the audience have
questions with Yes? I have a question for Audrey.
You had mentioned that as an employee owned cooperative, you
(52:48):
have much lower rates of turnover within your company
which then results in better care for your customers.
Can you also comment on whether or not that has improved your
succession planning and the growth of the company in the
future may be creating a stronger base for the future?
I yeah, I mean, I the, the fact that we have the lower turnover
(53:12):
rates really means that we have,we have a lot of tenure in terms
of our workforce and we have a lot of historical knowledge.
And so when you know, new workers, whether they're coming
into the office or whether they're coming in through the
training program to become, you know, home care workers and
(53:33):
deliver the care we have, you pass that knowledge along.
And so then the next group that is coming in, we're able to hold
on to them because they feel like they're connected and
committed to the organization. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I've,
(53:54):
I've been there since like the beginning.
But even on like my senior leadership team, I mean, we've
got folks who have 2520 years inand then we have the next set
of, you know, JC is one of our managers and JC has like 15
years. And then there's people behind,
(54:14):
you know, the next layer. And we just work to like do
different kinds of trainings andsupport so that we continue to
make sure that folks understand the importance of the qualities
that lead or importance of the investments that lead to people
feeling that that they're valuedand they're connected and stay
(54:37):
in the jobs. Great question.
Do we have time for one more probably go to Christos?
OK, well, thank you so much. That was an amazing
conversation. I feel like this group really
came at this from every different perspective and every
level of experience. So this was this was really
fascinating and I learned a lot.Thank you.
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