OP-ED: Employee stock ownership plans — a viable option for South Africa? By David Ellerman and Michelle Galloway
Social reform and empowerment strategies usually involve either getting the government to do more good things for people or empowering people to do more good things for themselves. Employee ownership of companies is part of the second strategy and employee stock ownership plans are a potential entry point for such employee ownership.
is for a worker co-op with all company employees as members to serve as an employee stock ownership trust. Employees may not sell shares to others and the employee stock ownership plan buys back the shares which are then redistributed to the remaining employees. This repurchase of a worker’s shares is financed by the continuing collective labour contract payments from the company to the co-op/employee stock ownership plan.
The original idea of employee stock ownership plans came from an eccentric San Francisco lawyer, Louis Kelso, who feared that automation would cause so many people to lose their jobs that society could only be stabilised if people had a capital income in addition to their labour income. Employee stock ownership plans were pushed through the US Congress by Senator Russell Long, son of populist Huey Long, and were supported by legislation and tax breaks.
By contrast, the employee stock ownership plan-leveraged buyout involves a loan to buy a significant amount of ownership at one time, although the employees only gain individual share ownership as the loan is paid off.Anglo American-type sham employee stock ownership plans, the shares are either a gift to a specific set of employees or the shares are supposed to be paid off by dividends, which could only pay off a pittance.
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