In this event, Natalie Foster, author of “The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy,” asks us to imagine a new economic framework that casts aside the failures of the trickle-down approach and builds economic security and well-being from the bottom up. Foster, who serves as president and co-founder of the Economic Security Project and as a senior fellow with the Institute’s Future of Work Initiative, describes a bold vision in which housing, health care, higher education, dignified work, family care, and an opportunity to build generational wealth are guaranteed for all by our government.

The 2024 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum brought together members of Congress and their staff, government officials, practitioners, researchers, think tanks, philanthropy, investors, and the leaders of employee-owned companies to learn about and discuss the latest in policy, research, finance, and practice. The theme was “Employee Ownership on the Ground,” which brought innovative employee share ownership initiatives and speakers from around the country to DC to highlight how this bipartisan approach to improving jobs, wealth creation, and business performance is helping create more equitable economies in states, cities, and rural communities.

In this event, panelists discuss the long-standing challenges that farmworkers face and how to build good jobs in this essential sector. In short, better jobs are possible and within reach. Multiple states have led the way in legislating better pay and protections, including the right to organize, a right these essential workers have long been excluded from.

In this event, panelists discuss the state of research into employee ownership trusts (EOTs), the benefits that EOTs provide, how EOTs compare to other forms of employee ownership, the experiences of business owners and workers in trusts, and what the future holds for this model in the US.

In this event, Marjorie Kelly, author of “Wealth Supremacy: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises,” outlines the myths that perpetuate wealth inequality and discusses how the democratization of ownership — including public ownership of vital services, worker-owned businesses, and more — can help us build a non-extractive capitalism and economy based on the public interest.

This piece provides a summary and highlights from “Good Work in the Gig Economy: Building a Sustainable App-based Economy,” an Opportunity in America event EOP hosted in 2023.

This piece provides a summary of The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone’s Work, a book talk EOP hosted with MIT Professor Zeynep Ton in 2023.

For more than two decades, the Vermont Employee Ownership Center (VEOC) has worked to raise awareness and grow employee ownership in the state, including by providing technical and financial assistance to firms looking to transfer ownership to their workers. Vermont is home to several notable employee-owned companies, like Gardener’s Supply Company and King Arthur Flour, boasting one of the highest rates of employee ownership in the country, and the benefits of this shared prosperity are measurable. The state’s 55 employee-owned companies tend to have higher employee retention rates and narrower pay gaps between leadership and workers when compared to conventionally owned companies. And Vermont’s employee-owned companies report that employee ownership has improved their resiliency. The history of employee ownership in Vermont and the work of VEOC provide useful guidance and insight to those seeking to grow employee ownership and develop new state centers.

This playbook, developed by A—B Partners, is part ot the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program’s Shared Success project. Shared Success is working with CDFIs across the US to help them integrate job quality into their financing and advising services. This playbook offers findings and recommendations on how best to communicate the importance of job quality to owners of small- and medium-sized businesses.

This piece is a call to action for workforce development, advocating not just for a job quality framework for the sector’s work with clients but also for the need to increase job quality for practitioners themselves.