At the inaugural Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, leading policymakers, practitioners, experts, and the media convened for a robust discussion on how we can grow employee ownership for the shared benefit of American workers and businesses.

In this event, Zeynep Ton, author of “The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone’s Work,” discusses the components of a “good jobs” system, which ensures a living wage, dignity, and opportunities for growth to employees, and helps to foster shared success for both workers and organizations. Ton — a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and president and co-founder of the Good Jobs Institute — explores the benefits of this approach; the disadvantages of low-paying and high-turnover jobs; how labor investments can pay for themselves; the obstacles to creating a good jobs system; and how leaders can break free and overcome these challenges to create good jobs.

In this event, panelist discuss how employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) can improve job quality, reduce wealth inequality, and strengthen our economy. They highlight how the coming “silver tsunami” of retiring business owners represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to grow the number the ESOPs. And they explore the policies, supports, and assistance that businesses — including publicly traded companies — need for ESOP conversion.

In this event, Rick Wartzman, author of “Still Broke: Walmart’s Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism,” considers the experience and history of Walmart moving toward a more conscious capitalism and the recent efforts the company has made to provide higher wages and better benefits and opportunities for its employees. Wartzman raises important questions about how much an individual company can do on its own to improve the quality of jobs and people’s ability to earn a living through their work; the degree to which business imperatives encourage companies to improve jobs and when those incentives conflict with that goal; and whether public sector action, through either labor market regulation or the provision of social supports, needs to be strengthened to ensure that work in today’s economy is contributing to an inclusive economy in which all can thrive.

In this event, panelists discuss the possible impact of guaranteed income on the labor market and especially on the quality of jobs. This bipartisan idea — which has roots in the nation’s founding, the New Deal, the Nixon Administration, and the Civil Rights Movement — is gaining momentum and is now being piloted in more than 100 demonstration sites across the US. How might the security of a guaranteed income provide workers agency, strengthen competition, and raise the floor for all?

The US government is the largest purchaser of goods and services in the world, spending over $600 billion per year. And public procurement exceeds $2.1 trillion annually when state and local governments are included. In this event, panelists consider what it would mean if good jobs principles were embedded in procurement decisions.

As growing numbers of business owners retire, efforts are underway to help them convert their business to employee ownership, including worker cooperatives. Despite this momentum, however, worker cooperatives remain a small part of the US economy, and growing the model can be challenging. In this event, panelists share success stories — at home and abroad — and discuss what we can learn from them, including how to remove barriers to cooperatives’ growth.

It takes intention to design a workplace culture that fully leverages the strengths of employee ownership. In this event, panelists discuss the diverse ways that employee ownership can be realized for a business, including employee stock ownership plans, employee ownership trusts, worker-owned cooperatives, and equity compensation programs. Each holds different advantages and disadvantages, and they can differ in their profit sharing, costs, flexibility, and how workers are involved in decision making.

This piece reflects on the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program’s event “Democratizing Work: The Role, Opportunities, and Challenges of Worker Cooperatives in the US,” which introduced the US movement for worker cooperatives and discussed their potnetial to improve job quality.

With rising inflation, stagnant wages, deeply rooted inequalities, and increasingly concentrated profits, the American economy is broken. More than 37 million Americans live in poverty, and although work is supposed to provide a route to a better life, 53 million people are stuck in jobs that pay low wages. Over the past 50 years, the balance of power between employers and workers has increasingly skewed toward employers. Workers have few opportunities to shape their working conditions and are too often trapped in dangerous, low-paid jobs. The United States faces a job-quality crisis. To reimagine the economy, restore a balance of power between workers and employers, and share prosperity today and for generations to come, we need bold, broad solutions. One solution gaining momentum is guaranteed income. At times understood narrowly as a replacement for income for jobs lost to automation, guaranteed income has a much longer history, with support at the nation’s founding, during the New Deal, throughout the civil rights movement, and more.

This brief explores guaranteed income as a tool for the unique and urgent economic challenges of today; it focuses on guaranteed income’s impacts on work and job quality. How might guaranteed income rebalance power and dismantle the inequalities that plague our current labor market? Can guaranteed income restore, rather than replace, the promise of work in America?