Three employee ownership models for better jobs

Lizah Makombore interviews Deborah Groban Olson about her career as an attorney advocating for workers through labor unions, worker cooperatives, Employee Stock Ownership Plans, and Employee Ownership Trusts. Since 1981, Attorney Deborah Groban Olson has specialized in creating and advising employee-owned companies and cooperatives, and representing a diverse array of clients including sellers, buyers, companies, unions and trusts. Olson is a former chair of the National Center for Employee Ownership. She is Board Chair of the employee-owned Once Again Nut Butter Collective, where she facilitated a 3-year process that created an inclusive and efficient system employee participation in 79 types of decisions. She is a board member of Circle Pines Center, a cooperative education and recreation center. She founded and served from 2007-2019 as Executive Director of the Center for Community Based Enterprise, Inc. which provides legal, business planning, marketing and employee training to help create living wage jobs through employee ownership. She founded the Capital Ownership Group at Kent State University, a global online think-tank and conference center on using employee ownership to counter the negative impacts of globalization. Olson has also published and spoken extensively in both the US and Europe.

Lizah is the 2023 summer intern at VEOC, a PhD student in Sustainable Develops and Ecological Economics (SDPEGs program) at UVM, and a Fellow for both the Gund Institute for the Environment and the Leadership of the Ecozoic.

Chapters: 0:00 introductions 9:53 unions supporting worker ownership 17:49 support systems for worker co-ops 27:58 Employee Ownership Trusts 37:15 profit sharing vs ESOP stock repurchasing 46:00 ownership and participatory culture

/