O
n March 3 the 98-year-old Capital City Press
in Berlin, Vermont shut its doors for the last time and 200 skilled
workers, members of the Teamster-affiliated Lithographers Local
1, found themselves without jobs. The decision to close down the
facility was made as a cost cutting measure by the print shop’s
parent company—the Maryland-based Sheridan Group. Production
formerly done in the Green Mountains has been transferred to a nonunion
plant in Hanover, Pennsylvania.
Immediately after the announced closing, many Capital City Press
employees came together to see if they could establish a new print
shop that would be better rooted in the community and ultimately
owned by the employees.
Dan Brush, a former Capital City Press worker and current business
manager of Local 1, explained that his union was “60 percent”
down the road to getting the new company off the ground. He and
other members of the committee have been meeting with third parties
trying to raise capital and pursue block grants. They had also been
reaching out to former Capital City Press customers and had already
secured over $1,500,000 in projected sales. If all goes according
to plan, they expect to open, providing employment for 35 people,
in June or July 2006.
If successful, these print workers will join other Vermont companies
such as Carris Reels, Croma Technologies, the Trust Company of Vermont,
and King Arthur Flour as the latest addition to the growing list
of employee-owned Vermont businesses. In total there are 45 worker-owned
companies in Vermont employing an estimated 2,200 people.
According to Don Jamison, director of the Burlington-based Vermont
Employee Ownership Center, worker-owned businesses are on the rise.
He explained that the reasons why people pursue worker ownership
are diverse. Some do it to cash in on tax benefits offered by the
state. In other cases businesses choose to transition towards worker
ownership as an exit strategy for a private owner. Still others
do so because of a sense of moral obligation. Whatever the reason,
supporters contend that employee-owned companies have achieved higher
levels of productivity, are less apt to relocate out of state, and
tend to offer better pay and benefits than comparable jobs in traditional
corporations.
Worker Cooperatives
T
he vast majority of employeeowned busineses
are organized according to one of two dominant models: worker cooperatives
or Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). Worker co-ops represent
just over 20 percent of employeeowned companies in Vermont. However,
these tend to employ far fewer workers then ESOPs. While practiced
on an industrial scale in a number of nations, including Spain,
Italy, and Argentina, in Vermont it is rare that co-ops involve
more than 20 people. For example, the Red House construction co-op
in Burlington and the Langdon Street Café co-op in Montpelier
both employ 15 people. The Brattleboro Tech Collective employs three.
Some worker co-ops, like Red House, were started for practical reasons,
such as the desire to attract and retain highly qualified workers.
Others, such as the Langdon Street Café, were started for more
philosophical reasons, such as the desire to extend town meeting-type
democracy into the workplace.
All worker co-ops have democracy built into their structural model.
This was done by either allowing every worker a voting seat on the
board of directors or through workers electing representatives to
the board from within their own ranks. In a co-op the worker-owners
always constitute the majority of any decision making body.
While the ten or so worker cooperatives in Vermont differ depending
on industry and the people involved, what co-op members hold in
common is the belief that this model helps alleviate workplace alienation,
increases output, and more equitably extends financial rewards throughout
its membership.
David Evans, a member of the Brattleboro Tech Collective, contends,
“We spend the bulk of our days and lives…laboring in a
workplace. So I think the bulk of peoples’ experience is not
having any control or real feelings of independence…. On the
other hand, you don’t get apathetic when you’re a worker-owner.
Once you take the reins of your workplace, it empowers you in other
areas of your life.”
Wes Hamilton, a worker-owner at the Langdon Street Café (established
in 2003), emphatically agrees. “You’d have a hard time
finding anyone who would argue against freedom, equality, and democracy,
but the funny thing is we are completely willing to accept what
amounts to a dictatorship when it comes to work and your job. We
decided on collective ownership because we want to live in a world
where there is no dictatorship…and where there really is democracy
and where everybody affected by a decision has a voice in creating
that decision.”
For Hamilton, who describes himself as an anarchist, worker cooperatives
represent an alternative model of how Vermont’s economy could
be restructured along more equitable and democratic lines. In a
certain sense he understands his co-op as a kind of propaganda of
the deed. “We are a small band of idealistic, politically-minded
20 somethings, but to the extent that we can make this work and
get our philosophy and ideas out…I think it opens up the notion
that workerowned cooperatives can be successful. It opens up the
concept to people who may otherwise never consider it,” Hamilton
explained.
Stock Ownership Plans
T
he majority of workerowners belong to Employee
Stock Owenership Plans (ESOPs) and claim workforces well into the
hundreds. While some are committed to workplace democracy, the only
guaranteed commonality is that employees own some portion of the
business. That portion can vary from 1 percent (Green Mountain Coffee
Roasters) to a slight majority (Carris Reels) to 100 percent (King
Arthur Flour). The way this ownership works is that after a set
amount of time, qualified workers accrue stock that pays dividends
as the value of the company increases. Collective ownership requires
that departing employees sell back the stock. In this way ESOPs
have built in financial rewards for the workers whose labor helps
generate profits.
In general Vermont ESOPs put a heavy emphasis on “the culture
of employee ownership” where employees are made to feel that
their voice matters. They are typically encouraged to maintain an
open dialogue with management, to take a more active role in the
overall running of the company, and are often allotted representation
on the board of directors. The extent of this representation varies.
Gardener’s Supply Company in Burlington, for example, allows
non-management one seat on a seven-member board. The former Capital
City Press workers, on the other hand, plan to give the rank and
file ultimate control over the board, presumably by giving non-management
employees a majority of the seats.
Many
within the ESOP movement report that their work environment translates
into increased productivity, a decrease in absenteeism, and an avoidance
of many of the management-labor frictions common in traditional
corporations.
However, not all are convinced of the workplace altruism that many
ESOP boosters speak of. While Vermont’s labor leaders speak
highly of the worker cooperative model, when it comes to ESOPs they
express varying degrees of apprehension. Vermont Workers’ Center
Director James Haslam points out that the formation of an ESOP,
despite the near universal talk of a culture of ownership, does
not necessarily mean employees will be any more legally empowered
than in traditional companies. Haslam contends, “Unless [companies]
are worker run, and in a democratic way, then it makes sense for
workers to have a voice in their own working conditions. The only
way to have that truly is if you have a union.”
Traven Leyshon, president of the Washington County Central Labor
Council, AFL-CIO, shares Haslam’s misgivings. “Who has
the majority [and therefore control] on the board of directors and
who is the management? Of course management is a technical skill.
It usually does require hiring-in someone who has business expertise
that the workers are not likely to have themselves, but who controls
that person?”
Leyshon explains that his misgivings date back to his experiences
in the 1980s while organizing in the labor movement outside Vermont.
He says that during this period ESOPs were used as a tool to win
concessions from union truckers across the U.S. He states that following
the deregulation of the industry under Ronald Reagan many faltering
freight companies went to their employees and convinced them to
agree to ESOPs in exchange for large cuts in benefits and wages.
He points out that all of these firms went belly up within the first
few years of their existence.
ESOP enthusiast Cindy Turcat, chief operating officer of Gardener’s
Supply Company and president of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center,
admits that it is not accurate to paint all ESOPs with the same
enlightened brush. “Not all people do ESOPS for the right reasons,”
she warns.
Jamison recognizes the past exploitive nature of some ESOPs. “As
with any complex financial arrangement…there is room for abuse….
In the 80s, when there were a lot of businesses going belly up,
unions were sometimes suckered into bad deals for their members
where ESOPs were used as a kind of a last way of ringing out concessions
from employees as the business was going down,” Jamison explained.
However, for him these abuses are primarily a thing of the past.
Again, he states that the recent track record for ESOPs in Vermont
demonstrates that the potential gains far outweigh perceived risks.
Many people currently employed in ESOPs tend to agree. Pat Bates,
an employee-owner of the Gardener’s Supply Company, is a firm
ESOP supporter. She sees employee ownership as a means for workers
to feel more connected with the business, as well as a way for them
to share in the rewards. “It’s [in part] about sharing
the profits. We’re not working our eight hours a day, putting
in our 100 percent so that the few elites can reap the benefits
and profits and put them in their pockets. We all get to share in
it. In the good times we can celebrate and in the difficult times
we come together to find those creative resolutions,” says
Bates.
At Green Mountain Coffee Roasters I talked with a ten-year veteran
of the company. He affirmed that the benefit package and pay provided
by the company is very good (i.e., full healthcare, time off, and
occasional yoga classes) and he is particularly happy with the additional
pay accrued by his stake in the ESOP. However, he also confides
that in his opinion the company employs too many temps.
As
at many ESOPs, temps and part-time workers are not eligible for
ownership or benefits and commonly receive no more then $9 an hour.
The human resources department reports that there are currently
60 part-time workers and 7 temps employed by the company.
One former temp told me his experience at the company was not qualitatively
different than at other non-ESOP factories. He says, “I didn’t
see any signs of anything [at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters] being
any utopian pleasure palace. I saw people just trying to get through
the day with equipment that was malfunctioning and deadlines that
were to be met and demands by management to make more portions for
sale.”
As for the coffee company’s claims of establishing a culture
of ownership, he charged, “They said there was an open door
policy, but saying that there was and actually accepting any feedback
are two different things…. The only feedback that they [management]
wanted to hear was, ‘Yes, I will work harder’.”
While this worker’s experience may or may not be common within
ESOPs, many Vermont workers are still drawn to the model. Dan Brush
and the former Capital City Press employees have chosen to organize
their new business venture as an ESOP. Even so, they intend on borrowing
certain elements of the cooperative model in order to provide meaningful
worker oversight of management.
Brush asserts, “When we get up and running, we will be making
all the decisions. We’ll all be shareholders. We’ll own
a majority of the business. We will sit down and make the decisions.
We’re not going to make the day-to-day decisions [for that
they expect to hire a plant manager], but the big decisions.”
Brush continues, “Since people are all union members and are
used to having those types of meetings and making those type of
decisions, this is something we are very comfortable with doing.”
The print workers also intend on keeping their status as a union
shop. “There are a lot of good shops that are union shops where
there aren’t a lot of problems between the union and management.
I think we would be evolving into one of those shops and I think
we may be growing into a vision as to what the future might be for
parts of the labor movement as our manufacturing base leaves the
country,” concludes Brush.
Whatever the future may hold, it is likely that worker-owned companies
will continue to play a dynamic and increasing role in Vermont’s
economy. What remains to be seen is whether or not this trend is
capable of delivering actual workplace democracy or if it will be
limited to providing financial rewards and a perception of employee
participation. Regardless, in this era of outsourcing and stagnant
wages, employee ownership will likely be embraced as a marked improvement
to the status quo by many a Vermonter. The print workers are just
the start.
David
Van Deusen is a freelance jounalist and writer from Moretown, Vermont.
He is also a member of the National Writers Union, Local 1981.