I recently read an interesting article from Forbes.com that discusses employee ownership. I was very pleased to see that there is still a national conversation about the benefits of employee ownership.

The article is titled “Raising Minimum Wage? How About Raising Employee Ownership?” and it references Rutgers professor Joseph Blasi’s new book, The Citizen’s Share. The main point of the article is that rather than engaging in protracted fights over whether or not to approve an increase in the minimum wage, our elected politicians should instead consider a different solution for helping employees: “encourage companies to provide greater ownership opportunities or revenue sharing to all their workers.”

As you are likely aware, this was one of the policies that enabled SAIC to succeed so decisively against the competition while providing every employee with valuable company equity. I wholeheartedly agree with the author of this article, and I hope that more companies will give broad-based employee ownership a try.

As he pointed out, companies don’t need to wait for legislators to see the light — they can adopt employee ownership practices now. I firmly believe that if they do, the positive effects will be significant and long lasting.

— Bob