Skip to content

Employee Ownership

Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing The Media Industry

April 1, 2025 Damon Orion, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , , , , ,
The arrival of COVID-19 in the United States kicked off an ongoing period of job insecurity within the media industry. In April 2020, the New York Times reported that about 37,000 news company employees had been laid off, furloughed, or had their salaries reduced since March of that year. This instability was still evident in 2024, with media outlets like the Los Angeles Times, the Messenger, and HuffPost undergoing major layoffs and closures. An October 2024 report from the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc. found that 13,279 media jobs had been cut that year. This included 3,520 cuts in the broadcast, digital, and print news industry—the most since 2020. Job insecurity has helped spur the rise of worker-owned journalism cooperatives like Flaming Hydra, Aftermath, Racket, and RANGE. According to the Poynter Institute, “[a]t least six worker-centered [news] outlets launched in 2024 alone.”

Is Private Equity’s Employee Ownership Plan The Real Deal?

July 29, 2022 Marjorie Kelly and Karen Kahn, Impact Alpha. , , ,
In April, 19 private equity firms committed to providing equity shares to employees at some portfolio firms, as part of the new nonprofit Ownership Works initiative, which has a goal of creating $20 billion in wealth for low- and moderate-income workers over the next decade. Seems like good news. But we urge impact investors to be skeptical. The industry that has done the most damage to job quality and worker security over the last two decades claims to be reversing course. And there will be workers who see a nice hit of cash. But ownership? Not really. What these PE firms are doing falls far short of what authentic employee ownership represents, which is the beginning of a truly democratic economy where ordinary people have more control over their lives, more stability in their work, a fair share in the wealth they create, and the chance to own and control the places where they work.

Life After COVID-19: Decommodify Work, Democratize The Workplace

May 22, 2020 By Isabelle Ferreras, Julie Battilana, and Dominique Méda et al., The Wire. , , ,
More than 3,000 researchers from 600 universities around the world have issued an urgent call to heed the lessons of the COVID-19 crisis and rewrite the rules of our economic systems in order to create a more democratic and sustainable society. Their call – made in an op-ed published simultaneously in 33 leading media outlets around the world, including The Wire – in the midst of an unprecedented health, climate, and political crisis, paves a positive path forward following three core principles: democratize (firms), decommodify (work), and remediate (policies) in order to respect planetary boundaries and make life sustainable for all.

May Day Time For Workers To Unite For Power

May 1, 2020 Richard D. Wolff,  Maria Carnemolla, Liz Phillips, Michelle Scott,  Democracy at Work , , ,
This May 1, 2020, let us ask the question, why do we keep a system that requires workers to endlessly struggle against the opponents who own and operate each enterprise with exclusive control of the profits?  For workers to secure reforms requires a strategic next step. They must transition beyond the employer vs. employee system, the one which defines capitalism.  With a worker co-op based economy, workers, who are the majority in every workplace, collectively and democratically become their own employer, and by negotiating amongst themselves, workers will secure more rights than they could ever achieve under capitalism.

Antidotes To Brutal Capitalism? Some Hidden In Plain Sight

February 4, 2019 By Frances Moore Lappé, Smirkingchimp.com  , ,
In our capitalist economy, business enterprise is controlled by capitalists, of course, and structured to bring highest return to shareholders. We’re all supposed to love this set-up because competition among companies gives us ever cooler products and always better deals. Right? But, wait a minute…where is the competition? Over just the last 15 years, mergers have proliferated so quickly that in twelve major industries just two companies now control more than half the market. Economists warn us this level of concentration kills competition — not to mention bringing with it an erosion of wages, as monopoly weakens competition for workers too.

To Preserve African-American Businesses, Durham, NC, Turns To Employee Ownership

January 25, 2019 Fifty Fifty, Medium.com , ,
Durham, North Carolina, once famous for its “Black Wall Street,” is exploring a new strategy to preserve and grow local African-American businesses through employee ownership. One of four cities chosen to participate in the Shared Equity in Economic Development (SEED) fellowship program, sponsored by the National League of Cities and the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), the city is preparing to reach out to African-American business owners — particularly those approaching retirement age — to encourage them to consider employee ownership when planning their succession strategies.

General Motors’ Factories Should Not Be Closed. They Should Be Turned Over to the Workers

December 16, 2018 By Rich Whitney, Counterpunch , , ,
General Motors’ November 26th announcement that it will be eliminating more than 14,000 jobs and closing seven factories worldwide by the end of next year, including four factories in the U.S. and one in Canada is an opportunity. These facilities should be condemned by government authority and turned over to the workers whose labor created the wealth and profits that General Motors’ shareholders enjoy. They could then, with government assistance, be retooled and placed under the ownership and control of their workers, organized into democratic cooperatives for that purpose.