Employee Ownership: Structuring Opportunities for Racial Wealth Building and Family Well-Being

Abstract

Policies and practices of the 19th and 20th centuries have had a lasting impact into this century. This is most evident when examining racialized wealth inequality between Black and White families. This study of low-income employee owners examines the following questions: (1) Does employee ownership reduce the racial wealth gap? (2) How does employee ownership reduce the racial wealth gap, and (3) To what effect does employee ownership reduce the racial wealth gap? Findings indicate employee ownership impacts wealth building, advancement opportunities, and family economic security among Black employees and other marginalized populations. Policy and practice implications to advance employee ownership to address racial wealth inequality are highlighted.

Guest editorial: Introduction to the special issue “diversity and employee participation”

“…Some democratic workplaces display remarkable degrees of inclusive equality and diversity, while others reproduce gender inequalities grounded in occupational segregation and gendered power structures (Sobering et al , 2014). Employee participation in ownership has been found to mitigate racial wealth inequality in the USA (Boguslaw and Brice, 2022; Boguslaw and Schur, 2019). The two studies looking at wages in worker cooperatives and conventional firms offer nuanced findings.…”