Labor and Capital Day
On union membership, ESOPs, and how to make Labor Day acknowledgments a little more productive on average
Given the history of Labor Day, the holiday engenders no shortage of acknowledgments for organized labor unions, particularly as politicians looking toward November seek to drum up both donations and volunteer support. Companies post messages (sometimes platitudes) thanking their employees, and individuals pen thoughts on the evolving nature of work.
■ But what usually goes missing is a broader discussion of how "labor" isn't always an adversary to "capital" within a market economy. There certainly can be confrontation between the two, and sometimes even hostility. But with union membership down to 10% of the US workforce (half of what that rate was in 1983), seeing things through old prisms may no longer be valid.
■ Labor Day would be a very good day to celebrate co-ops, mutual firms, and credit unions alike, not to mention employee-owned companies like ESOPs and solopreneurs. There are lots of ways in which competitive firms can be started and sustained under a free-market framework, and it's short-sighted to pay attention only to the ones that are publicly traded or have an obvious individual "owner".
■ It's good for an economy to have a mix of firm structures, including those that are owned either by member/customers or by the employees themselves. That kind of diversity helps to bring about innovation in the way products and services are developed, to be sure, but perhaps more importantly, they stimulate new developments in areas like operations and management, not to mention finance and R&D. Company governance is undoubtedly different for, say, a large co-op than for a company with a single controlling shareholder.
■ Like technological tools, company structures are neither inherently good nor bad. They depend upon the contexts in which they are put to work, and the character of the people using them. It doesn't have to stop there, but Labor Day should be a jumping-off point to discuss the many ways in which a bigger vision for how ownership can work may pay dividends more broadly.
