Webinar: Why Worker Coop Conversions and Ownership Make Sense Now

Overview

Hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank

Recorded Thursday, October 15, 2015

Employee-owned businesses bring tremendous benefits to workers, businesses, and the broader economy. In this webinar, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank, we will review the main features and benefits of worker owned cooperatives, talk about why worker ownership is an important community economic development strategy, and introduce strategies for how traditional businesses can convert to coops.

An important approach for worker coop conversion is supporting retiring business owners to sell the business to their employees. The pending ‘silver tsunami’ of retiring baby boomers makes this issue not only important, but very timely. Baby boomers own 66% of all privately-held businesses with over 20 employees or nearly 4 million companies. Most businesses do not have succession plans which portends the tremendous risk of losing large numbers of these businesses altogether, or having them sold to out-of-state buyers or private equity firms that often relocate jobs or the entire business.

For business owners who want to see the business remain in their communities, who want their employees to be well taken care of when they retire or sell their business, and who want their mission and the core strengths of their business to remain intact, employee ownership is an excellent solution. But often this option is not considered because of the lack of knowledge about the mechanisms to accomplish it. In this webinar, experienced practitioners will explain the process of “converting” a traditional business to a worker coop, some approaches to financing these employee buy-outs, and additional insights from case studies.

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