Studies on Employee Ownership, Concern About Bailouts

As some of you may remember, the Foundation for Enterprise Development is supporting studies on employee ownership and various employee-ownership topics at a variety of universities. Many of them are case studies on companies that have been successful implementing employee ownership that consider how they did it. Three of eight different programs we are sponsoring to do this are here in San Diego — one with the University of San Diego (USD), one with San Diego State University (SDSU), and one with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). We met on Monday with representatives from the USD program and reviewed their status — it looks like they’re off to a good start. We plan to have a symposium here in San Diego later in the year to get all the participating universities together. Stay tuned for further information. There will be a public panel discussion as part of this symposium.

I can’t help mentioning my concern about the government bailing out the likes of General Motors and Chrysler. I suppose the experts know what they’re doing, but it seems to me the solution is bankruptcy and reorganization rather than continuing to pump taxpayer money in. While reorganization is now occurring at the top of GM, I have no idea what is going on at Chrysler. Good old Ford, I’ll always buy their products.

— Bob