(Washington, DC, February 19, 2004) - The ESOP Association released data today on the views of employees involved in shared capitalism programs in the US that was collected from a series of questions on the just released General Social Survey (GSS), which is the premier survey of social data in America. (The GSS was administered to a national random sample of working adults and is funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.)
The survey found that 81.2% of individuals, who identified themselves as holding company stock, are satisfied or more or less satisfied with their financial situation. Another 78.9% of individuals, who also hold company stock, strongly agree or agree that they have a good chance of improving their standard of living. Over 67% of individuals surveyed who hold company stock, viewed their financial situation as getting better. Overwhelmingly, when asked to identify themselves in terms of social class, 95.5% said working or middle class, which confirms earlier survey results that show Americans are heavily vested in company stock and provides strong proof that employee stock ownership plans are growing.
The survey also found that a strong majority of individuals who own company stock voted in the 2000 election (69%), and when asked about ideology, 40.2% identified themselves as moderate, 37.1% as conservative, and 22.7% as liberal.
“These results show that stock ownership is growing and as it grows, it becomes a major factor in employees’ attitudes towards our economy,” said Association President, J. Michael Keeling. “This data is a wake up call to all candidates for federal office, including the White House, to become more attuned to the growing number of capitalists in America.”
The ESOP Association and its 501(c)(3) affiliate, the Employee Ownership Foundation, provided significant funding for the series of questions on shared capitalism. (Shared capitalism is defined as broad-based employee, current or deferred, stock compensation programs, such as ESOPs, stock purchases, stock options, gainsharing, profit sharing, and bonus programs.) The shared capitalism series of questions were developed and analyzed by well-known employee ownership researchers Dr.’s Joseph Blasi and Douglas Kruse (School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University), and Dr. Richard Freeman (Harvard University) for the Shared Capitalism Project of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Founded in 1978, The ESOP Association represents over 1,300 ESOP companies and 750,000 employee owners who believe that employee ownership will improve American competitiveness, increase productivity through greater employee participation and strengthen our free enterprise economy.