Employee Ownership in Multinationals

[Steve Clem <cclem@kent.edu>]

Former NCEO (National Center for Employee Ownership) staff member Veronica
Manson, in a 1996 article (which may be found in the NCEO website library)
titled "Globalizing Employee Ownership Plans for Multinational
Corporations," found that the tendency toward the globalization of business
has led to a globalization of the work force, the increased mobility of
which has prompted many multinationals to try to maintain uniform
employment policies in order to be fair to all of its employees, regardless
of where they are stationed.   This has apparently applied to employee
ownership plans as well as to more basic benefits and other employment
policies.  

In the U.S., where employee ownership is relatively well-established, ESOPs
and other types of ownership programs have been generally shown to
stabilize the workforce, lower turnover and motivate employees to "act like
owners" when it comes to their own jobs and how they perform them.  For a
multinational to implement such a system in its facilities worldwide,
however, runs into  problems. Ms. Manson, in the article cited above,
listed some features of a new model that may allow the extension of the
benefits of employee ownership to employees working in overseas subsidiaries:

        1.  The international ESOP trust is established in            a low- or
no-tax country;
        2.  The foreign subsidiaries make periodic cash            contributions
to the trust to purchase
            stock of the parent company;
        3.  The shares are then allocated to individual            employee 
accounts;
        4.  The company can set vesting schedules;
        5.  The contributions to the international ESOP            trust can be
determined according to 
            a formula that takes into consideration the            number of
employees in that subsidiary or
            other factors.

Any comments about its workability? Is this something that has potential?
Going a bit further, how can we encourage more multinational corporations
that employee ownership is a good thing for both them and their employees?