Half OwnersHalf Owners

The two deals, and the “pay twice” problem

Section 2: The economics. Section owner: [name]

[Body text. Lay out the economics plainly: wages, union retirement contributions, and ESOP allocations side by side.]

[Body text continues.]

Thinking like an owner when you aren’t one

Section 3: Culture and ownership thinking. Section owner: Stephen Kasallis

Here’s something I’ve come to believe about work. People rarely stay at a company, or leave it, because of the paycheck alone. They stay or go because of how a place makes them feel about who they are.

So when a company tells its workforce, out loud and in writing, that everyone here is an owner, it isn’t just describing a retirement plan. It’s making a claim about identity. And at Jaynes, that claim lands on two very different groups of people.

Once a year, Jaynes holds its annual ESOP meeting. An outside firm has already valued the company, that number has been divided by the total shares, and a new share price is ready. In the room, it gets revealed. Statements go out showing each owner’s balance, the year’s contribution, and how far the shares moved. By one Jaynes leader’s account, it’s a fun meeting people genuinely look forward to. He added, half joking, that it’ll probably feel very different the year the price goes down.

Now think about who isn’t in that room.

About 62 percent of Jaynes’s workforce is union represented. They’re the carpenters, laborers, equipment operators and cement masons, spread across four unions, who physically build what the company sells. Their retirement comes through collective bargaining, not the ESOP. So the moment the company celebrates ownership most openly is a moment most of its people never see.

None of this is hidden. And as far as we can tell, none of it comes from bad intent. It’s simply how the structure works. But structures have a way of speaking even when nobody’s talking.

Jaynes’s careers page says every employee shares in its financial success. Its stated purpose is to “Build One Another.” Its blog credits employee ownership with better teamwork, mentoring and even safety. “100 percent employee‑owned” is accurate, too. The ESOP holds all of the company’s shares.

But most people hearing that phrase would assume something else: that everyone who works there is an owner. At Jaynes, about 38 percent are. Both readings are true at the same time. And that’s exactly where the lines start to blur.

Boots, gloves and hammers vs. slacks, keyboards and emails.

To see why, you have to look at a project team. Take a typical crew in the company’s concrete division. There’s an estimator, a project manager, a project engineer, a superintendent, a foreman, and then the trades. They work closely, on the same building, toward the same deadline.

But draw a line through that team and something interesting shows up. Foreman and below are generally union. Everyone in the office is in the ESOP. Superintendents sit right on the line, with a choice to keep their union card or give it up and join the ESOP. And the union agreements require that tool work on Jaynes sites be done by union members. So the separation isn’t one‑sided. Both systems help hold it in place.

When we asked whether this creates tension, the answer from inside Jaynes was thoughtful and, I think, honest. There isn’t really a union versus ESOP rub, one leader told us. There’s a field versus office rub, the kind you’d likely find at any contractor no matter how ownership was set up.

I believe him. Anyone who’s worked in construction or manufacturing knows that divide. It was there long before anyone invented the ESOP.

Still, it’s worth sitting with one fact. At Jaynes, the line between field and office and the line between non‑owner and owner fall in almost exactly the same place. When two lines overlap that closely, it gets very hard, maybe impossible, to say which one is doing the work. Is the friction about the job itself, the clothes, the desk versus the dirt? Or does ownership quietly add a little weight to a divide that was already there? Honestly, nobody can know for sure. Not the office, not the field, and not us.

That same leader could recall only two times he’d heard a union employee complain about being left out of the ESOP. One came right after a company meeting about what it means to be an employee owner and how ownership drives the culture. The intent was positive. Leadership simply didn’t realize, until afterward, how that message sounded to the non‑owners sitting in the room.

That small moment might be the whole story in miniature. Nobody set out to exclude anyone. A company proud of something it built shared that pride. And for some of the people listening, the message underneath sounded like this is about them, not you.

Which raises a fair question for any company built this way. If you ask people to “think like owners” but most of them can’t be, what exactly are you asking for? Maybe it’s care, pride and effort, which plenty of union craftworkers bring every day for reasons that have nothing to do with stock. Or maybe, without meaning to, you’re reminding them which side of the line they’re on.

The most human version of this story belongs to one man. He’s a veteran superintendent, now in senior leadership, who has carried a union carpenter’s card for most of his working life. He has the option to give up his union benefits and join the ESOP. The people around him believe that, financially, he should. And still, he hasn’t decided.

Part of it is math. Trading a known, negotiated benefit for one that rises and falls with the company is a real risk. But part of it, by a colleague’s account, is identity. Being a union carpenter isn’t just a benefit plan to him. It’s who he’s been.

That’s what makes ownership culture harder than it looks on a careers page. For a new office hire, joining the ESOP is a perk. For someone like him, it means trading one kind of belonging for another.

So can Jaynes honestly claim an ownership culture when most of its workforce sits outside the plan? I don’t think there’s a clean answer, and I’m not sure there should be. The structure is legal and out in the open. The union side has protections the owners don’t. And from what we heard inside Jaynes, the people there get along better than the numbers might suggest.

But culture isn’t only what a company intends. It’s also what people hear. When the word “owner” means something precise to the accountants and something broader to everyone else, the space in between becomes a place where people quietly decide whether they belong.

Maybe that’s the real lesson here. Not that Jaynes got something wrong, but that the words a company chooses keep working long after the meeting ends.

Two ways to judge the deal

Section 4: The ethical analysis. Section owner: Angela Lucero‑Horton

Here’s something I keep coming back to when thinking about employee ownership. People can work for the same company, contribute to the same goals, and take pride in the same finished product, yet have very different experiences of what it means to belong to that company.

Jaynes Corporation is an example of a company that has both an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and multiple Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs). An ESOP lets employees become partial owners of the company through shares held in a retirement plan. In an ESOP, employees gain an ownership interest, the company benefits from their commitment, and everyone has a reason to succeed because it directly affects their future financial standing. But what happens when some employees own shares and others, particularly union members, don’t?

At Jaynes, office employees participate in the ESOP, while union employees receive retirement benefits through collective bargaining. The company takes pride in its ownership culture. Its non‑union employees may look forward to seeing their share value increase each year. Meanwhile, union employees continue to perform essential work that contributes to the company’s financial success, but they do not participate in that same ownership plan.

Participation in either the ESOP or CBAs can have both pros and cons. Union employees negotiate their benefits through CBAs, while ESOP participants rely on the business performing well. The ethical question is not simply whether everyone receives the same benefit. The question is whether the company fairly recognizes the contributions and interests of both groups.

Shareholder theory offers one way to look at this situation

From this perspective, management’s primary responsibility is to protect and increase company value for its owners. An ESOP may encourage employees to think beyond their individual responsibilities and consider the company’s long‑term success. If ownership improves productivity, retention, and profitability, the plan can benefit the company and its employee‑owners.

From a shareholder perspective, offering different benefit plans to union and non‑union employees may be justified if the arrangements work toward the same business objective. Sometimes decisions that increase shareholder value can have broader negative consequences. If employees view these differences as unfair or feel undervalued, the company can face lower morale, higher turnover, reduced efficiency, and lower work quality. Therefore, decisions that look good in the short term may not be worth it in the long run if they create greater costs for the organization over time.

Stakeholder theory asks a different question

Instead of focusing primarily on the owners, it considers everyone affected by the company’s decisions. Union employees, non‑union employees, management, customers, and the community all have interests in the company’s success. The company depends on the work of people who may never receive an ownership statement or participate in an annual ESOP meeting.

From this perspective, the issue becomes less about whether the company can have different retirement plans and more about how those differences affect its people. Do union employees feel that their work is valued? Does management recognize that employees can be committed to a company’s success without owning its stock? And does the company communicate its ownership culture in a way that includes people who are not ESOP participants?

Union employees may value the CBA negotiated protections and benefits. Some may not want to trade those benefits for an ownership plan whose value may decline if the company performs poorly. Others may feel excluded when leadership celebrates employee ownership and financial gains while overlooking the contributions of workers outside the plan.

This is where fairness becomes more complicated than treating everyone identically. An ethical company does not necessarily have to provide identical retirement arrangements to every employee. However, it should disclose its current financial state, explain its decisions transparently, respect collective bargaining, and avoid using ownership benefits to discourage union membership or weaken employee representation.

Another cultural question is: when management encourages everyone to think like an owner, what does that mean for someone who isn’t an owner and cannot participate in the ESOP? Does telling everyone to think like an owner suggest that some employees belong more than others? Or does it mean taking pride in the quality of the work, supporting coworkers, and actively helping the company succeed?

Where I land

I believe stakeholder theory provides a more complete ethical framework for this situation because it recognizes that a company’s success depends on more than its owners’ financial interests. At the same time, shareholder theory reminds us that financial sustainability matters. A company cannot continue sharing success if it fails to remain successful.

Ultimately, two perspectives can be true at the same time. A company can pursue profitability while treating its workforce with dignity, respecting union representation, and communicating honestly about the differences between ownership and employment.

Perhaps the real question is not whether every employee must be an owner. It is whether every employee can reasonably believe that they are valued employees and that their contribution matters.

An ESOP may create financial ownership for some employees, but building a culture of shared responsibility requires something more. It requires leadership to recognize that ownership isn’t the only reason people care about their work, and that employees without shares can still be essential to the company’s success.

The ethical challenge is to build a company where not everyone has to own a piece of the business to feel that they have a meaningful place in it.

What a fair company would do next

Section 5: Recommendations and conclusion. Section owner: [name]

[Body text. Turn the findings into practices leaders could adopt right away.]

1. Use inclusive language, “team members” alongside “employee‑owners.”
2. Share company results openly with union crews.
3. Give union crews a gainsharing or profit‑sharing bonus.
4. Put ESOP participation on the table at the next bargaining round.
5. Hold regular listening sessions with both groups.

[Closing paragraph.]