This Labor Day, give more state workers a stake in companies they help build

I grew up in a little farm community called Gridley. Pretty much everyone went into farming: rice, peaches, prunes, walnuts, stuff like that. My dad wanted all of us to become rice farmers, but I didn't want to be a farmer. So, after high school, I did different things. I worked at a gas station, at a lumber mill, for a window company and a plumber. Then, 32 years ago, I got a job working in the meat department for Holiday Market. For a while, it was just a solid job. I did my 40 hours a week, paid all my bills and eventually started contributing to a 401(k). But then, about a dozen years in, we all got a huge surprise. As the country prepares to celebrate Labor Day, I'm thinking back to a day almost 20 years ago that changed my life. I showed up to work that day, and we were told our company was being sold. The new owners were going to be us, the employees. To be honest, a lot of us were skeptical. We had never heard of an employee stock ownership plan, the retirement plan that was being used to share ownership with us all. Many of us had just started to save real money through our 401(k) and didn't see the point in a separate retirement plan. Boy, were we wrong. The ESOP started slowly, but after a few years, it started gaining traction. It wasn't long before the money in my ESOP account topped my 401(k) savings. That's when it hit me we had been handed an unbelievable gift: security for the future without contributing anything but our hard work. Over nearly 20 years, the value of our shares has skyrocketed by more than 37 times. That's created life-changing wealth. I'm 60 and it's incredible to know I won't have to work forever. I'll be able to retire and enjoy the next stage of my life. I'll have money to help send my son to college, if he chooses to go. And to fulfill a longtime dream of playing a round of golf in all 50 states. Becoming an owner has kept me at Holiday all these years. Sure, it's the wealth I'm building. But it's also the satisfaction that comes with having a voice at work and being part of something that's bigger than yourself. It's personal for me. I look at everybody who works for our company. We're all owners, and we're all in this together — even the folks I've never met. They're helping contribute to my future and their future, and everybody else's future along the way. It's just a different feeling to know your work doesn't just make one person rich but helps build all our futures. It makes us want to come up with ideas to help the company grow. I noticed flat-iron steaks were selling really well out of my counter. It's tender and not very expensive compared to some of the other cuts. So, I took pictures of it and sent it around to all the meat departments and told folks, "This is something you should put in your counter. It's a great cut. And it's going to sell like crazy." Now, a lot of the meat departments are cutting the flat irons and putting them in the counter. They're making good money on it. And, at the end of the day, that helps us all. It fills me with pride to know one of my ideas is helping to make us all a little wealthier. When it comes to employee ownership, I'm now completely bought in. It's turned out to be such a positive force in my life. I wish more Americans could benefit from it. Less than 1 percent of California's private companies are ESOPs, and there are only about 6,500 in the entire country. A new coalition, Expanding ESOPs, has come together to change that and I hope sharing my story helps to build momentum for more companies to adopt employee ownership. On Labor Day, my family is going to cook up some flat irons to celebrate. As we enjoy our meal, I want to be sure to thank Richie Morgan, now our executive chairman, and everyone else that was involved in creating our ESOP at North State Grocery some two decades ago. I'll be thinking of how lucky I was to become an employee-owner. And hoping that in California, and beyond, more workers get stakes in the companies they help build. James Womack manages the meat counter at the Auburn location of Holiday Market, part of North State Grocery, an employee-owned company.