Your recent comments about a John Lewis economy set me thinking. Thinking that you should stop thinking. Of all the harebrained wannabe vote-catchers this takes the biscuit. It will not endear you to voters and it certainly won't win any friends in business. Most importantly it won't fix the economy either.
Despite your ill-researched comment (JLP is a trust, the staff do not own shares), there is evidence that employees with a shareholding in their employer are actually more productive, rather than being 'as good' as you allege. That said, the motivators of those employees are unlikely to be purely financial, and you would need to analyse why they joined the firms and industries that they did alongside what it is that motivates them to over-perform. It is daft and simplistic to assume that giving employees a share in any firm will create anything other than additional paperwork for the employer. Without any other regulation it is also likely that the employer will reduce salaries to allow for any dividend which may be payable.
Overall then this is unworkable and pointless, just an attempt to put a Liberal flag in a corner of the Big Society. That said, it is a laudable aim, in certain circumstances. Capturing the benefit of a more motivated workforce and population is a big theme of the Unofficial Big Society Green Paper, which I am sure, from your comments, you haven't read. You can see more at www.bigsocietygreenpaper.org
In essence there is a way to create the benefits of employee share ownership, widely and deeply across society, without forcing companies to give up shares. Giving people shares, or policies, in a national insurance and pensions fund is one of the proposals in the Green Paper and whilst this fund could own shares in state and social enterprises, it could also hold funds on behalf of, and provide benefits for, the entire population. This would be a widely spread fund reducing the risk to individuals from a corporate insolvency but it would provide the same direct correlation between their efforts and their rewards that you seek from direct share ownership. In that way it would enshrine big society ideals whilst solving the inherent unfairness of the current system.
That has to be a plan worthy of consideration? If so, please let's have a think about it before we announce it.
Best
Gareth
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