Bob's Red Mills Natural Food Company Becomes Employee Owned

Another democratically controlled, employee owned company was recently formed as the owner of Bob's Red Mills Natural Foods donated his multimillion dollar company to his employees.

"It's a good old basic Bible lesson," Bob said. "Love of money is the root of all evil. And unfortunately, our entire philosophy today is get all the money you can and whatever way you can. It's caused many corporations to bite off more than they can chew. And it causes people to do a lot of things just for money that they feel in their hearts is not the right thing to do."

As more people wake up to the sins of corporate American in the new millenium, this type of democratic structure is gaining rapidly in popularity. According to the National Cooperative Business Association, there are at least 40,000 cooperatives in the United States alone, and they are growing fast.

And it's little wonder. As compared to traditional public companies, employee owned companies tend to offer greater benefits, better job security, a say in the direction of the company, and even significantly better sales performance.

"I don't think there's anybody worthy to run this company but the people who built it. I have employees with me right now that have been with me for 30 years. They just were committed to staying with me now and they're going to own the company."

Are employee owned and cooperative companies the way of the future? Fortunately, the answer to that question can be influenced by all of us.

See a List of Employee Owned Companies in the United States...

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