A pro-worker experiment in private equity
4/8/202626 min
Live event info and tickets here.
If your company got bought by a private equity firm, how would you feel? Maybe a little nervous? You might find yourself wondering if there will be layoffs.
And you’d be right to worry about that. Research shows that while private equity ownership can boost a company’s productivity, it does generally result in job cuts.
But one private equity executive is trying to do things a different way – giving workers equity, little cuts of ownership in their own companies. To see if doing so can improve outcomes overall.
On today’s show, private equity is not widely beloved for its societal costs – job losses, product degradation, worsening inequality. And this one guy at this one firm can’t solve all of his industry’s ills. But for the past 15 years, he’s been running a large-scale, real-world experiment to see if giving workers ownership can fit into the big bad world of PE. And maybe lead to more … equity.
Recommended Listening/Reading:
What Do Private Equity Firms Actually Do?
The risk of private equity in your 401(k)
Here's what happens when private equity buys homes in your neighborhood (newsletter)
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This episode was hosted by Mary Childs and Wailin Wong. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang with an assist from Marianne McCune, fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, engineered by Cena Loffredo with help from Jimmy Keeley. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
Music: Universal Production Music - "Make Me Want You," "Baby I Surrender," and "Bye Bye Bye"
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMary Childs· Host0:00
This message is brought to you by the Planet Money book tour. Join Planet Money for a night of dry wit, sober discussions of economic policy with intelligent guests, and Q and As that go on just a bit too long- [knocking] I'm so sorry.
Speaker 10:14
Can ... I, I do feel like we're maybe underselling this, like, a bit. Do you mind if I just do a little- By all means. Is that okay?
Mary Childs· Host0:19
Go right ahead.
Speaker 10:20
Okay. Thank you. So the Planet Money book tour really is unlike any other book tour. Each stop is totally designed just for your city. There will be game shows, inter-audience competitions, tests of humanity itself, and we will be joined at various stops by influencers, celebrity chefs, a co-founder of Anthropic, and Planet Money's very own Jack Corbett of TikTok. And absolutely zero questions that are, like, a little this is more of a comment than a question situation. We're gonna, we're gonna ban those. You can get tickets at planetmoneybook.com, and we do hope you'll join us. Thanks.
Wailin Wong· Host0:52
This is Planet Money from NPR.
Mary Childs· Host0:55
Cindy Cordes loved her job. She worked at a company called Capital Safety. It made safety equipment like harnesses people wear washing windows on skyscrapers or working on oil rigs, and her team made the part that attaches to the harnesses.
Cindy Cordes· Guest1:13
I was in the shocks, which the shocks was the part that would tie off from the harness to your point of, say, on a building or a scaffolding or whatever.
Mary Childs· Host1:26
What was your favorite part of the job?
Cindy Cordes· Guest1:27
Sending out quality, um,