"That's capitalism for you!"

"In July of 1994, 55,000 employees at United Airlines assumed majority ownership and substantial governing influence over their company. That one transaction and two and one half years of results that have followed from it seem to have made a difference. While results at United are complex and include recent (January, 1997) contested contract negotiations concerning how to share the company's apparent success, it would be difficult to dispute the overall positive profile of the United experiment to date. Anchored by a national print and television advertising campaign featuring United employees announcing to the traveling public that "we don't just work here," United has aggressively promoted their new circumstances. A March, 1996 Business Week cover story, reported the first measurable consequences of employee ownership. Operating revenue per employee in 1995 had jumped by 10% versus gains of 8% and 7% at American and Delta respectively. United stock, which traded at $88/share at the time of the transaction currently trades at nearly triple that price, taking into account a 4:1 stock split in early 1996. Unlike competing carriers, that have relied heavily on retrenchment to achieve their recent gains, United achieved theirs with an expanding job base. In an era of dramatic downsizing, during which executives at AT&T have been simultaneously propagating an 'end of jobs' economy, United has been hiring -- adding 7,000 new employees since the buy-out.

Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence to support the new found visibility of employee ownership since the arrival of United however has recently materialized via the pen of that noted scourge of utopian thinkers, George Will. In a December 5, 1996 nationally syndicated op-ed column entitled "A new chapter in capitalism", Mr. Will admiringly quotes both union and management leaders at United and ventures the thought that employee ownership of private enterprise could herald "a promising new chapter in the history of capitalism ... [that could] ... diminish some of the forms of social strife that have fueled modern liberalism." "
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