How A Business Accelerator Is Literally Cementing Equity into Cincinnati’s Economy

Benefit corporations provide a way for businesses to make profit without having to slash wages or resort to environmentally destructive practices. Ben & Jerry's, for instance, is one of the world's most popular ice cream brands with an annual sales revenue of $132 million. Its lowest-paid worker makes $16.13 an hour, which is 46 percent above the living wage in home state Vermont, and the company offsets more than 50 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions. More than 40 percent of the board and management are from underrepresented populations, such as women, people of color, lower-income individuals, and people with disabilities.

In a time when U.S. corporate profits are soaring but wages remain stagnant, Ben & Jerry's and hundreds of other companies, including Cooperative Home Care Associates profiled below, are choosing an alternative business model – benefit corporations – driven not just by profits but also by fair working conditions, diverse leadership, and environmentally sustainable practice.

One of the fundamental challenges to growing more "triple bottom line" businesses is the legal requirement to maximize profits that applies to corporations. Anything that takes away from profits, such as higher wages or more sustainable environmental practices, leaves the corporation vulnerable to being sued by its shareholders. This limitation hinders companies from advancing any values beyond profit making.

In response to this limitation, a movement was started to pass legislation allowing for a new type of corporate entity called the benefit corporation. The benefit corporation provides legal protection for businesses that choose to treat their workers well, protect the environment, and invest in their communities, even if it means their annual profits are not as high. As of 2013, 19 states plus the District of Columbia passed benefit corporation legislation, including Delaware, which is home to 50 percent of all publicly traded companies and 64 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

In 2012, Ben & Jerry's took a step beyond being a benefit corporation and became a Certified B Corporation, as conferred by a nonprofit organization called B Lab. There are currently more than 1,000 registered B Corps. A Certified B Corp voluntarily meets higher standards of governance, workforce treatment, environmental impact, and community involvement. Companies must score at least 80 points on a scale of 200 to be eligible for certification.

Certified B Corps are part of a community of socially responsible companies and span a large spectrum of goods and services. In 2012, Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) in the Bronx, New York, became the first home care company to become a Certified B Corp. Their overall B Score, at 154, is nearly twice the median score.

One of the reasons CHCA scores so high in the B Impact Assessment is because it is a worker-owned cooperative with the vast majority of the workers and worker-owners being from the Bronx. In an industry where good-paying jobs are hard to come by, CHCA deliberately chose a different business model, one that prioritizes workers over profits, and has flourished for nearly 30 years. The company has grown from 12 people to now over 2,000 employees, 70 percent of whom are worker-owners.

"When we started, a lot of for-profit home-care companies were established and were seen as a way of making a lot of money in a short time," said Michael Elsas, president of CHCA. "You didn't have to pay workers that much, you didn't have to train them that well, and you could move in and make a killing. And, in that environment we wanted to establish something a little different, more socially responsible."

Treating the workers well was not just a social mission, but it made good business sense. Elsas said, "Many of the people we were seeing were women, particularly women of color. The thought was if we train people longer and really spend time with them, if we prepare them for an entry-level position and get them ready to work and remove those barriers to work, and, if we provided a lot of support for those workers both before and after they were trained by us, we could create quality, full-time jobs. And then as a result of that quality job, we would be providing quality care that we could, in fact, provide better services."

CHCA has been a co-op since the company started in 1985. Going from a co-op model to also certifying as a B Corp was an easy decision and made a lot of business sense, Elsas said. "Distinguishing ourselves as a B Corp would be helpful in marketing to be able to say we are the only B-Corp certified home care company. We thought that would be helpful for those entities that want to do business with a B Corp. Quite honestly, it was a natural for us. There was very little that we had to do to get certified because we were already a worker-owned company, we already had everything in place."

Elsas said that CHCA is successful not because it is a co-op but because of the best practices they employ. Currently, 90 cents of every dollar that comes into the company goes to the worker. While paying workers less would result in higher profits and better dividends, Elsas said higher dividends is not what has made the company successful for 30 years. Instead, what makes CHCA successful is "how we train, how we supervise people, how we respect people, how we let people participate in what we do."

Companies like CHCA and Ben & Jerry's show that businesses can make a profit and embrace socially responsible practices. Higher wages and better work environments help working families reach economic security. Consumers can support B Corps and environmentally and socially conscious businesses by buying their products and services. A full list of B Corps can be found here.

PolicyLink Director Mildred Thompson Discusses Her Path to Management

This cross-posted blog is part of the Monday Morning Manager Blog Series hosted by The Network for Social Management. The series features a weekly post about a manager who embodies the Network's Human Service Management Competencies and can serve as an excellent example to others striving to improve their management skills. This week's featured post features the Directror of the PolicyLink Center for Health Equity and Place, Mildred Thompson.

Tell us about your path to management:
Having graduated from NYU in the late 1970’s, I thought I was on the path to my dream of being a clinical social worker, working with children and families. I did live this dream, but only for six years. I was an excellent clinician and did some really significant work with the 12-14 year-olds and their families I was assigned to, but in the back of my mind there were serious questions about how these young children became so damaged. I was working with those that had been written off as the most severely disturbed; children who were fire starters, who had beaten up their parents, siblings, and peers; and were thrown out of regular school and stigmatized as socially unacceptable. They were truly outcasts, placed on an island right outside Harlem. Wards Island was home of the state hospital for adults and later a facility was built for children, both for those who lived there, away from their families, and those who attended a day program.

I was unafraid of the challenge. I had begun my career as a 21-year-old head nurse at the famous Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric unit, heading a locked ward for “elite” mentally ill adults. I thought working with children would offer an upstream or preventative pathway to health and wellness. So, my journey continued. Along the way there were deep questions which led to a lifelong inquiry on what conditions contributed to good health and resilience. How was it that two siblings experiencing the same family dynamics had very different responses? What were the resiliency factors that served to protect one and left another strikingly vulnerable? The more I worked with children, the clearer it became that to have a positive impact, I had to engage the families. And I began doing in-home family therapy, because my “theory of change” was that that’s where it all starts and that’s where the work was needed; less on the identified child and more on examining family functioning.

However, as I continued the inquiry, I realized there were additional layers and causative factors that impacted one’s state of physical, emotional, and spiritual heath. Families lived in communities, communities are governed by systems, and public policies shape systems. I learned early on that families and children are often at the effect of inadequate and inequitable systems and policies. Compounding all of these systemic barriers is the shameful legacy of racism, since most of the children in the institution were children of color; African American and Puerto Rican children with families living in poverty. So, I had a choice: either I continue working downstream, trying to help the sea of suffering brown children, one child and family at a time or chart a new course, working upstream by changing malfunctioning systems and policies.

My management career began after leaving New York and moving to Oakland, CA and eventually landing a job as Director of Social Work at a multicultural community clinic. In less than a year, I was asked to replace the center director. I had natural leadership skills that emerged early on and were nurtured by a seasoned mentor. It was on the job training in a very supportive environment. From there, I moved into senior leadership roles within the county public health department, continually increasing my leadership skills, style, and capacity, and eventually becoming director of a new division focused on integrating community health within the health department. So, my pathway of influence continued to unfold, from having individual impact as a psychiatric social worker, to being a family therapist, attempting to impact family dynamics -- then transitioning into system work through the community health clinic and public health department and landing into policy, the final chapter in impacting change!

It would seem admirable if I had this realization early on in my career. I did not, but I had the good sense to be obedient to opportunities continually opening up to me. I remained curious and learned as much as I could and had probing conversations with a range of people, read a lot, and participated in learning circles, constantly seeking answers to why and how and what my contributions could be. I was committed to making a difference and made this my life work. So, for the past 17 years I have worked within a policy organization, PolicyLink, influencing change through system and policy change. This is truly where substantive long-term change happens.

In summary, I am continually on my journey of learning how to be a better person than I was yesterday. Assessing when to pass the baton to the next generation of leaders. Determining how to walk every day with clarity, substance, and grace -- even in the face of challenges and setbacks. My aim is to remain balanced, to practice self-care. I try to remember my training grounds -- in school, home, and places of spiritual development. I have come to rely on my inner voice. I surround myself with people who “get me” and those who challenge me to my higher self. I do my art, listen to music, travel, and read books that stimulate, inspire, and teach.

How do you motivate your team members?
Motivating team members begins with supporting them, giving them space to lead and take risks, knowing when to step back and when to step in. It means allowing them to do it their way, even though you have a proven track record that your way has produced results. It requires patience and intentionally investing in your team.

What are you reading and/or following now (e.g. book, blog, social media groups, etc.)?
One book I am now reading is Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change by Adam Kahane, it's an exploration of ways to solve some of our nation’s most pressing challenges through balancing both power and love.

What advice do you have for those beginning their professional journey or who are already in leadership positions?
For newly emerging leaders it is important to adopt new values and skills. Social work was an excellent training ground for me, allowing me to examine situations and apply an analysis based on those early clinical trainings. But as the context changes, managers and leaders must be flexible, self-reflective, constantly growing, keeping everyone engaged and actively listening. There must also be a willingness to step back and allow the natural leadership within groups to emerge. Critical throughout all of this must be an impeccable sense of integrity and humility. It is possible to be firm, effective, and caring.

To contact Mildred Thompson for any inquiries please email her at mildred@policylink.org.

Gender and Racial Pay Gaps Stifle Local and Regional Economies

Cross-posted from the Toronto Star

Though they make up nearly half of the workforce in the U.S. and Canada, women — and women of colour in particular — continue to be marginalized in labor markets. Women make significantly less than men of similar experience and education, are vastly overrepresented in low-wage work, and are underrepresented in management — these are not just civil rights issues, they are fundamental failures within the labor market that are holding back economic growth for cities, regions, and entire nations.

When my mother, a young journalist, moved us from her home town of Montreal to New Jersey in the early 1950s, soon after I was born, she was looking for relatively better opportunities to advance in her profession as a woman, and the grass at least appeared to be greener in the States at the time. It did not necessarily turn out to be the case, and both countries still have a long way to go, but there are also promising changes in attitudes and concrete policy steps being taken on both sides of the border, as the imperative for justice intersects in new ways with strong economic incentives for inclusion and fairness.

Urban and regional economies -- in both the public and private sector — have a stake in seeing gender and racial pay gaps decline. As a group, women in the U.S. and Canada are more educated than their male peers and they are the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs, with women of colour leading the growth in small-business ownership in the U.S. This, in part, is why many local leaders are doubling down on efforts to address inequities in the workplace, seeking to capitalize on the often underappreciated talent and potential that women in the workforce bring to the table. For example, under the leadership of former Mayor Thomas Menino, Boston sought to become the “premier city for working women”, and current Mayor Marty Walsh recently pledged to become the first U.S. city to eliminate the gender pay gap entirely. Boston is home to the largest proportion of young women between age 20 and 34 — and the highest percentage of college educated women — of any major U.S. city, making the economic opportunity of its young women top priority for local leaders. To close the remaining 18-cent pay gap in the city, Mayor Walsh is leading the charge to educate businesses on the economic importance of closing the gender pay gap. One particular business-focused effort, 100% Talent, is a first-of-its-kind initiative that has enlisted 100 companies to voluntarily pledge to help close the gender gap by sharing payroll data (including metrics on gender and race), implementing recommended practices to reduce pay inequities, and participating in biennial reviews to discuss their progress. The Mayor has also spearheaded a $1.5 million project called Work Smart in Boston, which will provide 90,000 women with salary and benefits negotiation training over the next 5 years.

On the opposite coast, in a city home to the largest gender pay gap among major U.S. cities -- local government in Seattle, Washington is taking inspiration from Boston’s example. After a 2013 analysis found that women in the Seattle metropolitan area were earning 73 percent of what men make, with women of colour earning anywhere from 49 to 60 percent, then-Mayor McGinn’s office convened the City of Seattle’s Gender Equity in Pay Task Force, which has led the city to pass a resolution in 2014 calling on several cities departments, including the Personnel Department, Seattle Office of Civil Rights, and the Mayor’s Office, to promote progressive policies in hiring, pay, and benefits that specifically target both gender and racial inequities. Within the private sector, the city’s Chamber of Commerce and the Women’s Funding Alliance launched their own 100% Talent in 2015 whereby businesses will be obligated to identify internal gender equity issues, share lessons learned with other employers, and implement at least three of the 33 best practices identified by the initiative, including flexible scheduling, greater wage transparency, and increased diversity in hiring practices.

Though these efforts are still in their early stages, these leaders are proving that they understand the crucial opportunity facing cities and regions today: the places that will thrive the most in the 21st century economy will be those that embrace inclusion and capitalize on the talent, creativity, and potential of all residents — especially those who have too often been left behind. This dedication to inclusion is at the heart of All-In Cities — an initiative to promote inclusion and equitable growth in cities launched this year by my organization, PolicyLink.

Like the recommendations made by the 100% Talent initiatives above, All-In Cities seeks to support policymakers and businesses within metropolitan areas to foster comprehensive economic and racial inclusion. For gender and racial inequality in the workplace, this means looking beyond the pay gap to the very structure of the labor market — asking not only, how can we lift stifled wages for women, but how can we build work environments that are conducive to the needs of the ever-growing segment of female workers and their families.

In addition to reevaluating wage, hiring, and scheduling practices as mentioned above, this means policymakers and businesses should foster female entrepreneurship and leadership within organizations. They should promote women’s education and recruitment within high-paying fields — such as math, science, and technology — where they are historically underrepresented. Employers should offer paid family leave and sick leave, so that working mothers do not have to choose between a paycheck and taking care of a sick child.

Overcoming an issue as stubborn as the pay gap will require widespread cultural shifts — in classrooms, in boardrooms, in local councils and halls of parliament —but the rewards we will reap in justice and prosperity are well worth the effort. Advocates for equality from an earlier time, like my mother, would have appreciated how much the ground has shifted.

Read the full article in the Toronto Star (page 2).

Take the High Road: How to Boost Wages and Dignity for Restaurant Workers

At the beginning of her new book Forked: A New Standard for American Dining, author Saru Jayaraman tells the story of her great-grandfather owning and managing a restaurant in the small town of Karur, India. It’s a moving tale of legacy, grit, and entrepreneurship. Even as Jayaraman writes how her great-grandfather treated his employees as family, she acknowledges that he did not always pay them enough to keep them out of poverty.

As the founding director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), Jayaraman works to improve wages and working conditions for the nation’s restaurant workers. Employers who are striving to meet those goals do exist, according to ROC United, calling these restaurants “high-road” employers. They are the ones taking the high road to a successful business and ensuring their workers don’t earn poverty wages.

Such models are sorely needed. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 4.7 million food and beverage-serving workers in the United States take home a median pay of $18,550 a year. Despite consistent overall growth in the sector, workers in the restaurant industry still occupy seven of the 10 lowest-paying jobs in the country. In 2012, one in four women of color with jobs in the restaurant industry found themselves living in poverty.

In Forked, Jayaraman compares and contrasts employers who are choosing to take the high-road — offering paid sick days, health care, and childcare, improving job mobility, combating sexual harassment, and more. Below, we profile three of the high-road success stories.

Paying One Fair Wage: Florida Avenue Grill, Washington, DC

Restauranteur, lawyer, and real estate developer Imar Hutchins purchased Florida Avenue Grill, a Washington, DC diner established in 1944, as a part of a larger real estate deal in 2005. A vegetarian and former proprietor of vegan restaurants, Hutchins strove to maintain the legacy and culture of the site (including serving meat), while increasingly promoting health for both the diner’s workers and customers.

In the beginning, change was slow to take effect. “When you start something from scratch,” Hutchins told me, “it’s easy to set it up the way you want. But when you have something that’s been going, in our case for 70 years, it’s very hard to change anything.” In 2012, Hutchins introduced paid sick and vacation days and hiked the starting wage for both tipped and non-tipped workers to $9.50 an hour. Providing paid sick leave in food service protects the health of customers as well as job security for workers. Only 10 percent of U.S. restaurant workers have paid sick leave, while 60 percent have reported coming to work sick.

Believing in its principles, Hutchins joined ROC United, and is now a board member of the organization. One of their major campaigns, One Fair Wage, advocates for cities and states around the country to require restaurants to pay all their employees at least the regular minimum wage, so that the decision to increase wages doesn’t just fall on individual small business owners like Hutchins. The federal tipped minimum wage has been stagnant at $2.13 since 1991. The strongest proponent for maintaining this meager standard is the trade association and lobbying group the National Restaurant Association, whose member associations include McDonald's and Darden (the parent company of Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Capitol Grille).

Mom-and-pop restaurants “just don’t have the capital that large corporations have,” said Hutchins, “so it’s ironic that the companies that are in the best position to do things like pay employees more money, for example, are the most ardently against it.”

ROC United also works alongside other local and national organizations and coalitions led by workers that are advancing campaigns like the Fight for $15 and institutionalizing a workers bill of rights in every major city.

Creating Job Mobility for Workers of Color: Busboys and Poets, Washington, DC

ROC United has documented the vast inequities along racial lines in the restaurant industry. Workers of color are consistently segregated into lower-level segments in the food industry — especially in fine dining — and workers of color earn $4 less than White workers in the U.S. restaurant industry.

Busboys and Poets, the chain of eight D.C. metropolitan-area restaurants that also features bookstores and event spaces, exemplifies an equitable approach. More than 600 people are employed by the chain and proprietor Andy Shallal has launched several initiatives to close the racial wage gap in his business. He encourages group conversations about race and culture as a part of the new employee orientation process.

Shallal also ensures that hiring is inclusive and that no one racial or ethnic group is concentrated in any particular position. He sees it as both a personal conviction and a smart business decision. “If you start hiring people from all types of diverse backgrounds, you expand your ability to attract people of different backgrounds,” said Shallal. “Customers like to go to places where they feel represented.”

“Eliminating the two-tiered system [of tipped and non-tipped employees] isn’t the whole sum of the solution in terms of eliminating racial disparities, but it is a huge part of it,” said Jayaraman, noting that it goes hand in hand with policy and desegregation work, “and working with employers to get them to actually promote from within from busser positions to server positions.”

Creating a Level Playing Field: Vimala’s Curryblossom Café, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Vimala’s Curryblossom Café is a farm-to-fork Indian restaurant located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Owner and Executive Chef Vimala Rajendran left an abusive marriage and began selling takeout as a way to raise her children as a single parent. She ran her take-out business for 16 years before opening her current brick-and-mortar location in 2010. It has since become an award-winning, community favorite.

Two of the reasons Vimala’s Curryblossom Café is categorized as a high-road business: Rajendran has formalized a homegrown primary health care plan, Curryblossom Creations; she also offers a childcare allowance to her employees. “What’s replicable is not the specific benefits that she provides,” said Jayaraman, “but her consistent attempts to improve what she provides.”

The day Forked arrived in her mailbox, Rajendran’s neighbors read the entry on the restaurant to her and her husband. “All of us were in tears,” Rajendran remarked, “because Saru captured the soul of my life leading up to the start of this restaurant, as well as how I run it and the way we treat our employees.”

Jayaraman said she emphasizes the “high-road” metaphor in Forked and elsewhere because it underscores that restaurant employers are demonstrating an ongoing commitment, not reaching a destination. She also highlights ROC United’s legislative efforts as a demonstration of the strength in numbers. “We actually aren’t trying to create change company by company or get everyone to move out on their own in this direction,” commented Jayaraman. “We want employers to work with us to make it a level playing field by [helping] us pass policy that would have everyone do this, not just one employer.”

To purchase Forked, visit forkedthebook.com, and take a consumer pledge to support high-road restaurants. ROC United also has a diners’ guide app available for download.

Read the rest of the April 7, 2016 America's Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model issue.

A Hearing for Chief Judge Merrick B. Garland

Today, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick B. Garland to be the 113th justice of the United States Supreme Court.  By all accounts, Mr. Garland is an outstanding candidate.  He had a stellar career as a lawyer, both in the public and private sectors, and serves as the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, perhaps the most prestigious and celebrated federal appeals court in the country.  And in 1997, he received bipartisan support for his appointment to the DC Circuit.

Yet, if we are to believe what we have seen and heard starting just 15 minutes after Justice Antonin Scalia’s untimely death was announced, Mr. Garland will not be confirmed.  Indeed, he will not even get a hearing.  That a candidate as accomplished as Mr. Garland will not be allowed to make a case to the American public that he is the right person for the job and that he will protect the rights and liberty of all people living in this country, is an undeniably glaring signal of how dispiritingly broken and dysfunctional our politics have become.

Of course, there is more at stake with this nomination than the functioning of our political system.  Critically important cases, whose resolution could undermine efforts to advance equity for low-income communities and community of color, are before the Court.  For example, in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the Court will revisit the constitutionality of affirmative action.  In Evenwel v. Abbott, the Court’s ruling could undermine the political power of minority groups, particularly Latinos.  And at issue in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, is the financial sustainability of unions.  Mr. Garland’s appointment, assuming he is confirmed in a timely manner, could lead to rulings that promote equity in all these cases. 

Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution states, “[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and judges of the Supreme Court . . . ."

President Obama has done his job.  It is time for Republicans in the Senate to do theirs.

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