Specializing in Employee Ownership Since 1981

Wishing you & yours a joyous holiday season
& the very best for the New Year

Dear Friends, Clients and Colleagues:

    We are excited to announce that Jacquise A. Purifoy, Esq. is joining the Law Office of Deborah Groban Olson. Jacquise comes to us as the recent Community Grants Coordinator for Congressman Hansen Clarke.  She will also be working for the Center for Community Based Enterprise as its Outreach and Development Director.

    We are honored to continue providing legal services to our national and local employee ownership, co-op, business succession and union clients. We look forward to working with small businesses, non-profits and unions to build a sustainable, collaborative and inclusive Metro Detroit economy.

In honor of our clients we are making a donation to Alternatives for Girls and UNICEF.

Happy Holidays! 

Deborah Groban Olson
dgo@esoplaw.com 313-331-7821 

Jacquise A. Purifoy
jpurifoy@esoplaw.com 313-744-6171

Attorney Deborah Groban Olson
1021 Nottingham Road
Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan 48230
Phone (313) 331 7821
Fax (313) 331 2567
Email dgo@esoplaw.com

Attorney Deborah Groban Olson provides tools to help local companies and communities compete in the global marketplace. She is an attorney with over 30 years’ experience creating and advising employee-owned companies, equity compensation plans and cooperatives and representing companies, trusts, co-operatives, unions and employees. She is Executive Director of the Center for Community Based Enterprise, Inc. (C2BE), which supports and connects entrepreneurs, community and resources to grow “community based enterprises” that are locally-rooted businesses paying living wages. The Center also provides education and consulting on community based enterprise best practices. She is managing member of Ingenuity US, L3C, that develops labor patent strategies for keeping union jobs in the US and helped draft the Hawaii Sustainable Business Corporations Act of 2011. She is a board of directors’ member of Circle Pines Center (co-op education and recreation center since 1938); and a board member of the Once Again Nut Butter Collective in Nunda, NY.

Olson was founding Executive Director of the Capital Ownership Group (COG), a Ford Foundation funded virtual think tank, developing policy to broaden capital ownership globally. COG's funders have also included the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. and the European Union. She was also a board member and past Chair of the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO), and she serves on the Board of Directors of the European Federation of Employed Shareholders (EFES).

Attorney Deborah Groban Olson is also very active in community economic development in the Detroit Metropolitan area and serves as a founding board member of Joint Cities Development Corp.

Examples of ESOP and Co-op Clients and Services

• Advising UFCW International and Local 1000, in 2011, in negotiating significant corporate governance role and representation agreement for existing and new stores, when Homeland Acquisition Corp. created 100% employee ownership in a food store chain expected to expand from its 76 stores;
• Advising Creative Community Pathways, Church of the Messiah, City Mission, and others developing worker cooperatives in Detroit;
• Convening and providing organizational assistance to the Detroit Community Cooperative (DCC), a broad-based, grassroots community collaboration of over 30 organization supporting development of worker cooperatives;
• Performing market study for Vanguard CDC on creation of a business services cooperative or TimeBank;
• Designing the ESOP for the Carris Corporate Community;
• Creating and advising Sub Chapter S company ESOP for Exhibit Works, Inc.;
• Serving as general counsel for the 100% employee owned Maryland Brush Company;
• Serving as general counsel for Mustard Tree Cooperative (housing);
• Designing worker cooperatives for the Franklin Forge and Southwest Detroit Construction Cooperative;
• Designing a highly participative ESOP and corporate structure at Republic Container;
• Advising the employees on the privatization of Oakland County Community Mental Health Authority;
• Providing Employee ownership pre-feasibility studies for the states of Michigan, Ohio and Maryland;
• Creating a 100% employee buyout at North Coast Brass;
• Representing the UFCW in negotiation of majority ownership at the Rosauers Supermarket chain;
• Providing assistance and advice to PACE International Union concerning potential employee buyouts of Eastern Fine Papers, Shasta Paper, Cornell Globe, Tower Automotive, Sebewaing; I.P. Natchez, Ms., Passadumkeag Sawmill;
• Assisting Gas Workers Local 80, SEIU to protect its interests in the merger of MichCon into Detroit Edison;
• Providing employee ownership advice for the following unions or their members organized into buyout committees: UAW, USWA, IAM, UPIU, Carpenters, IBEW, OPEIU, Teamsters, Boilermakers, ALPA, SEIU, AIW, UFCW, Visiting Nurses, Independent Union of National Forge Employees and others;
• Teaching employee/board of director members and ESOP trustees their duties through the Ohio Employee Owned Network, the Worker Ownership Institute and the National Center for Employee Ownership, and as a consultant to employee owned companies in conjunction with the Ohio Employee Ownership Center;
• Teaching Irish labor, coop, and economic development leaders about ESOPs and making legislative proposals, upon the invitation of the Irish Government and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions; Teaching labor law, plant closing alternatives and employee ownership at Wayne State University (WSU) Law School, the WSU labor studies program, the University of Michigan Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations, the AFL-CIO George Meany Center for Labor Studies, Cornell University, University of Indiana, New York University, Bentley College, University of Wisconsin School for Workers, and to unions, attorneys and employee owners.

Publications
Her publications, available at www.esoplaw.com, include: “Union Experiences with Worker Ownership” 1982 Wis. LR 729; “Keeping Jobs and Capital at Home” 1984 Nova Law Journal 583; “Employee Ownership and Economic Development” 1987 NYU Review of Law & Social Change; “Unions and Employee Ownership”, ESOP Handbook (Probus, 1989); “Unions and Fair Market Value: An Argument for a Safe Harbor for Negotiated ESOPs”, 1992 Journal of Employee Ownership Law & Finance 135; “ESOPs for People, Not for Wall Street,” 1993 Journal of Employee Ownership Law and Finance 5; “Development, Growth & Experience of ESOPs and Democratic Employee Buyouts” speech at Int’l. Conference on Democratic Employee Ownership, Dublin, Ireland 1993; “Giving Employee Owners a Real Voice as Stockholders: Legislative Proposals to the Dunlop Commission”, 1994 Journal of Employee Ownership Law & Finance; “The Employee Buyout Feasibility Study”, Leveraged ESOPs and Employee Buyouts, NCEO 1997 (updated 2005), “The Feasibility Study for an Employee Led Buyout” Winter 1998, Journal of Employee Ownership Law & Finance. Summary of “Capital Ownership Group Industrial Homestead Policy Proposals” Business Ethics September 2000 and Accountability, December 2000; Chap. 17 “Labor Unions”, ESOP Answer Book, Panel Publishers, July 2000; “Fair Exchange: Providing citizens with equity managed by a community trust in return for government subsidies or tax breaks to businesses”, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy (2006) – for policy conference at George Washington Univ. Law School ; Scan of Community Based Enterprise Innovations and their Application to Detroit, C2BE 2009.

Employment
1989- Present  Private practice specialized in employee ownership
1997-2006       Founding executive director of the Capital Ownership Group (COG), a global on-line network and think tank on using broad ownership to address globalization challenges, operating from Kent State University, and director of COG’s Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded Fair Exchange Project at http://cog.kent.edu/grphome.html        
1982–1989      Founding executive director of the Michigan Employee Ownership Center                            
1980 –1981     Practiced civil rights and labor law at Youngdahl, Larrison & Agee in Little Rock, Arkansas
1977 – 1979    Solo labor law practice
1976 – 1977   Attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and then practiced with labor law firms: Schneidman & Meyers, and Perry First in Milwaukee, Wisconsin                                                                            
Education
1973-76  University of Wisconsin Law School, Madison, Wisconsin, J.D. 1976, Order of the Coif
1967-71  University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, B.A. with honors 1971, psychology and history

Professional Associations
AV rating from Martindale Hubbell since 1997; Participant, Corporation 2020 (policy working group); Member, AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee; Leadership Detroit XVII, Detroit Chamber of Commerce; Michigan Bar Tax, Labor & Corporation Sections Member. Bar Admissions: Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Arkansas. Past Affiliations: Board Chair, National Center for Employee Ownership; Board of Directors, European Federation of Employed Shareholders; Board of Trustees, Michigan Housing Trust Fund; Vice-Chair, Michigan Chapter of the ESOP Association; Founding Chair, JointCities Development Corporation; Wisconsin Committee on Occupational Safety and Health.

Thinking of Selling Your Business? An ESOP Can Save You Money.

Union Experiences with Worker Ownership 1982 Wisconsin Law Review 729