Last month, Pacific Steel & Recycling employee-owners Craig Eff and Tim Culliton attended the ESCA 2012 Federal Policy Conference in Washington D.C. Part of the conference included two days on Capitol Hill for ESCA member company representatives to meet with their Members of Congress to ask for their support for S ESOPs and share the findings of a new study by Alex Brill on the impact of S ESOPs in economic growth and job creation. The study shows S ESOP companies that were surveyed were able to grow jobs by 60 percent during the past ten years, while employment in the rest of the private economy remained largely flat.
While on Capitol Hill, Craig Eff met with Representative Doc Hastings and invited him to tour the Pacific Steel & Recycling branch in Kennewick, WA when he came back to the district in August. Earlier this week, Rep. Hastings took Craig up on his offer and toured the facility where more than one million pounds of steel are recycled weekly. Rep. Hastings noted that it was a good opportunity for him to see a different aspect of Washington’s economy, which is largely an agricultural based economy.
Pacific Steel & Recycling has benefited in many ways from the S ESOP structure. Not only have they continued to grow and hire throughout the past decade, but all employee-owners are able to plan for a secure retirement through their ESOP. Their retirement fund, through the ESOP, is fully funded through the profits of the company. Because all employee-owners are invested, everyone works harder because everyone has skin in the game. This culture of ownership leads to a strong bottom line for Pacific Steel & Recycling, which ultimately helps the local economy and job growth.
Employee-owners at Pacific Steel & Recycling will continue to work with Rep. Hastings to ensure generations to come can benefit from this model that has proven so successful.
You can see Representative Hastings tour the facility here.