Mansfield native and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) visited Lifetouch Church Directories and Portraits Inc. in Galion on Wednesday to tour the building and meet employees from the plant and Galion city leaders. Sen. Brown visited Lifetouch to tout the company’s policies and business model.
Brown shared his thoughts on the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP)- a business model that Lifetouch already operates under- and the policy’s relationship in the retention and creation of jobs in the United States.
ESOP is an employee-owned business model that Lifetouch has been operating under since 1978. The plan offers its employees with corporate stock options as a retirement plan. Employees are able to sell their stocks when they retire from the company.
“When you look at this across the country, if companies become Employees Stock Ownership Plans- if companies become ESOPs- they do better,” said Brown.
The United States as whole, in Brown’s words, has suffered over the last twenty years because too many jobs have been out-sourced to different countries. Brown is currently advocating for legislation that will make ESOPs more accessible for existing companies in America. He thinks they are important for creating and keeping jobs in America.
“The reason that [ESOP is] so important is because it gives employees a stake in what they’re doing … You’re always conscious of cost, like you probably are at home- your kids probably aren’t, but you probably are. And you obviously are very aware of your productivity,” stated Brown of the Lifetouch employees.
He also encouraged employees with a few statistics and anecdotes from around Ohio.
“We’re the number three manufacturer state in the country. Whether it’s you producing pictures like this, or, we have the biggest yogurt manufacturer in North America north of Dayton, we have the V-8 we make in the state, cars we make, airplane engines we make, chemicals we make, tires we make … we make darn near everything in this state,” said Brown.
Despite Ohio’s efforts, however, the senator stated that it is difficult to find anything with a “Made In U.S.A.” tag. He stated that from 2000 to 2010, the country has lost over 5 million manufacturing jobs, but within the last four years, the country has regained 500,000.
“My point is, we don’t make enough stuff,” said Brown. He went on to describe one of the bills (Wear American Act) he is working on that will change the current law to mandate the U.S. government to buy American made apparel. The current law allows for the government to buy clothes that are 51 percent made in America.
“That doesn’t make sense to me,” stated Brown. With that, he invited the employees to ask questions or make comments.
Employee Rhonda Breit started it off by asking the senator what his priority would be if he had to choose an issue to focus on for the rest of his tenure.
The senator answered simply, “How you create jobs in the path of the middle-class.” He continued by saying, “We’ve got to find a way to get people who want to be in the trades, they want to go to community college, they want to go to a four year school, they want to go to the military, they want to go directly into the work force from Galion or Crestline or Bucyrus or Wynford or Colonel Crawford, they have the opportunity to do that with a path to the middle-class. And too many people don’t. I think if we do that, a whole bunch of other stuff falls into place.”
To conclude the event, Brown encouraged Lifetouch to keep inviting members of government into their facility to educate them on how an ESOP works. He said this would help legislation to be passed in the country to keep jobs from going over seas.
Brown is in his second staggered term as senator. His full biography where facts on his accomplishments as senator can be found by clicking here.
Lifetouch has been in business since 1936, and has grown to many locations across America and Canada since then. To learn more on Lifetouch Inc., visit their website.
