“I’m able to be here with you today because my son is at a wonderful childcare provider home,” says WorkforceRx guest, Rachel Wick, to illustrate how critical direct care workers are to our lives and economy. Wick, the senior program officer for Blue Shield of California Foundation, describes childcare and direct care provided in the home for the elderly and disabled as ‘the work that makes all other work possible.’ As she tells Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, it’s time our society valued it as such and invested in the sector the way we invest in public schools and healthcare. Wick is hoping the foundation’s new report, Forging a Sustainable Future for California’s Direct Care Workforce, will help provide a shared understanding of these workers and their challenges among all relevant stakeholders to help advance needed policy changes. Raising up this worker population and increasing economic security for other low-income communities is part of the foundation’s overall mission to remove barriers to health and wellbeing, especially among people of color, in order to build lasting and equitable solutions that will make California the healthiest state. “As we listen to families across California, what they tell us is that health and wellbeing and stability is just not possible when you are caught in a relentless daily struggle for survival.” Tune in to learn more about the role economic security plays in health, and how unionization and cooperative business models may be part of the answer to elevating a critically important workforce.
Continue readingHoward Brodsky, CEO of CCA Global Partners: Capitalism with a Heart
What if there was something business owners could do to boost employee retention 65%, increase worker loyalty and perfectly align company and employee goals? Oh, and by the way, give people a sense of hope and increase their wealth at the same time? Well, according to Howard Brodsky, that “something” is using a shared ownership model. Brodsky, a globally recognized pioneer in cooperatives, co-founded and leads CCA Global Partners, one of the largest retail companies in America serving over one million family businesses. The profitable $12 billion organization is the parent company for 14 other businesses in flooring, carpeting, lighting and other sectors, including child care. In this revealing conversation with Futuro Health CEO Van Ton-Quinlivan, Brodsky describes creating a new economic environment where instead of subsidies to repair the damage caused by chronically low wages, there is shared ownership and prosperity. “I think there has to be more distribution of wealth at the base level, not distribution after somebody makes a fortune and they decide where they want to give money to. People need opportunity, not subsidies.” Brodsky says the model is much more resilient in tough economic times, too. With an estimated 25-30 percent of family businesses failing in the U.S. during the pandemic, the closure rate among CCA Global’s members is only 1- 2 percent. This is a conversation that will leave you thinking.
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