Published in The Wall Street Journal

By Miriam Gottfried

A group of large private-equity firms has agreed to get stock into the hands of more employees at companies they own in an effort to address income inequality. A coalition of more than 60 groups that also includes banks, pension funds and others has signed on to back a new nonprofit aimed at promoting broad-based stock ownership, officials told The Wall Street Journal.

Ownership Works, as the new organization is known, will help companies roll out share-ownership programs for employees from top executives to lower-level workers. It launches Tuesday with a goal of creating at least $20 billion in wealth for low- and middle-income employees over the next decade. Ownership Works will set standards for designing ownership programs and advocate for more widespread adoption of them, as well as promote financial-literacy training and employee-engagement efforts…

…Others joining with the organization include United for Respect, which has led worker campaigns against private-equity-backed companies, Omidyar Network and the Ford Foundation. “We need to design into capitalism policies and structures that generate more shared prosperity,” said Ford Foundation President Darren Walker.