Van Meter Industrial, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was been selected by The ESOP Association as the 2011 ESOP Company of the Year. The award was presented at the Association's 34th Annual Conference in Washington, DC.
Van Meter Industrial is a strong supporter of employee ownership and The ESOP Association. and the company's employee-owns take an active role in the Iowa/Nebraska Chapter of the Association and participate in Chapter meetings, present programs at these events, write articles for Association publications, and participate in Employee Ownership Month activities every October.
In addition to Association activities, the company also hosts several of their own including: Guess the Value Contest, in which every employee owner has a chance to guess the company's stock value; an Annual ESOP Statement Roundtable to educate employee owners in all locations; and a Work 10 Years and Get 5 Free Years which helps employee owners understand more about the ESOP and think about their future with the company.
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.