Palco Community Corporation will be Heartlands Trust Company held to begin with, then going to full Employee Owned as soon as basic corporate infrastructure is in place and employees become confident of successful ownership and management. See the Heartlands Trust Co. page for the list of Palco products and services. Palco Community Corporation divisions are either independent affiliates or divisions of parent company. All affiliates funnel certain percentages into the main Palco Community Corporation trust account for cutting operational costs of each component as well as strengthening their overall financial leverage power.
Palco Community Corporation
an employee owned and managed for-profit company
1. What is a “Community Corporation”?
In this case, it is a for-profit Corporation of Employee owned and operated entities comprising the land, manufacturing and material assets of Palco
Community Corporation and its subsidiary divisions, businesses, and cooperative associations.
The Palco Community Corporation is based on equitable resource allocation.
The entities have proportional profit sharing requirement and are democratically controlled by vote, with one vote per participant. Company asset and resource equity is held by Palco Community Corporation in trust for the participants and their heirs and all future PCC employees.
2. What are the basic purposes for organizing Palco Community Corporation in this way?
-From the Articles of Incorporation.
The purposes of Palco Community Corporation are:
1. To be a holding corporation for property acquired to be operated by employee owned and operated businesses and cooperative associations.
2. To serve as advisor and consultant for the establishment of employee owned and operated businesses and cooperative associations within the Palco Community Corporation umbrella.
3. To seek out economic opportunities to assist employees to buy out their current place of employment, especially at a time when their jobs are in jeopardy from plant closing or drastic down-sizing. Also to help new enterprises to be established as employee owned and operated entities with pride and proprietorship.
4. To enable individual businesses within the Palco Community Corporation umbrella to participate effectively in efficient, competitive, cost-effective systems from the creation of the basic resource product to processing resource into products, to distribution and marketing of all Palco Community Corporation products and services.
3. How does the Palco Community Corporation work with cooperative associations and employee enterprises?
Palco Community Corporation holds title to, lease holds, or otherwise holds land and/or facilities to be provided to cooperative associations and employee enterprises whose bylaws and practices comply with the Palco Community Corporation statement of purposes and bylaws. The amount of payment from said cooperatives and employee enterprises shall be the payments, interest and taxes that Palco Community Corporation is obliged to pay for the facilities and financing PCC provides to said employee enterprises and cooperatives. Additionally, each cooperative association or employee enterprise will be obligated to a payment of 5% over the gross paid to Palco Community Corporation for facilities plus 5% of the net profit of the cooperative association or employee enterprise figured after all wages, salaries, but before profit sharing is calculated. This fee, which may be paid in facilities and/or services, will be used to cover overhead, administration, salaries, and the research and development Palco Community Corporation shall carry on as a service to said cooperative associations and employee enterprises complying with the Palco Community Corporation statement of purposes. When a facility is paid for in full from whatever source, the Palco Community Corporation maintenance, research and development, and assistance to the same through expanding or acquiring further facilities, shall be paid for by a 15% payment of the net net income from the PCC cooperative association or employee enterprise. A cooperative association or employee enterprise may voluntarily adjust these amounts in times of economic stress or exceptional economic prosperity for the purpose of assisting said cooperative association or employee enterprise, or for the purposes of expanding the Palco Community Corporation family of cooperative associations and employee enterprises more rapidly.
4. How does a cooperative association or employee enterprise become part of Palco Community Corporation?
Employee owned and operated cooperative associations and enterprises that wish to associate with Palco Community Corporation must agree to the following:
Each employee shall be paid a salary or wages plus a proportional share of the surplus income of the cooperative in direct relation to their participation.
A cooperative association or employee enterprise shall except as a member any employee hired for more than 90 days.
The cooperative association or employee enterprise may hire consultants on a temporary basis.
Temporary or seasonal employees shall be paid their share of the equally proportional part of the cooperative association's or employee enterprise' surplus income in direct relation to their participation as are members of the cooperative association or employee enterprise.
Social and economic incentives are to be implemented to promote excellence, to increase productivity, safety and responsibility of the individual for the general good of the cooperative association or employee enterprise and the community in which Palco Community Corporation provides employment.
5. What is the benefit to the individual if they choose to become a member of a cooperative association or member of an employee enterprise under the Palco Community Corporation umbrella?
All members share in the profits of the cooperative association in direct relationship to their participation. All members of an employee enterprise under the PCC umbrella share in the profits in direct relationship to their participation, the only difference being in individual ownership and management of an employee enterprise vs. a cooperative association. Your money, normally paid in taxes, can be put in a revolving fund to benefit yourselves and your community.
To see what kind of purposes a cooperative association can be put to, consider the following:
The building and maintaining of cooperative community planned unit housing developments and service facilities including cooperative food store, children's care centers, medical and retirement care facilities, supplemental and continuing education and recreation facilities, systems and staff. The manufacturing, selling, or supplying to its members of machinery, equipment, vehicles, fuel, insurance and other benefits, or supplies and services of whatever type and quantity that improves their quality of life.
The financing of any such activities.
To create and operate equitable resource allocation projects for members and others. To create and operate humanitarian projects that serve to alleviate suffering, promote understanding and true friendship between peoples of all races and national origins. To help working people become owners and operators of the basic means of production, processing and distribution. To contribute two and a half percent of the cooperative's net income and comparable intellectual and physical resources charitably to assist the creation of an environment which help build a healthier and happier Humanity.
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The basic framework of the Palco Community Corporation was borrowed from my late friend, Roger McAfee, now deceased, who was the target of FBI harassment and foul play due to Rogers's outspoken Communist political views and successful socialist organizing projects such as his co-op trucking line which Teamsters hated. Roger is the one who bailed out Angela Davis, herself arrested for her outspoken Communist views. Communitarian Socialist ideas are in this project and thus we shared a fundamental core value, Roger and me, although he wasn't a Christian and wasn't opposed to social change violence like I was and always have been. Trouble with authorities has also plagued Roger's son who runs a raw milk dairy on the former communal farm of his father's.
