Business for Shared Prosperity

By Julie M. Donnelly
Boston Business Journal, Nov 11, 2011

Excerpt: Joseph Rotella, owner of Spencer Organ Company in Waltham, was in Denver this week to oversee the installation of an organ he restored at an Episcopal cathedral. He took time out for some politics.

“I stopped by the Occupy Denver site,” Rotella said. “A few weeks ago, I was in Seattle and visited the site there, and I’ve been to Occupy Boston a couple of times.”

Rotella is part of a nascent minority of small businesses who say they too suffer from the tax advantages and other perks bestowed on large corporations. Some, like Rotella, say they actively support the Occupy movement. The board of the Main Street Alliance, for instance, which represents 10,000 small businesses nationwide, voted to support the movement last week. Others, like businesses represented by the [Boston-based] nonprofit Business for Shared Prosperity, support policies that address inequality in the economy, but stop short of officially joining with the protesters...

Rotella and some other business owners say they are being hurt by tax policies that favor large companies. They also say that when average consumers suffer, so do they…

Rotella said small businesses are the true “job creators,” and that they often offer better conditions than big corporations. Rotella, for instance, offers profit sharing and health insurance to all 10 of his employees, even those that are part time.

Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans Coffee Company in Orange, has been supporting the Occupy Boston movement by sending ground coffee and chocolate-covered coffee beans to the camp. The owner of the roastery for organic, fair trade coffee said he’s unsatisfied by proposals from either political party to get the economy moving. He says his company, a C-corp, pays 35 percent in taxes, while some giant corporations pay very little. “We are the source of both jobs and innovation and it’s a big mistake for government to cater to bigger businesses,” Cycon said. He said his 10 employees, all in their 20s or early 30s, enjoy profit-sharing and 100 percent contributions to health care premiums.

“The bigger guy gets more of everything and the little guy pays a bigger tab,” Jan Whitted, owner of Artbeat, an art supplies store and art studio in Arlington, said. She said her three-person business depends on local families having the disposable income to spend on paints, easels and studio time, and lower prices at big box stores make it tough to compete. She’s a member of Business for Shared Prosperity, and said she’s in favor of drawing attention to inequalities. But she stops short of throwing her support behind the Occupy movement. “There are a lot of ways that businesses are speaking up, I don’t have an opinion about whether businesses should join with the Occupy movement.”

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Copyright 2011 American City Business Journals

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