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The Gallegos Corp. of Eagle County launches a new employee ownership program

Company hopes to be 35% employee-owned by 2030

The Gallegos Corp. this year launched an employee ownership program. The goal is to be 35% employee-owned by 2030.
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The Gallegos Corp. has a lot of loyal employees. The company is now opening itself to employee ownership.

Thanks to an initiative launched by Suzanne Gallegos, the widow of company founder Gerald Gallegos — who died in 2010 — the company on Jan. 1 launched an initiative to become 35% employee-owned by 2030. As of Jan. 1, the company has welcomed 18 new employee owners. Additional offerings will be made on Jan. 1 every year for the next four years.

According to company CEO Gary Woodworth, who’s worked for the company for 37 years, anyone with five years or more of service with the company is eligible for the program. Those employees are likely to be with the company for a while.



“Our retention data tells us if we keep someone for five years we’ll keep them for 20,” Woodworth said.

Woodworth said as the company’s leadership was in a strategic planning session on workforce development, the question came up of better engaging employees. The ownership program was the result.

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Employee ownership isn’t yet common in family-owned businesses, but it’s starting to catch on. Erin McCuskey of the Northwest Small Business Development Center is also the Eagle County Economic Resiliency Manager. In an email, McCuskey wrote that employee ownership is shown to increase employee engagement and retention, both of which benefit a company’s performance and profitability.

The Gallegos Corp. isn’t exactly a small business. The current full-time staff is about 275 people, Woodworth said. The company has locations in the Vail Valley, Aspen, Denver and Bozeman, Montana. The firm is currently working on a large project on Denver’s 16th Street Mall, installing granite pavers there.

The program is open to everyone at the company, from laborers to those in the corporate offices. The buy-in is discounted for employees to make it affordable, and can be done through payroll deductions, with payments made to the Gallegos estate.

When the employee buy-in is complete, the estate will continue to own 65% of the company and, obviously, control of the firm. Suzanne Gallegos is chairwoman of the board, with Woodworth as the CEO and another eight people on the executive board.

As employee owners leave the company, their shares are returned to the company, with an opportunity for another employee to buy in.

The Gallegos Corp. is busy this year, as busy as it’s been since the COVID-19 pandemic, Woodworth said. The employee ownership program is a way to share that success, he said, and “create some sustainability” for the company.  


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