Here we hope you find the information you are looking for to help each of us understand the ESOP's benefit and value to us as employee owners, and to our Company by being 100% employee owned.
The Abrams family, along with Abrams International has appointed several employees to serve as members of your ESOP Committee. Their primary function is to help train our employees on what the ESOP is, and how we can use that information to help create beneficial ownership behaviors that focus on safety, quality, career growth and opportunities for the future thru consistent profitability. So let's get started...
What is an ESOP? An Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is a federally qualified employee benefit plan that is governed and regulated by United States law under the Federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Individual company ESOP plans are approved by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and monitored by the Department of Labor (DOL).
An ESOP creates a direct link between company interests and employee interests through employee ownership. A company with an ESOP establishes a Trust into which it contributes new shares of its own stock or cash to buy existing shares. Shares or cash in the Plan are allocated to individual employee accounts once each year. Employees who are a part of an ESOP are referred to as participants. As participants gain longevity in an ESOP they acquire an increasing right to the value of the shares allocated to their account, a process known as vesting. When participants retire or otherwise leave the company, the company must redeem their allocated shares at the fair market value for those shares. ESOPs are defined by ERISA legislation, the IRS, and the DOL as defined contribution plans. Our Plan, which was approved by the IRS, lays the ground work for how each of these different aspects of the plan are handled.
Through this web page, and continued training at our Office and Project locations, your ESOP Committee is focused on improving our knowledge of how our individual efforts contribute to the overall value and success of the Company.
Below, you will find several easy ways to ask questions about your ESOP Plan, and how it works. You can click on the email link, or print a paper form to fax or mail in.
You can also access our FAQ section (coming soon!) for answers to other questions that have been received.
Your ESOP Committee operates under a Mission Statement that is within the ESOP guidelines. Here is where the goals for the Committee are agreed upon, and how the committee operates, what their responsibilities are, and how we can nominate other Plan Participants to be part of it.
The Committee's focus in the coming years is to train towards our vesting schedule. Knowing that at each step in our career the ESOP will mean different things to us, our goal is to: