Locker Associates specializes in strategic research, financial analysis and comprehensive planning to help unions and other progressive organizations win campaigns, navigate difficult businesses situations, and build power for their members.
Over the last 38 years, we have directed more than 250 strategic efforts in support of organizing, bargaining, plant closure aversions and other initiatives spanning the construction, transportation, distribution, manufacturing, service and public sectors.
We bring to our clients a deep understanding of how businesses and industries work. We helped industrial unions deal with deindustrialization and preserve work by founding employee-owned firms. We’ve served as the investment advisor to employees during the establishment of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). And we’ve provided in-depth analyses of companies and markets for more than 100 strategic campaigns.
Our combination of strategic acumen and financial and business expertise makes us uniquely qualified to serve clients by:
- conducting in-depth research of industries and businesses, identifying sources of leverage and helping unions design powerful organizing, bargaining and fight-back campaigns;
- representing unions in strategic planning and workplace reorganization and bankruptcy;
- facilitating ownership transitions to secure the long-term viability of a business;
- leading joint labor/management business improvement initiatives;
- preparing comprehensive campaign plans for community-based groups seeking to use leverage to organize for progressive change.
Michael Locker is founder and President of Locker Associates, Inc., a NYC-based business consulting firm that specializes in corporate restructuring, buyouts, feasibility studies, developing business plans and performing due diligence. As a recognized authority on reorganizing troubled companies, Mr. Locker often representing employees in such efforts. Major clients have included trade unions (United Steelworkers, Machinists, United Auto Workers and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters), financial institutions (Bank of Boston, Lazard Freres, Congress Financial, Santander Investment), law firms, bankruptcy trustees and government agencies.
Mr. Locker served as Chief Restructuring Officer and Trustee of J&L Structural, reorganizing that firm under Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. As an investment advisor and consultant, Mr. Locker has authored and directed over 200 company/industry studies on steel, brass, copper, iron ore, mining, airlines, trucking, textiles, clothing, tires, energy, warehousing, banking and packaging equipment. Most of these projects involved an in-depth market and financial analysis conducted in conjunction with management. He has served as the investment advisor to the employees and investors in several transactions of small and medium size companies, many of which established employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).
Mr. Locker is also a leading steel industry analyst, publishing and editing for the last thirty years a monthly newsletter, Steel Industry Update, which is widely circulated to union officials, management personnel and financial experts. He has also conducted over 150 joint labor-management seminars at steel plants throughout North America and served as an expert witness in legal cases as well as arbitration proceedings at Inland, Bethlehem, National, LTV, Wheeling-Pitt and Republic Engineered Steel. He is also a member of the Iron & Steel Society. Over the last twenty years, Mr. Locker has founded, directed and served as President of five New York research, consulting and investment banking firms, incluiding Corporate Data Exchange (1973), Locker/Abrecht Associates (1980), Locker Associates (1985), Locker/Livingston Associates (1989) and MediaTek Consulting (2005).
Mr. Locker is a founder, director and former chairman of the New York Industrial Retention Network (NYIRN). He has served on the board of directors of Pittsburgh Forgings, Meta Software and the Center for Labor & Community Research. He has been an advisor to Working Assets Money Fund and New York State Senator Franz Leichter. He has made major presentations to the United Steelworkers, the Canadian Steel & Employment Congress, United Auto Workers, the U.S. International Trade Commission, the American Association of University Professors, World Steel Dynamics Steel Survival Conference and financial analysts in the United States and Germany. He has also traveled to Latin America, the Peoples Republic of China and the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Locker attended Earlham College and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history in 1964. In 1966, he received a Masters of Arts degree in sociology from the University of Michigan. He has taught economics and social science at Brooklyn College. 5/30/17