Amid increasing corporate power and dwindling worker profits, a coalition of lawmakers on Thursday put forth one solution that just may take off.

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) teamed up to put together two bills that would make it easier to form and operate employee-owned businesses, which have been “proven to increase employment, productivity, sales, and wages in the United States,” according to a statement from Sanders’ office.

With nearly 10,000 such businesses already in the U.S. and studies showing that employee ownership boosts productivity and profit, there is ground for support.

“And believe it or not,” remarked Jessica Bonanno, chief financial officer and director of employee ownership programs at The Democracy Collaborative, “this is a policy idea that might actually have a chance, since prominent Republicans like Ronald Reagan have long favored employee ownership, which leverages firm structure, rather than social programs, to improve family economic outcomes.” 

“In an era of hunger for solutions to inequality,” Bonanno wrote in an op-ed published at Common Dreams, “this may be an idea whose time has finally come.”