Just before Labor Day, PPI’s President Will Marshall had an opinion piece in The Atlantic, in which he proposed reorienting the relationship of organized labor. Rather than adversaries, they should be partners. Here’s an excerpt:
President Obama is cobbling together a new jobs package for September, but it won’t be enough to revive the economy. Instead of offering another grab-bag of micro-initiatives, the administration needs to embrace a different model for growth that stimulates production rather than consumption, saving rather than borrowing and exports rather than imports.
This strategy emphasizes investment in the nation’s physical, human and knowledge capital–infrastructure, skilled workers and new technology. That’s a better way to raise U.S. wages and living standards than a new jolt of fiscal stimulus.
Getting consumers spending again will boost demand, but much of it will leak overseas via rising imports, stimulating foreign rather than U.S. production. In a world awash with cheap labor, where technology gaps are narrowing rapidly, a wealthy society like ours can thrive only by speeding the pace of economic innovation and capturing its value in jobs that stay in America.
The shift from a consumer-oriented to a producer-centered society won’t happen without a new partnership between labor and business–and a shift in outlook among workers themselves. Organized or not, U.S. workers should think of themselves first and foremost as producers rather than consumers. They have a compelling interest in keeping the companies they work for competitive, and in supporting a new economic policy framework that enables investment, entrepreneurship and domestic production. This reality points to new relations between workers and companies, and new political alliances.
A GRAND BARGAIN FOR LABOR
In the post-war compact of the 1950s and 1960s, workers offered loyalty and labor offered peace to companies in return for stable jobs with decent pay and benefits. But the deal between labor and capital changed as globalization took hold. Workers gave up job security; in return, they got low consumer prices and access to easy credit. Despite access to cheap foreign goods, however, real incomes fell for most households, as real wages dropped and job growth in most parts of the private sector virtually disappeared. Easy credit was used to fund consumption rather than investment in human capital.
Now, at a time when America’s economic preeminence cannot be taken for granted, the interests of workers are converging with those of companies, foreign and domestic, that want to invest in the U.S. economy. In a new compact for competitiveness, workers would pay more attention to innovation, workplace flexibility and productivity gains. Companies would invest more in upgrading workers’ skills, help them balance the pressures of work and family, and pay them middle class wages and benefits.
Two unions are pointing the way toward such a bargain: the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
Read the rest by clicking here to find out how. Read Marshall’s full policy briefing on the subject by clicking here.
