================================== NEW DEMOCRATS ONLINE -- NEW DEM DAILY -- Pithy news and commentary from the DLC. ================================== [ http://www.ndol.org ]
06-JUL-2001
Idea of the Week: A New Economy Labor Movement
It's no big secret that the two most dynamic elements in the Democratic Party, the New Democrat Movement and the Labor Movement, have on occasion crossed swords on the big economic trends of globalization and technology -- in short, on the New Economy. As is often the case in intensive intramural debates, each side has tended to exaggerate the other's positions.
But we are very happy to note there's fresh thinking bubbling up in the Labor Movement about steps it can take to help workers compete and win in the New Economy. The New Democrat magazine reported in 1999 that a New Economy Information Service (NEIS) had been created by labor-oriented intellectuals associated with the Social Democrats, USA. A recent email bulletin from NEIS gives abundant evidence that union activists are beginning to go beyond Industrial Age collective bargaining strategies to work on a broad front to upgrade workers' skill and education levels.
After accurately noting that income disparities in the United States are increasingly associated with knowledge, NEIS said:
"Here, then, is the main challenge before America's embattled trade union movement. Unions are, of course, struggling to win higher wages through collective bargaining, working for increases in the minimum wage, straining to preserve low-skilled jobs here at home. But what can they do about an education gap that is more and more a reality behind our growing income gap?
"A number of unions here and abroad are not only campaigning for better schools -- they are making education, professionalization and skills development a hands-on and central mission of their own organizations."
NEIS particularly notes the leading role of the Communications Workers of America, led by Morton Bahr, seeking to convince other labor activists that their success in organizing "wired workers" and offering world-class skills training to the rank-and-file are critical to the future of the labor movement.
Moreover, NEIS has sponsored a variety of trans-Atlantic dialogues among labor activists in the United States and in Europe, where unionists and their social-democratic political allies concluded some years ago that the old, class-warfare militancy against capitalism needed to be replaced with a new, Information Age collaborative strategy. For example, says NEIS:
"[T]he British Trades Union Congress, a turf that once belonged to the miners' Arthur Scargill and his class-warfare militants, has now made partnership and training the centerpiece of its program. It's no lukewarm, namby-pamby idea, though. Unions are going about it with thoroughness and fervor. Many unions have designated cadres of 'Workplace Learning Representatives' to help fellow members to frankly assess their job qualifications, devise plans to improve their skills, and stay the course once they get started. The unions are asking business to pay for more workforce development, and to allow more time off."
NEIS also advances a historical prospective on the labor role in worker skills that the New Democrat magazine tentatively offered in 1998: "Some historians and labor thinkers see a revival of the kind of skills-centered unionism that characterized the old craft guilds."
It's hard to overestimate the importance of this trend in the international labor movement. If unions begin devoting more resources to worker training -- and also begin making employer training resources a high priority in collective bargaining efforts -- then labor will begin to develop a major stake in shaping the new, global Information Age economy rather than simply fighting its corrosive effects. More particularly, New Democrats and the Labor Movement will be able to cooperate on public policy efforts to "expand the winners' circle" by creating a genuine system of lifelong learning while empowering workers to control health care, pension and other benefits associated with economic security.
We urge all New Democrats to subscribe to the New Economy Information Service, and to welcome a growing convergence of views among progressives on how to both accept and manage economic change.
Further Reading:
The New Economy Information Service: http://www.newecon.org/ ---> Sign Up for NEIS's E-Bulletin: ---> http://www.newecon.org/ebulletinsignup.html
"The New Economy: How Working Americans Can Take Control," Blueprint Magazine, Volume 7, Summer 2000: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=132&subid=193&contentid=2912
"Why America Needs a New Labor," The New Democrat Magazine, March/April 1998: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=102&subid=104&contentid=2288
"Let's Expand the Winner's Circle," by Will Marshall, Blueprint Magazine, Volume 7, Summer 2000: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=927&kaid=107&subid=175
"A Window Opens In the House of Labor," by Theo Yedinsky, The New Democrat magazine, July 1, 1999: http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=1201&kaid=127&subid=171
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