By Thomas A. Kochan
One unanticipated fall out of the financial crisis is that now, lo and behold, Sen. John McCain has proclaimed: “Workers are the backbone of the economy.” As somebody who studies how people work, I welcome his sudden awakening, even if he only got it half right.
But workers are too smart to fall for empty rhetoric, especially when it is outdated. Today, it's not just strong backs but also strong, creative minds that hold the potential for turning our economy around. So today’s workers want concrete and commonsense policies and actions that give them the opportunity and the power to use their knowledge, skills and, yes, hard work to lead an economic recovery, for their families and for the nation. So let’s go beyond the rhetoric and see what in fact McCain and Obama would do to empower workers in this way.
Let’s start with the obvious: What would the candidates do to reverse the steady loss of jobs and earning power? McCain’s jobs’ policy would reduce taxes on business to spur investment and innovation. This is the same trickle down economic rhetoric of the Bush administration that has resulted in the lowest rate of job growth of any economic recovery in memory, the loss of more than 600,000 jobs this year alone and wages that leave workers no better off today than when Bush took office.
Sen. Barack Obama proposes a middle-class tax cut but doesn’t stop there. He would take direct action to create 5 million new, family-supporting jobs by investing in critical industries such as renewable energy, infrastructure repair and health care. Businesses benefiting from these investments would be held accountable for working in partnership with employees and labor representatives to put in place state-of-the-art training and work systems needed to drive innovation, productivity and service quality.
McCain has no strategy for improving workers’ wages. In fact, he has opposed increasing the minimum wage, opposes fixing labor law to give workers a real right to unionize and would increase the cost of employer-provided health insurance by eliminating the tax advantages of these plans.
Obama proposes increasing and indexing the minimum wage to inflation and promises to fix America’s broken labor laws to restore workers’ ability to form a union and to expand collective bargaining coverage. Obama also supports labor and management efforts to work together to once again get wages moving in tandem with productivity growth. That was what helped working families move into the middle class before and what can be done again if we put workers’ knowledge, skills and ideas to work and then share the fruits of their efforts fairly.
McCain says he wants to give working parents more flexibility to balance their work and family responsibilities but his way of doing so is to give employers the flexibility to substitute time off for overtime pay earned after 40 hours of work. This is a backhanded way of giving corporations a break on paying overtime rather than giving working parents the flexibility and financial support they need to meet their dual work and family responsibilities.
In contrast, Obama would expand coverage of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to the 50 percent of the labor force now excluded and provide seven days paid sick leave for all working parents.
McCain says we should consolidate employment and training programs and reform unemployment insurance to catch up with the changing labor force. While these programs need to be updated, how can workers trust his rhetoric when in the past, he has opposed the extension of unemployment insurance to workers who exhaust their coverage and stood idly by while the Bush administration cut funds for worker training and development?
Obama would overhaul and expand unemployment insurance coverage and provide job training and health insurance coverage to all workers displaced by trade and renegotiate trade agreements to hold our trading partners accountable for meeting internationally recognized labor standards.
But there is also a more deep seated issue that workers should be asking of the candidates: What would you do to reverse the scandalous actions the Bush administration has taken to undermine enforcement of the laws designed to protect workers' rights on the job?
I have worked with the people in charge of our key labor policy agencies for more than 30y years, in both Democratic and Republican administrations. These agencies are now in the worst shape I have ever seen. George W. Bush populated these agencies with a bunch of his know-nothing political cronies and business buddies. Most of the people he put in charge at the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board and other key regulatory agencies either don’t believe in the laws they are sworn to enforce or lack the independence to do so. They can’t say or do anything unless the White House approves.
The next president will need to re-establish the credibility, independence and trust of these agencies by putting professionals in charge who can earn the respect of workers, not to mention leaders of labor, business, women and minority groups who deal with them on a day to day basis.
So when you hear a presidential candidate spouting rhetoric about workers being the backbone of the economy, press the candidate to see if he truly understands the modern workforce and how to unleash its full potential. And see if he can be specific about what he would do to reverse the direction of work and employment policy of the past eight years. The response we need will show that workers are not just the backbone of today's economy—but the brains that drive it.
Thomas A. Kochan is George M. Bunker Professor of Management and co-director of the Institute of Work and Employment Research at MIT Sloan School of Management. Kochan is author of Restoring the American Dream: A Working Families Agenda for America, available , at .™
