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March, 2002
NEW ECONONY INFORMATION SERVICE E-BULLETIN In this issue:
The New Realism and Workplace Skills Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland notes a new temper in our economic life: “Americans went to war after the attacks of Sept. 11. But they did something else just as important and far more characteristic: They went to work” (March 7, 2002). If the mood really is, "let's buckle down," we should see a revival of interest in building up the skills and professionalism of America's workforce. Workforce development was high fashion in the 80s and early 90s. Quality circles, high performance work organization, total quality management--these were buzzwords for business leaders and policy wonks alike. Then two things happened. First, it became clear that a lot was wrong with the ways we went about training and skills development. Some interesting plans were drawn up for reforms. But in that instant we became engulfed by the budget battles of the mid-nineties, and anything caught out in the open became a target. "Reform" turned into "cut." Believers in the benefits of workforce programs debated how to fight back. And that's when a second factor came into play: the effects of the late '90s economic boom. Suddenly almost everyone had a job. Some employers still complained of shortages of highly skilled workers, but they sounded like whiners at a feast. Besides, with H1-B visas they could always poach workers from overseas. But 2001 -- the dot.com crash, 9/11 and the rest--has been a sobering year. When the economy first slumped there was, of course, no clamor for skilled labor. Lots of tech and managerial workers were on the street. Indeed, the Bush Administration jumped at the chance to cut training and skills support: the budget for the Labor Department proposes cutting discretionary spending on employment and training activities by 9%. But now the economy is recovering. This time, though, there is no wave of financial speculation to ride on. This time we're going to have to grind it out—three yards and a cloud of dust. And we are going to have to count on ourselves, not hastily imported foreigners. Education and training are not like other benefits that can be passed out by corporations and the welfare state: to be effective, they demand substantial effort and commitment from the participants. The culture shift this entails requires bottom-up engagement by workers, an engagement that unions can be key to. One model we have devoted attention to in previous issues of this Bulletin is the British approach. Some have responded that it's only workable there because they have a labor government that helps it along. The reality, however, is that what some call the British Model has long been employed by some important unions here, without much government involvement.
For example, back in the early 1980s the United Auto
Workers and the Big-3 auto companies established
partnership programs in education and training. At
Daimler-Chrysler the union and management have even
introduced “local training facilitators” -- a role
similar to that played by union "learning representatives"
in the UK. These UAW facilitators engage workers in
identifying their own skills gaps and in figuring out
how to close them. They also work with management to
identify current and future skills requirements. Union
members are paid for this work by the company.
Another U.S. union, The International Association
of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, faced massive
layoffs in the airline industry and manufacturing.
In response, it embarked on far-reaching partnership
with management. Its High Performance Work Organization
(HPWO) partnerships aim at restructuring the workplace,
with the union assuming a role in helping the business
grow. This even involves a union audit of the exact
costs of all a plant's activities, followed by the union's
proposals on how to cut costs and improve productivity.
In effect, the union becomes a kind of management
consultant, and in exchange gains a role in decision-
making. Education and training are often a major
component of the collective bargaining agreement, and
the union takes upon itself a major responsibility to
motivate and assist members in continuously raising
their skill levels.
A Tale of Three Forums: New York, Porto Alegre and Berlin The September 11 attacks pushed debate about economic globalization off the big screen. But in the last month it began to flicker back into focus. Recent meetings in three venues may suggest the shape of things to come: Right, Left and Center. The World Economic Forum, which for some years brought corporate, financial and government globalizers and their entourages to Davos, Switzerland, convened on January 31 of this year in bloodied but unbowed New York City. Although news trickling in about the American economy was encouraging, the mood of the gathering was sober-- even defensive. Bubbles of the boom Nineties would not stop bursting: Brazil, Enron, rosy budget and tax scenarios.
But such recent contretemps were only ripples on a tide
of difficulties that has been running against the Davos
Forum for some years. As Fouad Ajami put it in the New
Republic, "the Davos bubble has burst." No longer is
globalization just about jetting off to emerging markets
to do deals that promise a lifetime of luxury. It's also
about pathological young men from uncomprehended places
ramming airplanes into the structures of our government
and economy. No longer is globalization just about
market values that climb charts resembling stairways
to the stars. It's also about bankruptcies and layoffs
and dumped pensioners. In the end, the Davos Forum in New York was given over to the lamentations of the powerful: "We're really not as bad as they say we are." One wonders if the Swiss will want a group back on their manicured meadows that now draws as many smirkers and gawkers as it does titans of finance and their glitterati. [World Economic Forum URL: www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/Annual+Meeting+2002] With the Davos crowd passe', attention turned to the counter-Davos World Social Forum, which convened again at the same time, but the other end of the earth: the fashionably progressive Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. A big turn-out in Porto Alegre reflected a shift in strategy by the anti-globalization protest movement. Only a relative few of its troops showed up to jeer at the capitalists in New York. Instead, some 40,000 labor unionists, environmentalists, cause activists and radicals, drawn mainly from Europe and the Americas, swarmed to Brazil for seminars, protests and networking. One thing proved by their numbers and enthusiasm: the anti-globalist left, although thrown into disarray by the September 11 attacks, is far from dead. But something else was also evident: this is a movement rife with contradictions and confusion. One point seemed to win general assent: those who continue to describe this as an "anti-globalization" movement are now going to be scolded. Its strategists insist that they are not opposed to globalization--what they want is globalization that serves ends they define: the authentic needs of humanity. One widely-touted proposal was the "Tobin Tax"--named after recently-deceased Nobel economics laureate James Tobin. This somewhat notional idea involves taxing international currency trades to provide some deterrent to excessive speculation. As Tobin initially conceived it, revenues from the tax would be paid to the World Bank and the IMF -- two institutions that not all Porto Alegrerians hold in high regard. Some objection was raised that the Tobin tax is actually not very revolu- tionary. Other issues emerged to give even more telling evidence that the Porto Alegre movement may not cruise comfortably from the realm of protest into politics. An important group of union leaders challenged the leadership of the World Social Forum for advancing "the concept of 'civil society,' which the WSF claims to represent, as an attempt to cover up the borders between social classes."
There could also be difficulties over perspectives on
world affairs. An official document from the meeting
denounced the U.S.-led campaign against Al Qaeda and the
Taliban, and called for solidarity with the Palestinian
people against Israel's "brutal occupation." A report
on the Forum's web site provides this illuminating
vignette: "'If one looked at the official definition of
terrorism, it would be identical to the official definition
of U.S. foreign policy,' [Noam] Chomsky said to wild cheers
from the audience."
Will public dialogue about globalization continue to be polarized between the laissez-faire radicalism of the Davos set and its strange bedfellow antagonists from Porto Alegre? On March 15 the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which has ties to the German Social Democratic Party, convened a meeting in Berlin to discuss how mainstream supporters of democracy might better cooperate both to promote globaliza- tion's benefits and to resist unacceptable social costs. This meeting (entitled "No Globalization Without Represen- tation?") took up a paper by Harvard economist and gadfly to globalizers Dani Rodrik. Participants included Supachai Panitchpakdi, future Director-General of the WTO, Ernst Welteke, President of the German Federal Reserve Bank, and an array of academic and NGO figures from around the world. Instructions for participants stressed the need to "identify common interests of political, business and civil society representatives" and to "build political alliances necessary to ensure that the global policy process becomes more participatory and accountable…." The first of these points would be treason to Porto Alegre's anti-capitalists, the second an abomination to the privateers of globalization. Germany's Social Democrats are in for a difficult election campaign, and may find it hard to chart a course between Greens and former Communists and the many Germans frustrated by the burdens and complexities of an economy and social welfare system in need of reform. Whether their Friedrich Ebert Stiftung can work at providing a sensible alternative to the polarization that afflicts the globalization debate is not certain.
Those interested can find out by following the FES web site
devoted to these issues,http://www.demglob.de
Last week American newspapers noted the assassination of
Marco Biagi, an academic known and admired by many in this
country's Industrial Relations Research Association.
Biagi's killers shot him from a motorcycle, and Italy's long-
dormant Red Brigades have claimed “credit.”
Some aspects of the murder are still unresolved, but much
about it suggests a significance that goes beyond what some
commentators treated as just a lingering Italian cultural
pathology.
Biagi, a moderate with social democratic connections,
worked with a wide range of political leaders and economists
to try to introduce greater flexibility into Italy's
rigid labor markets. His most recent effort had to
do with reforms of Article 18 of the Italian labor code,
which, according to our sources, would have given
employers who are judged to have unfairly dismissed
workers the option of paying them a settlement instead
of hiring them back.
According to Rome's La Repubblica, "Those who shot him
thought he was a hawk, who had to be destroyed, who was
at the heart of a social conflict that divides Italy in
half, because he was collaborating with Maroni [Welfare
Minister in the Berlusconi government--ed.] But Biagi
was no hawk. 'We have to find a middle way,' he said
in his last television interview, a way that isn't the
government's, that even the CGIL can support.' "
[The CGIL is Italy's big, and, for a long time, pro-
Communist labor federation -- ed.]
Biagi is a third moderate labor expert to be assassi-
nated by leftist extremists in Italy. Professor Ezio
Tarantelli, who proposed changing the Italian system
of wage indexation, was killed by the Red Brigades
in 1985. Massimo D'Antona, an official in the Labor
Ministry, was shot in 1999, with what is thought to
have been the same gun used to kill Biagi.
Labor market reform is one of the main challenges
confronting a Europe that has difficulty remaining
competitive in global markets while at the same
time maintaining high levels of labor protections
and social benefits. The tensions this provokes
could be the undoing of the so-called "Third Way"-
a grouping of moderate social democrats who swept
elections throughout in the 1990s and drew support
from the Clinton Administration in the United
States.
Earlier this month, Portugal's voters followed Italy
and Spain to the center-right. Elections will be
held this year in Germany, France, Holland and Sweden,
and all could turn to the right. Of all the Third Way
group, only Britain's Tony Blair has tackled old-style
industrial relations head on, and only he, for the time
being, appears to be secure.
The following are President Bush's first 10 appointees to
the newly formed President's Council on the 21st Century
Workforce, who were announced by the White House on
March 21:
Doug Banes, Vice President for the Carpenters and Joiners
of America;
Jeffrey Bleustein, Chairman and CEO of Harley-Davidson Inc;
Anna Cablik, founder of Georgia-based Anatek Inc., a
contracting company specializing in highway bridges, and
Anasteel and Supply Co., a reinforcing steel fabricator;
Anna Escobedo Cabral,President and CEO of the Hispanic
Association on Corporate Responsibility,
a coalition of Hispanic organizations working to include
Hispanics in corporate America;
Thomas J. Donohue, President of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce;
James K. Glassman, syndicated columnist for The
Washington Post and resident fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute;
Lowell M. Guthrie, founder of Trace Die Cast Inc. an
auto parts manufacturer in Bowling Green, Ky.;
James P. Hoffa, President of the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters;
David S. Lee, entrepreneur, Regent at the University
of California, and chairman of the Board at a unified
communications provider in Kennesaw, Ga., and a
telephone systems firm in Corinth, Miss.; and
Charles Joseph Scarborough, former Congressman who
resigned in September 2001 and now practices law in
Pensacola, Fla., with Levin, Papantonio, Thomas,
Mitchell, Echsner, Proctor P.A.
The Secretary of Labor and the Director of the Office of
Personnel Management serve as ex-officio members. The
council will provide the President and the Labor
Department's Office of the 21st Century Workforce
information assessing current and future changes in the
workforce environment, including technological change,
demographics and globalization.
This E-Bulletin is published by the New Economy Information Service
(NEIS), a project of the Foundation for Democratic Education. NEIS
provides information and reviews debate on the impact globalization
and technological change has on democracy at home and abroad.
Current interest focuses on how American workers can be equipped
with the skills they need for decent employment and economic
security, and on how the globalization of the economy and the
expansion of democracy can strengthen one another.
To make a contribution, offer a comment, add your name to our
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