Full employment at a living wage is possible -- An E-interview with Sheila Collins about the right to work: Part One

Dr. Sheila Collins, a staff member of the General Board of Global Ministries for many years, is now a professor of political science and director of the Masters Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. In 1994 she co-founded the National Jobs for All Coalition, an organization committed to the principle that “every person capable of working should have the right to a job.”

She is the author of five books including Let Them Eat Ketchup! The Politics of Poverty and Inequality, Jobs for All: a Plan for the Revitalization of America (co-authored with Helen Lachs Ginsberg and Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg), and Washington’s New Poor Law, Welfare Reform and the Roads Not Taken, 1935 to the Present (co-authored with Goldberg).

In anticipation of Labor Day and because our United Methodist Social Principles (see para. 163. IV. 3) support the right to a job at a living wage, Untied Methodist asked her to discuss the possibilities and practicalities of full employment. 

Here is Part One of this in depth e-interview:

What would it take for there to be enough decent jobs for everyone in the United States? Is it really possible? 

A few years ago, I would have said that it would take an act of Congress for there to be enough decent jobs for all--a rewriting of the Employment Act of 1946 to conform to the government guarantee of "full employment" that was the heart of an earlier version, the Full Employment Act of 1945, that was defeated by a coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans. 

In other words, there needs to be a proactive government commitment to full employment.  It can't just be left to the private sector.  The Federal Reserve was originally supposed to adjust its monetary policy so as to create "maximum employment opportunities," but even that weakened commitment has long since been abandoned.  The Fed, more a tool of Wall Street than the American public, is more concerned about inflation than unemployment and has willingly sacrificed the jobs of workers to satisfy its financial overlords. The Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act that was passed in 1978 during a period of high unemployment by full employment advocates in Congress required the president to set numerical goals for the economy and to suggest policies that would achieve those goals, one of which was no less than four percent unemployment.  But Humphrey Hawkins has been completely ignored by subsequent Congresses.   

There is still nothing technical stopping us from creating enough jobs for all; it is really a matter of political will.  But with the acceleration of globalization, that political will has become more and more distant as countries around the world (including those like Sweden, France and Germany whose governments, unlike the United States, were committed to full employment policies throughout the post WW II era) have conformed to the alleged dictates of the market.  I say, "alleged dictates of the market,” because much of what we are told is inevitable and inexorable about the global economy is really a matter of political choice:  government elites choosing to adopt policies that favor the corporate class who also happen to be their largest campaign contributors. 

Governments today protest that they are hapless victims of globalizing trends, yet it is national governments that are actually directing the globalization process often at the expense of significant sectors of their own populations.  Our government protests that it lacks the money to provide what is needed to fully fund education, health care, child care, and other human needs -- all of which are job multipliers-- yet our per capita income has grown by over 170 percent since 1960, even as inequality has increased beyond anything comparable in the industrialized world. 

Clearly it is a matter of the misdirection of resources.  Nevertheless, the fact that investment and credit can be sent around the world in nano-seconds and jobs outsourced to cheaper labor zones abroad means that the playing field for full employment policies has become more politically complicated.  For example, because work is outsourced to China, or El Salvador, American consumers are paying less for their products.  Thus, American workers are in conflict with themselves as consumers.  To adopt full employment policies would mean raising the prices of the products we purchase.  It would also mean raising taxes, at least in the short term, to help pay for the jobs government would create or subsidize. 

Yet most Americans seem averse to raising taxes, despite the fact that we pay the lowest taxes in the industrialized world and the latest round of tax reductions overwhelmingly benefit the top one percent of Americans rather than the majority. It might also mean reducing our commitment to militarism as the way of doing foreign policy so that some of those funds could be channeled to job-producing sectors.  (Military investment, on average, produces one-third fewer jobs than investment in the public sector.)  Yet, at a time when the public is feeling threatened by terrorists and so-called "rogue states," asking them to reduce military spending could be politically difficult.

Nevertheless, Americans have not been offered the choice of such tradeoffs.  We have been told that there is nothing we can do about globalization, that too much government interference in the economy will make us uncompetitive, and that the only way to protect ourselves is to invest in more weapons of mass destruction.  Yet, there are a number of policies that the government could adopt that would represent a significant step in the direction of jobs for all at living wages.  Here, in brief, are a few of the policies I would suggest:

1.  Increase public investment in activities that require job creation and have a higher multiplier effect than military spending, such as infrastructure repair, housing, environmental conservation and renewable energy, education, health care, child and elder care, public transportation.  For example, the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups has estimated that a 10-year investment of $300 billion in clean energy technologies (that’s less than seven percent of our annual military budget) could produce 3.3 million jobs, reduce our dependence on oil—a major source of our security problems around the world—rebuild our industrial base, stimulate $1.4 trillion in new GDP, and more than pay for itself in increased revenues to the federal treasury. Investing in jobs in these areas also helps to guarantee that the jobs will not be outsourced.

2.  Tie public investment funds to communities and private corporations to the guarantee of job creation at living wages. 

3.  Require companies that decided to move jobs abroad to pay the communities that are left behind a "pay or stay" tax which can then be used to create jobs in that community.

4.  Stop subsidizing the outsourcing of American jobs, by providing, for example, advantageous tax breaks for companies that go offshore.  A major source of the erosion of good jobs (i.e. those that pay living wages and provide health care) is the loss of almost 3 million unionized manufacturing jobs to outsourcing.   

3. Maintain a reservoir of "off the shelf" jobs that can be created quickly in regions where the unemployment rate reaches an unacceptable threshold.   

4.  Raise the minimum wage.  While analysts differ as to what a "living wage" should be, raising the minimum to something like 60 percent of the median wage would at least bring a worker over the already paltry poverty level for a four-person family. The minimum wage today does not even pay enough to bring a worker up to the poverty level for two-person family, let alone the poverty level for a family of four.  When we were much less affluent as a nation we were able to afford a minimum wage that was 120 percent of the three-person poverty level. 

5.  Expand public funding for the arts.  Of all the major industrialized countries, the United States spends least on public support for the arts.  The result is that cultural workers, if they are to survive, must either sell themselves to commercial interests which treat their work as commodities, or struggle to support themselves in other ways.  The result is not only that fewer arts jobs are created, but the degradation and commodification of culture for the great majority and an elite art world available only to the affluent.

6.  Create apprenticeship programs for non-college bound high school youth in employment sectors where they can develop marketable skills.

7.  Reduce the work week to 35 hours which can create more jobs.

8.  Rigorously enforce anti-discrimination policies in the workplace.

9.  Adopt a universal, preventive health care system, alleviating private employers of the burden of providing health care for their employees and creating more jobs.

10. Provide incentives to private industry for training that directly relates to the jobs that are or will be produced.  Most of the job training funds currently provided by government for welfare recipients and unemployed workers is wasted because it is not directly tied to existing jobs. [See, Gordon Lafer, The Job Training Charade (Cornell University Press, 2002).]

11. Continue Social Security as a universal old age insurance system and require the option of pension portability for all pension plans as Germany has just done and as is being discussed in the European Union. 

12. Return to a progressive income tax system like that which existed during most of the post World War II era. 

13. Renew government support for organized labor.  Unions created the middle class with good jobs and health care.  As they have lost members to outsourcing, so the quantity and quality of jobs—especially for those without a college education—has deteriorated.  Appoint people supportive of working people's rights to the National Labor Relations Board.  Rigorously enforce existing labor laws.   

14.  Accept and adhere to international conventions such as those of the International Labor Organization on child labor, the rights of unions and health and safety and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was signed by President Carter but never ratified.      

Watch for Part Two of this interview soon.

Comments

[Mike Barker]

Scary. Very scary. Defies everything we've learned from a long track record of putting into practice public investment in economic activity verses allowing markets to flourish unmolested from interference.

Truly scary. You wanna create poverty and misfortune, put these steps into practice.

Mike Barker

[Angela Wildmon]

I love what Dr. Sheila Collins shared and want to know more!