Commentary: Employers Have Opportunity with Big Labor
A lot has been written since the election about the current state of organized labor, not just from a political standpoint but also whether many unions will still exist in the near future. Clearly the labor community put all its political chips on the table and lost – badly. Not just the White House and the pro-labor regulatory power it could have exercised. Not just Congress either, but all the way down the ticket – governors, attorneys general, state legislatures, mayors, judgeships, sheriffs, dogcatcher – it was an electoral beating of historic proportions.
Partisans from both sides can tell you from experience, resounding electoral defeats, while painful, can also provide the opportunity for major soul-searching to understand what went wrong, why, and how to recalibrate going forward. When a business fails, the owners try to assess what went wrong. Was it the location, a poor pricing strategy, or a bad marketing approach? Or maybe the product offering did not properly address customer needs and failed to be relevant. Maybe it was the wrong product for the wrong market.
The unions now have a rare opportunity to go back to the drawing board and decide what their product offering really is. Are they going to double down and continue being mainly a political entity focused on legislation, regulation, litigation and electoral politics? Or will they seize an opportunity (and I would argue, answer a national call to action) by helping the country figure out the looming workforce crisis the U.S. faces over the next 25 years. That crisis is the impact that automation will have on tens of millions of lesser-skilled American workers who will be automated out of the workforce in the not-too-distant future.
It's not just about robots in factories and self-service kiosks in banks, airports, restaurants and rental car counters. It's even more fundamental.
Consider this: If you aggregate all of the job classifications in the American workforce where operating a motor vehicle is core to the job function – mail carrier, bus driver, cabbie, package delivery, ambulance driver and countless more – you would have the largest job class in America. And what is happening in that space? Companies are feverishly pursuing driverless vehicle technology and bringing it to the marketplace as fast as possible. That's right, we are essentially encouraging the high-tech economy to eradicate large swaths of the low-tech economy. (Ironically, the tech crowd is most likely leveraging the research and development tax credit to its fullest, meaning millions of taxpayers are essentially subsidizing the elimination of their job). Only in America.
The bottom line is that we have tens of millions of workers on the occupational endangered species list. Those workers need real help. They need the education, training and skills development to make them employable in the future economy that is coming at them fast. What an opportunity (and an imperative) for the labor community to regain lost relevance in the marketplace.
True, I am focusing on an opportunity for unions in this column, so let me remind readers that, for years, I have been saying this is also a major opportunity for the employer community to answer the same call to action. Clearly, one side is going to fill the void. What is less clear is - who will have the vision and intestinal fortitude to take on the challenge?
Many conservatives and business leaders will have to reluctantly admit (some through gritted teeth) that much of America was built on union labor. Union labor educated by extensive and well-funded, vocational training programs and cultivated by robust apprenticeship programs. The interstate highway system, most airports, bridges, tunnels and almost every major skyline in the country are products of those commitments to workforce development. As a result of that relevance to millions of workers and to the country, unions became a major political force. Unfortunately for them, over time, political power became their only real product offering. This past election made it abundantly clearly, consumers just aren’t buying it anymore.
The opportunity for unions to regain lost relevance is right in their grasp, if they can only see it through the trees. Like a century before, an entire swath of the workforce needs to be lifted up, cultivated, trained and empowered to make a meaningful contribution to the economy. But what are the unions doing instead? They are standing outside McDonald's clamoring for teenagers and other entry-level workers to make $15 an hour. Really? In the face of pending massive disruption in the economy and workforce, they're focused on bullhorns and burger joints? And they wonder why they've lost market share and political relevance.
If the labor community really wants to help the kid behind the window, teach him to fish. Train him. Develop him. Build his skills. Help him compete in the modern economy. And not just him, HER too. Get him a raise and he will be thankful for a few weeks. Get him the training and skill set he needs for a career, and he will be a union supporter for life. That’s just as true today as it was a century ago.
Only then will unions regain the prominence and subsequent political clout to be relevant again. I know they need that. I know that kid needs that. And I'm pretty sure the country needs it.
Joe Kefauver is managing partner of Align Public Strategies, a full-service public affairs and creative firm that helps corporate brands, governments and nonprofits navigate the outside world and inform their internal decision-making. Align specializes in service sector industries.