[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 6, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S891-S894]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                AMERICA'S WORKFORCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, Markley Roberts, the Assistant Director of 
the Economic Research Department of the American Federation of Labor 
and Congress of Industrial Organizations, recently gave the last of the 
1995 Benedum Lectures on the subject ``America's Workforce in the 21st 
Century'' at West Virginia University.
  I ask unanimous consent that a copy of his remarks, along with 
biographical material, be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

 Remarks by Markley Roberts, Assistant Director of Economic Research, 
    AFL-CIO, in the 1995 Benedum Lecture Series, University of West 
         Virginia, Morgantown, West Virginia--December 6, 1995


                  american workers in the 21st century

       I appreciate this opportunity to talk with you about 
     American workers in the 21st Century. I bring to this 
     discussion 40 years as a union member, elected union officer, 
     and speaker for the AFL-CIO, a federation of 79 unions 
     representing 13 million workers. So it's obvious that I have 
     pro-worker, pro-union instincts.
       We all share a common concern for political democracy, even 
     though we may have differing views on how political democracy 
     should affect social and economic justice. I hope you share 
     these concerns, and also my concern for human rights and 
     human welfare generally, as well as worker rights and 
     workers' welfare.
       We are blessed in the United States of America with 
     wonderful traditions of freedom, democracy, and a drive for 
     justice. Let me assure you that I appreciate what we have in 
     America--but there's no resting place, there's no stopping 
     the endless search for freedom, democracy, and justice, no 
     stopping the endless battle against injustice.
       It's not easy to define justice. I envy the judge who said 
     ``I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it.'' 
     Well, you have to look at a lot of pornography to know it 
     when you see it--and you have to look at a lot of injustice--
     political, economic, and social injustice--so you can 
     recognize justice when you see it.


                        labor force projections

       Our search for justice is endless because America is always 
     changing. The racial 

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     make-up of our population and our labor force is changing. Diversity, 
     civil rights, and equal opportunity are continuing challenges 
     in our search for justice.
       Let me lay out some projections on the American labor force 
     in the 21st Century.
       Population growth, labor force participation, and 
     immigration are key factors in determining the size of our 
     labor force.
       White, non-Hispanic people will be a smaller part of our 
     total population in the 21st Century (they have lower 
     fertility rates)--and blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific 
     Islanders, and American Indians will have a bigger share of 
     America's population.
       By the year 2005 our total labor force will be well over 
     150 million. This is men and women 16 years and older who are 
     working or looking for work.
       Four out of five workers will be white--(82%).
       One out of eight will be black--(12%).
       One out of 16 will be Asian, Pacific Islander, or American 
     Indian--(6%).
       One out of 9 workers will be Hispanic, (11%)--but Hispanics 
     also appear in white, black, and other categories.
       The labor force participation of women has gone up so much 
     over the past 30 years that the numbers of men and women in 
     the labor force are already very nearly equal. But the Bureau 
     of Labor Statistics expects a continuing increase in women's 
     labor force participation (to 63%)--and a slight drop in 
     men's labor force participation (to 75%).
       Immigration is a big question mark for the future. There is 
     now an unfortunate tendency to scapegoat legal as well as 
     illegal immigrants for some of America's economic and 
     social problems. There are proposals in Congress to cut 
     back legal immigration and to deny various benefits to 
     legal immigrants. My guess is that legal immigration will 
     drop from 800,000 a year now to about 600,000. No one 
     knows exactly how much illegal immigration there is. It 
     may be 1 million a year. But immigration--past, present, 
     and future--legal and illegal--will continue to add more 
     Hispanics and Asians to America's labor force.
       The message I draw from all this--more women permanently in 
     the labor force, more diversified racial composition of the 
     labor force, continuing legal immigration----
       Diversity and equal opportunity issues are here to stay in 
     the 21st Century--and they will continue to challenge our 
     sense of justice.


                          where are the jobs?

       A healthy economy and a healthy society should be creating 
     enough good-paying jobs for every American who needs a job 
     and wants to work. The Employment Act of 1946 and the 
     Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 reflect 
     America's belief that the opportunity to work at a decent-
     paying job is an important component of economic justice.
       What jobs will be available in the 21st Century? Where are 
     the jobs going to be? Who will get available jobs?
       Most of the new jobs are going to be in the service-
     producing sector of the American economy. Already 70 percent 
     of jobs are in the service sector--but 95 percent of the new 
     jobs created in the next 15 or 20 years will be in the 
     service sector.
       Most of the job creation will come in health care, business 
     services, retail trade, government, and FIRE (finance, 
     insurance, and real estate).
       Goods-producing industries--manufacturing, mining, and 
     construction--will have no job growth. In fact, the Bureau of 
     Labor Statistics projects fewer and fewer jobs in coal 
     mining--in spite of growing foreign demand for coal from the 
     U.S.A.--Why so? Because technology and high productivity in 
     coal mining go up even faster than demand for coal is going 
     up.
       The best jobs in the 21st Century--as in the 1990s--will be 
     the high-skill, high-pay jobs that require more and more 
     education and training. There will be more of these jobs. The 
     biggest rewards will go to the symbol analysts and symbol 
     manipulators, the people who can manipulate words and ideas 
     and computer systems and financial systems.
       Does that sound like politicians, computer whiz kids and 
     Wall Street buccaneers? I think so.
       Unfortunately, although the high-skill, high-pay, symbol 
     manipulator jobs have the fastest percentage growth, in fact 
     the biggest number of jobs opening up are low-skill, low-pay 
     jobs--janitors and cleaners, waiters and busboys, food 
     preparation jobs, security guards, nursing aides and 
     orderlies and other low-paid hospital and health service 
     workers.
       Many of these janitors and security guards will have high 
     school diplomas and some will have college degrees because 
     they can't find higher-level, higher-pay jobs. It will take 
     more education and training to get a job--but there's no 
     guarantee it will be a high-level, high-pay job.
       Unfortunately, it is a polarized occupational distribution 
     that is developing--more high-skill, high-pay, professional 
     jobs at the top--but many more low-skill, low-pay jobs at the 
     bottom, and fewer and fewer middle-range, middle-class jobs--
     jobs which have been a solid foundation for a mass production 
     economy based on widely dispersed mass buying power, the 
     foundation for a stable middle-class society, the foundation 
     for a stable democratic political system.
       Polarization in our distribution of job skills and 
     polarization in earnings from work will continue to challenge 
     our sense of justice in the 21st Century.


                              unemployment

       Some years ago Dr. Harvey Brenner of the Johns Hopkins 
     School of Public Health did a very scholarly study which 
     showed that increases in unemployment have a clear negative 
     effect on workers and their families and on local 
     communities--more murders, more suicides, more heart 
     ailments, more mental illness, more drug abuse, more family 
     violence, more family breakdown, more community crime. (1% 
     UE, 2% heart, 5.6% homicide)
       Unemployment is a personal tragedy, a human tragedy for the 
     workers without a job and for their families. Most workers 
     are paying on a mortgage, paying on a car, paying for their 
     children's dental care, paying for food on the table. When 
     they lose their jobs, they often lose also their medical care 
     plan and their pension rights. This violates our sense of 
     justice.
       The human costs of unemployment are huge. It's almost 
     impossible to quantify the human costs and human hardship. 
     That's why I am so grateful for Dr. Brenner's study. But the 
     economic costs are also huge. Economists have estimated 
     unemployment costs at hundreds of billions of dollars, the 
     difference between actual output and potential output. The 
     Congressional Budget Office has estimated that each 1 percent 
     of unemployment costs the American economy $150 billion--$100 
     billion in lost output and another $50 billion in extra costs 
     of unemployment compensation and welfare payments. And this 
     does not take into account the extra health and crime costs 
     that Harvey Brenner found.
       Economists often distinguish different kinds of 
     unemployment: frictional unemployment when you are just 
     between jobs; seasonal unemployment related to the time of 
     year; cyclical unemployment related to ups and downs of the 
     business cycle; and structural unemployment related to such 
     problems as changing technology, changing education 
     requirements, discrimination based on age, race, sex; and 
     trade policies that wipe out American jobs.
       Whatever the reasons for unemployment--and there are many 
     of them--the key policy-makers in the American economy seem 
     to be tolerating higher and higher levels of unemployment. A 
     misguided and excessive fear of inflation lies behind the 
     powerful economic judgments and decisions of the banker-
     dominated Federal Reserve Board which makes key decisions on 
     interest rates and money supply. Inflation is not the 
     problem. It's the Federal Reserve that's the problem.
       The Federal Reserve wrongly operates on the discredited 
     theory that there is some ``natural rate of unemployment'' 
     and if unemployment goes below the so-called ``natural rate'' 
     then inflation will mess up the economy. This is [a] wrong 
     view of how the American economy operates, and it deserves a 
     thorough critique--but I am going to spare you what is a very 
     abstract, abstruse argument and simply say that there are 
     some very distinguished economists--including Nobel prize-
     winners James Tobin and Robert Solow--who disagree with the 
     theory of a ``natural rate of unemployment.''
       Unfortunately, unless we have a major, catastrophic 
     economic breakdown, the anti-inflation zealots at the Federal 
     Reserve will continue to use their money-and-interest-rate 
     power to hold back job-creating economic growth. Why so? 
     Because the general public and most political leaders don't 
     understand monetary policy--and because the banker interests 
     that dominate the Federal Reserve are more concerned about 
     having a stable dollar than they are about having full 
     employment.
       This violates my sense of justice--even if it doesn't 
     bother the bankers.


                           workers in poverty

       Poverty in America is another challenge to our sense of 
     justice. Michael Harrington and Hubert Humphrey deserve a lot 
     of credit for awakening America's conscience on poverty. 
     Humphrey gave an education to Jack Kennedy in West Virginia's 
     1960 primary campaign and laid the groundwork for Lyndon 
     Johnson's War on Poverty.
       But poverty is still here. Most poverty is related to 
     unemployment and low wages. We have in the United States 
     almost 40 million Americans in poverty, about 15 percent of 
     the population. That's one out of seven Americans living in 
     poverty--and one out of every five children in America lives 
     in poverty.
       Unemployment compensation and welfare payments are part of 
     the social safety net system that we have put together to 
     protect Americans who need help--but training and decent-pay 
     jobs are also necessary. The so-called welfare reform bills 
     now before Congress will do little or nothing to relieve 
     poverty--and may even increase poverty by forcing more and 
     more welfare recipients into low-wage labor markets where 
     they will drive down [the] wages and earnings of America's 
     working poor.
       Census figures show 10 million working poor--people who 
     work at least part of the year, but cannot find full-time, 
     year-round work to lift themselves and their families out of 
     poverty.
       But what I find even more outrageous is the fact that two-
     and-half million Americans work full-time year-round at such 
     low wages that they still cannot pull their families up out 
     of poverty. This is a powerful argument for raising and 
     indexing the minimum wage.
       Raising the minimum wage helps reduce poverty. So do 
     employment and training programs, Medicaid, food stamps, the 
     Earned Income Tax Credit, and other safety-net programs that 
     help low-income people and many 

[[Page S893]]
     middle-income people. But I remind you--in a non-partisan way--that the 
     Republican-dominated Congress is cutting and killing most of 
     these programs that help poor people rise up out of 
     poverty.
       Is this social or economic justice? I think not.
       The result of these slash-and-burn tactics is that poverty 
     will remain a challenge to our sense of justice well into the 
     21st Century.


                    inequality in income and wealth

       Let me turn now to America's widening gaps in income and 
     wealth. The rich are getting richer. The poor are getting 
     poorer. And our middle class is getting smaller. Is this 
     economic justice?
       The richest 5 percent of America's families got real income 
     gains of 40 percent between 1979 and 1993. Families in the 
     middle lost 2.6 percent in real income--and the poorest 20 
     percent of American families lost 15 percent in real income.
       This is not news. You can read about it in Time or 
     Newsweek, in Forbes, Fortune, or Business Week. It is the 
     subject of concerned editorials, especially now that Congress 
     is cutting programs that help middle-class and low-income 
     people and preparing to heap $240 billion in tax cuts on rich 
     folks and big corporations.
       The distribution of wealth is even more unequal than the 
     distribution of income--and it has become more unequal in the 
     last 15 years. The top 1 percent, the richest in the country, 
     own 40 percent of all wealth and 50 percent of all financial 
     wealth in the United States. For most of us, our biggest 
     wealth holding is in our home--but for the top 1 percent most 
     of their wealth is in stocks and bonds.
       Between 1983 and 1989, the richest 1 percent got more than 
     60 percent of the nation's entire increase in financial 
     wealth--and between 1989 and 1992 the top 1 percent got 68 
     percent of the nation's increase in financial wealth.
       In fact, America has never been an egalitarian society--but 
     the last 15 years have produced more and more economic, 
     social, and political polarization--polarization that will 
     bring social and political troubles in the 21st Century.
       Is this economic justice? I think not.


                           big business power

       Let me turn to big business. Americans are ambivalent about 
     big business. We want the benefits of bigness--but we are 
     right to fear the concentration of economic power.
       It's no secret that the decisions of giant multinational 
     corporations and big banks dominate huge sectors of the 
     American economy, dominate much of our politics, dominate 
     much of economic policy-making.
       If you take the top 10 companies in banking, energy, 
     manufacturing, telecommunications, retail and service, or 
     transportation, you will find a tremendous concentration of 
     economic power--and a lot of overlapping, interlocking 
     controls through banks and board of directors.
       Big business decisions affect the nation's prosperity and 
     the jobs and earnings and living standards of all Americans--
     but there's little or no accountability to the general 
     public.
       The Mine Workers learned this in their fight with Pittston. 
     The Steelworkers learned this in their fight with Ravenswood. 
     And thousands of laid-off bank workers learned this after the 
     Chase-Chemical bank merger.
       Is this economic justice?
       Suppose your employer decides to be lean and mean, to 
     downsize and layoff workers or shift production from West 
     Virginia to Mississippi--or to Mexico. Unless you have a 
     union to represent you there's not much you can do about it. 
     When Congress passed the WARN law requiring 60 days advance 
     notice of plant closing, big business fought tooth-and-nail 
     to get weakening loopholes in the law--even though some of 
     those same companies have union contracts requiring even more 
     advance notice.
       Top executive pay in big corporations is out-of-sight to 
     the average American worker. Business Week reports these top 
     executives averaged $3 million last year--120 times the 
     $25,000 earned by the average factory worker--and often 
     executive pay raises bear no relation to company profits.
       Is this economic justice? Do we want the American economy, 
     American society, and American politics in the 21st Century 
     to be so heavily dominated by unaccountable, overpaid 
     corporate executives who are out of touch with the hopes and 
     fears and living standards of average American families. I 
     think not.


                       unions in the 21st century

       I turn now to the role of American labor unions in the 21st 
     Century. With or without labor law reform, unions are here to 
     stay because they meet a basic human need, the need to 
     participate in the decisions that shape your life and your 
     future, the need to have justice on the job.
       That's why almost all union-management agreements require 
     fair treatment on pay and benefits and job security, and due 
     process for grievances, including outside arbitration.
       Our national labor policy is supposed to guarantee working 
     men and women the right to organize and the right to bargain 
     collectively so that workers, acting through freely chosen, 
     independent labor unions, can jointly negotiate the terms and 
     conditions of their employment.
       This is the way we achieve some degree of democracy in the 
     workplace. This is the way we have built up a system of 
     industrial jurisprudence, a way of making labor-management 
     relations more civilized.
       Unfortunately, the reality too often is that these basic 
     worker rights are violated by anti-union employers determined 
     to thwart workers' efforts to form a union and bargain 
     collectively.
       The business of union-busting--and it is big business--is a 
     major part of the explanation for the decline of union 
     membership in the U.S.A. from a 1955 high of 35 percent of 
     the labor force to the current rate of 16 or 17 percent.
       There are additional reasons, of course. Trade policy and 
     imports have decimated union jobs in manufacturing. The big 
     increase of jobs has been in state and local government and 
     in the hard-to-organize service-sector industries. John 
     Sweeney, the new President of the AFL-CIO, was formerly 
     President of the fast-expanding Service Employees Union, so I 
     expect a heavy emphasis in the future on Union organizing in 
     the service sector and growth of white-collar and pink-
     collar unionism.
       Why do I expect unions to grow in the 21st Century? One 
     reason is what I have described as the human need to 
     participate in the decisions that shape your working life. I 
     see this as a basic human right.
       Also, with more and more women and minorities and older 
     workers there will be more and more need for on-the-job quick 
     response to discrimination and harassment based on sex, age, 
     and race. A union in the workplace can help defend workers 
     with this quick response.
       Most important, perhaps, is the self-interest of 
     enlightened employers who will empower their workers and 
     enlist their unions in raising quality, raising efficiency 
     and productivity, lowering costs, and raising profits.
       The first and foremost role of unions in the U.S.A. is to 
     represent their members in bargaining with management for 
     better wages and working conditions. To many people this 
     looks like an adversary relationship between unions and 
     management, and in some respects it is just that during the 
     negotiation of a contract as unions try to get more for the 
     workers.
       But most contracts run for two to three years. During the 
     life of the contract, the union will be protecting its 
     members from arbitrary or unfair actions by management, 
     protecting the safety and health of workers--but the job 
     security and economic security of the workers depends on the 
     employer's profitability and continued existence.
       That's why you find more and more enlightened employers and 
     unions working together in joint labor-management committees 
     in a wide variety of worker training and ``mutual gain'' 
     productivity-raising programs, with more and more emphasis on 
     restructuring work and empowering workers to participate in 
     the decisions that affect their working lives and affect 
     profitability of the employer.
       Co-operation of this kind is not a one-way street. It 
     depends on trust and mutual commitment. Management cannot 
     attack unions and expect co-operation.
       Many management people feel threatened by the idea of 
     giving workers more information about company production and 
     financial affairs. They feel threatened by shared decision-
     making. But there's a lot of evidence that ``empowering 
     workers'' not only increases democracy in the workplace--it 
     also raises workers' commitment and motivation, raises 
     quality of the product or service, raises efficiency, 
     productivity, and profits.
       Justice on the job includes a unionized workplace--and a 
     unionized workplace can raise productivity and profits.


                      politics in the 21st Century

       I suggested earlier that big business dominates the 
     democratic political process in America, but that's only a 
     partial truth. In addition to the big money of big business, 
     in addition to our two major political parties, we have a lot 
     of political activity by organized labor at the local, state, 
     and national level.
       I want to pay my respects here to one of labor's most 
     respected, most effective leaders, Joe Powell, President of 
     the West Virginia AFL-CIO Labor Federation. I have know him 
     for many years. He is a tower of strength in America's 
     labor movement.
       The labor movement can never come close to matching the 
     huge flow of political money from big business disguised as 
     personal contributions from business executives and their 
     spouses and children. But fortunately we have among our 13 
     million union members thousands and thousands of political 
     activists who distribute voting records, who punch doorbells 
     to get out the vote, who are committed to the democratic 
     process, who are committed to bringing more democracy and 
     more justice to America.
       Unions and union members will be there in the 21st Century, 
     pushing for democracy and justice in city and county 
     councils, in the halls of the state legislatures and in the 
     halls of Congress.
       And unions and union workers will be there in the 21st 
     Century at the ballot box, at the bargaining table and in the 
     workplace, pushing for justice on the job and for more 
     justice in all aspects of American life.
                                                                    ____


                      Biography of Markley Roberts

       Markley Roberts is a distinguished economist at the ALF-CIO 
     labor union federation with a long list of professional 
     accomplishments and publications. He is currently Assistant 
     Director of Economic Research and 

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     Director of the AFL-CIO Office of Employment and Training.
       Born in Shanghai, China, in 1930, the child of missionary 
     teachers, Roberts graduated from Princeton University in 1951 
     with an A.B. in Public Affairs. He received an M.A. in 
     Economics in 1960 and the Ph.D in Economics in 1970 from 
     American University. He worked at the Washington Star 
     newspaper from 1952 to 1957. From 1958 to 1961 he was a 
     legislative assistant to Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. Since 
     1962 he has worked at the AFL-CIO, first as a legislative 
     assistant in the AFL-CIO Department of Legislation and, since 
     1971, as an economist in the AFL-CIO Department of Economic 
     Research. In 1985 he was named Director of the AFL-CIO Office 
     of Employment and Training. In 1989 he also became Assistant 
     Director of Economic Research.
       In recognition of his experience and achievements in the 
     field of industrial relations and collective bargaining, 
     Roberts was elected to the executive board of a national 
     professional association, the Industrial Relations Research 
     Association in 1977. In recognition of his accomplishments in 
     the field of unemployment compensation, he was elected to the 
     National Academy of Social Insurance in 1991.
       Mr. Roberts is a publications consultant to Economics 
     America, the National Council for Economic Education, and a 
     member of the advisory board for ``The Senior Economist.''
       He has a long list of publications which include ``Making 
     Sense of Federal Employment and Training Policy for Youth and 
     Adults'' and ``Labor's Key Role in Workplace Training.''

                          ____________________