Addressing Technological Job Loss

Discussions about job loss caused by automation and technology tend to focus on training and income support for displaced workers. While these are extremely important, they must be part of a comprehensive good jobs strategy, and unions and collective bargaining are essential to making such a strategy work.

There is no shortage of predictions about the scale and pace of technological job loss in the future, but the truth is that nobody really knows for sure. While the precise impact is not yet clear, we know disruption and job loss have been massive over the past two centuries, and will continue to be significant into the future. Our commission understands that we must start preparing now.

We will have to manage change more successfully in the future than we have in the recent past. Job loss from deindustrialization, caused by our failed approach to globalization, was both unfair and cruel. The careers and livelihoods of millions of people have been sacrificed, and entire communities have been decimated. Changes today in the energy sector are being similarly mismanaged. Workers are being asked to bear the full brunt of energy transition, with little assistance from anyone in the corridors of power. We must do better.

We know that change can be managed successfully. As stated earlier, in the 1950s and ’60s the pace of productivity growth was faster than today, and workers experienced a tremendous amount of job loss and displacement. Yet displaced workers generally were able to transition to good new jobs thanks to strong worker bargaining power—a potent mix of full employment, collective bargaining by strong unions, robust worker protections and high levels of public investment.

Unions have been at the forefront of addressing technology-driven changes in the workplace, including job loss, for more than a century. Perhaps the most important lesson we have learned is that the best strategy for addressing job loss is ensuring the availability of good jobs. The best solution for the individual worker who loses his or her job is to find another good union job quickly. Training, education and income support can play important supporting roles, but there must be good jobs for workers to transition to.

A good place to start is by insisting on economic policies that produce full employment, which have been the calling card of the labor movement historically. As Reiner Hoffman, president of the German labor federation, emphasized in a presentation to our commission, we must be very clear that full employment is possible if we make the right policy choices. Even if the scale of future job loss is enormous, and entire sectors are eliminated, this does not mean we are condemned to a jobless future. In the past, automation has generated enough new jobs to keep unemployment from rising, by creating demand for complementary jobs and freeing up new spending as goods and services become less expensive. In the future, we can expect new jobs and entirely new sectors of the economy to be created, even if we have no inkling today what those jobs and sectors might be. As John Schmitt of EPI pointed out in his presentation to our commission, the share of Americans working in agriculture fell from more than 80% in 1800 to about 2% today, largely due to technological change, but the result was not mass unemployment. Nobody in 1800 could have predicted all the new jobs that would be created.

Full employment policies may not be enough, however. We also will need a good jobs strategy tailored to specific sectors of the economy. For example, for many years we have advocated for an industrial policy to create and sustain good jobs in the manufacturing sector. In addition, the recent report of the ILO’s Global Commission on the Future of Work recommends targeted investment in physical and digital infrastructure; the care economy (child care, early childhood education, health care and elder care); the “green economy”; and the rural economy.

There is no reason why jobs created through this kind of investment should be outsourced or automated, nor is there any reason why they cannot be good union jobs. If we make up our infrastructure deficit of $3.2 trillion, we can put millions of people to work in good union jobs and maintain strong job growth. Investment in infrastructure also will create jobs in the manufacturing sector—for example, in the production of buses and rail cars, and throughout the resulting supply chains. Building a digital infrastructure, including investment in universal broadband, can create good union jobs while ensuring the benefits of technological progress are shared broadly in all localities by all populations. The care economy is expected to grow in the future, and most of these workers are women, and many are immigrants and people of color.

In addition, millions of good jobs can be created by investing, organizing and raising labor standards in the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors; by domestic production and commercial application of advanced energy systems; by decreasing our reliance on imported clean energy goods; and by realizing that the battle to combat climate change cannot be waged on a project-by-project basis. As delegates to the 2017 AFL-CIO Convention recognized, the fastest and most equitable way to address climate change is for labor to be at the center of creating solutions that reduce emissions while investing in our communities, maintaining and creating high-wage union jobs and reducing poverty. Our commission’s Manufacturing Sector Subcommittee understands this firsthand, recommending policies to encourage U.S. manufacturing related to “better batteries; solar power; wind power; biofuels; commuter rail; electric cars; carbon capture and storage; and other technologies needed to address our environmental crisis.”

Job loss will affect some communities and regions more than others, and markets cannot be trusted to sort these things out on their own. Our commission’s Transportation Sector Subcommittee highlights the proposal for a “transportation workforce fund,” paid for by a mileage-based user fee on highly automated vehicles. Dedicated public investment will be necessary for economic development, public services and infrastructure as local tax revenues fall. We also must safeguard the pensions of impacted workers and reform bankruptcy law, in particular to prevent the breach of collective bargaining agreements.

An indispensable element of a successful good jobs strategy is collective bargaining. Union representation is an important reason why automation in the past has not been more traumatic. Collective bargaining will be critical to involve workers in the decision making about future transitions, sustain the demand necessary to create new jobs and ensure that newly created jobs include good pay, benefits and a voice. It should be the highest national priority that new jobs and emerging sectors have union representation.