Making ‘bad’ jobs good a social and political matter
WASHINGTON » So many policy proposals aimed at reducing economic inequality emphasize moving disadvantaged people into higher-paying, higher-skilled jobs, typically with more access to education and training.
We do need to invest far more in expanding opportunity for fellow citizens who have lost all hope for advancement, but there is a flaw in this thinking, as Steven Dawson argues in his paper “Make Bad Jobs Better.”
Dawson focuses on the tens of millions of Americans who do very necessary work in our society and receive little reward for their efforts. He challenges the idea that “bad jobs” are destined to be bad forever, and that little can be done to enhance them.
We mourn the decline of manufacturing jobs that were once seen as “bad.” It took unions working to raise pay and benefits and social legislation limiting hours and protecting worker safety to make old economy blue-collar jobs “good.”
What constitutes good work is a matter of social and political decision-making — and choices by employers to see their workers as assets and not merely as costs.
At the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, Dawson helped create employeeowned cooperatives of home health care workers, converting poorly paid jobs into pathways to independence, entrepreneurship and respect.
Dawson is scathing about the way our employment markets treat large numbers of very hardworking people. “A bad job is not simply the absence of a good job,” he writes. “A bad job destabilizes the individual, her family and the community. A bad job not only fails to pay enough for decent food and shelter for a worker’s family, it can risk her health, disrupt any chance for a predictable family life, undermine her dignity, and deny her voice within the workplace.”
He notes that “the occupations that employ the largest numbers of low-income youth and adult workers … experienced higher than average real wage declines” in the years after the Great Recession. The pay drops were especially large for workers in retail, personal care and food preparation.
At the bottom of the economy, the bane of workers’ lives is instability: wage theft, parttime work, seasonal work, variable hours and unpredictable schedules — the problem of “not knowing when you will be called to show up to your next part-time shift.” Lowwage jobs are also among the least safe.
Public policy can make jobs better, starting with higher minimum wages, income supplements such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, universal family leave and health coverage for everyone. We need to build on the Affordable Care Act, not gut it.
Public programs should be consciously geared not just to providing essential services but also to offering platforms for the improvement of work life itself, for enriched training, and for more worker voice.
Dawson also looks to private-sector employers for solutions. Especially when labor markets are tight, employers have an interest in satisfied, engaged and well-trained workers who welcome responsibility. Thus the Federal Reserve should avoid steps that would increase unemployment.
In another useful paper, “Restore the Promise of Work,” Dawson joins the Aspen Institute’s Maureen Conway to call for lifting up “high-road employers” who offer concrete examples of good jobs. Tax policy can encourage high-road practices, and Conway and Dawson note that when governments contract for private-sector services, job quality should be part of the negotiations.
Such reforms and innovations could change the lives of a great many struggling people.
When it comes to job quality, we need to get to work.