Keeping up with workplace flexibility

The workplace trends we have seen over the past several decades from "flex time" to "just-in-time" to "virtual" have turned out not to be passing fads but integral and permanent changes that have led to a labor force serving an increasingly adaptable, innovative, and efficient industry base. The problem is, US labor laws were created for work conditions over a century ago when one income families could count on lifetime employment with benefits....

So while employers now have greater ability than ever before to shape-shift in scaling up, downsizing, and otherwise adapting to the opportunities and threats of rapidly changing markets, all has not been well elsewhere. As usual, our children have paid the biggest price in poverty levels, nutritional insecurity, the lack of day care facilities, and in routine prenatal and childhood healthcare. Workers who have lost their jobs due to technological change or health setbacks have had a hard time replacing their former wages due to lack of affordable healthcare, new job skills training programs, and an inability to move to where the jobs are due to their precarious paycheck-to-paycheck finances and/or the mobility constraints of two-income households.

The legislation currently before Congress would address many of these issues in significant ways. That these initiatives are labeled as "historic" causes many to hesitate, but what needs to be recognized is that for ordinary Americans these remedies are both over-due and critically needed. Failure to bring our nation's labor laws and policies into modern times will be catastrophic to our families and ultimately to the industrial base that is built on that foundation.