| Reaching Out
to Workers `Left Behind'
Next president must devise
a strategy to close the cultural/wealth gap
June 2000 - By Ryan Streeter
- ©2000 San Francisco Chronicle
THE STOCK MARKET keeps showing
up in the presidential campaign's social policy debates
-- at the same time that George W. Bush and Al Gore were
sparring over how close to let Wall Street get to Social
Security, their policy advisers were sparring over strategies
for helping those left out of our current market boom.
Experts convened last month in Washington to discuss poverty
issues couldn't agree on how to better serve the working
poor, but they did agree on one thing: This is a problem
that the next president needs to take seriously.
In a way, each candidate has defined himself with this issue.
Gore has staked his social policy on ``our national prosperity
should not leave anyone behind.'' And Bush has built his
compassionate conservatism on the claim: ``The purpose of
prosperity is to leave no one out -- to leave no one behind.''
But do we know those ``left behind'' well enough to know
how to help them? It has become fashionable to decry the
``wealth gap'' in America and to rush to provide quick-fix
solutions to the economic plight of the poor. This assumes
we know the poor we're trying to help. What if the real
problem is the lack of understanding among those with the
resources to help?
The real wealth gap may be more cultural than economic:
many employers and the poorest workers have historically
had little to do with each other. Absent from nearly every
public discussion about economic inequality in America is
the role of employer investment in low-skilled workers.
Current hiring trends show that employers need workers and
will continue to need them, especially as Baby Boomers begin
to retire. Unlike any time in recent history, employers
are reaching out to poor, unskilled workers, many of whom
face multi ple barriers to employment.
Wall Street's gains and our continued economic expansion
have sharpened our focus on those ``left behind,` but Wall
Street is not the issue. Most experts agree that the problem
of growing inequality began when real earnings grew by 0.3
percent among the wealthiest Americans and fell 0.6 percent
among the poorest from the early 1970s through the early
1990s -- when the stock market was not skyrocketing. Growing
income disparity -- not that the rich have more assets --
strikes most people as unjust. Reasonable income growth
among the poor is the first step toward building assets.
Analysts on the right and the left generally agree on measures
that might attack the income gap: allow the poor to keep
more of their pretax earnings, promote stable families,
strengthen education, increase charitable sector involvement
and improve work supports such as child care, transportation
and income tax credits.
While these proposals meet important needs the poor have,
they would really only make the poor less poor. Only increased
earning power and the promise of a career will reduce the
income gap and move the poor out of poverty. And only employers
can provide better incomes.
The deeper issue here, though, is that the economic situation
of the poor will only be improved to the degree that employers
diminish the cultural gap between themselves and the poor.
To retain unskilled workers, employers have to invest in
them like never before. This means getting creative about
reaching out to the poor, providing unconventional human
services and paying a wage that makes sense.
Consider the Jobs Partnership in Raleigh, N.C., which brings
business leaders together with urban churches to provide
jobs for the less fortunate. More than 90 percent of program
participants keep their jobs, but the real success, according
to founding businessman Chris Mangum, is in the way that
the cultural and racial barriers between rich and poor are
coming down. He refers to program participants not as ``clients''
but as his ``neighbors,'' and he exhorts fellow businesspeople
to invest in them by providing livable wages and a broader
spectrum of personal help and services.
Or, look at the Orlando Chamber of Commerce, which works
together with Florida's welfare-to-work program to educate
area businesses in developing low-skilled workers into successful
employees. This second-largest American chamber has been
bombarded by businesses seeking to learn about the poor
-- as if to meet them for the first time.
By only focusing upon macroeconomics and social programs,
policy professionals are failing to think anew about what
we do know: most poor workers eventually leave poverty and
they do so because they find what we often call a ``career
ladder.'' Employers are the ones that can get them climbing.
The next president needs to know how to persuade the business
sector to invest in the poor. Current policies need to be
reworked to encourage career development, which is in the
interest of employers and workers. And the next president
needs to get on this yesterday.
Ryan Streeter is a research fellow
for the Welfare Policy Center of the Indianapolis-based
Hudson Institute. Poverty issues were discussed May 17 at
an event hosted by the Brookings Institution entitled, ``Americans
Left Behind: Issues Facing the Next President in Dealing
With Those Left Behind in the Current Economic Boom.'' http://www.brookings.org/comm/p2k/helping.htm
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