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Policies + Practices to address demographic inequity that may result from new technology's uneven labor impacts, differences in available training and education resources, or limitations in worker mobility that may limit access to new opportunities.
Governments should evaluate the extent to which psychometric testing—the use of questionnaires aimed at psychologically profiling job candidates—provides accurate insights about whether someone is qualified for a job. Decision-makers should consider regulating or limiting employers' use of these tools to make employment decisions based on their potential to create discriminatory outcomes.
Governments should rigorously evaluate, and consider regulating, employers' use of predictive algorithmic software to make decisions about job recruitment, hiring, compensation, and employee evaluation. In light of the growing prevalence of these tools, which create the potential for unfair profiling and discrimination, decision-makers should have accurate information about what inputs and functionalities produce these outcomes.
Governments should create and enforce provisions to prevent platform economy companies (such as food delivery services) from retaining tips meant for workers.
Governments should take steps to address the recent proliferation of noncompete and similar provisions in employment contracts. Creating and enforcing provisions against the improper use of noncompetes and no-poach/no-hire agreements can improve working people's wages and job mobility.
Governments should support the expansion of worker-owned and -controlled job-matching services, which would give workers power in the job-matching process and allow them to establish floors for wages and benefits and otherwise improve workplace standards, all while creating an empowered worker community.
A Worker Organization Administration should be established to provide technical assistance and counseling to workers interested in starting worker organizations and organizations interested in initiating organizing campaigns. In addition, the WOA could contract with worker organizations to train workers participating in works councils, serving as workplace monitors, and serving on corporate boards.
Governments should create partnership with unions, worker centers, and other worker organizations to enforce labor standards and proactively address issues in the work environment. A partnership with a government agency can play a legitimizing role for a worker organization, encouraging workers to take the organization more seriously and encourage support for collective organizing.
Governments should pass laws to create mechanisms for digital picket lines, requiring employers to allow workers to mirror in-person collective action in online transactions. Functioning essentially as a disclosure regime, the digital picket line would require employers to allow workers to inform online customers about strikes occurring at the employer’s physical site.
Governments should allow workers to express their desire for collective representation by signing a card or petition, whether physical or digital, without the need for a formal election process administered by an external review board. Cards or petitions would be presumed valid and would trigger bargaining obligations until they are actually declared invalid by the board.
Governments should pass statutes mandating that workplaces of a predetermined size have a worker-elected workplace monitor. In workplaces with 500 or fewer workers, there would be a single workplace monitor; in workplaces with more than 500 workers, the workers would elect 1 workplace monitor for every 500 workers. The monitors would be empowered to help ensure the workplace’s compliance with all state, federal, and local employment and labor laws and receive paid time off for their monitoring work.
Governments should expressly protect the right to collectively bargain among any independent contractors who: (1) do not employ any employees; (2) who make little capital investment—roughly defined as investment that is limited to the needs of the independent contractor personally (e.g., one car, one set of tools, one computer, etc.)—in their “businesses”; and (3)who share the same economic relationship with a single company.
Governments should require employers to facilitate workers’ communication by providing workers (and/or worker organizations) with a way to contact their coworkers. This obligation could run either to everyone in the organization, a default that many companies currently use (e.g., because their internal email address books include everyone in the organization); to all of the workers in an organization who are covered by labor law; or to subsets of workers who do similar jobs. This requirement could be as straightforward as requiring employers to provide workers with a list of company email addresses or other contact information, but a communications-facilitation requirement could be more effective if workers had a private forum for online communication.
Governments should significantly increase employer penalties for intervening in organizing campaigns, including making punitive damages available. For example, if an employee is discharged or suffers other serious economic harm in violation of the substantive rights to organize provided by labor law, the new statute should require that the employee be awarded backpay (without any reduction for interim earnings) and an additional award in damages.
Governments should expand access to skills training by making workers who lose their jobs eligible for a Dislocation Reskilling Account. The account would provide public funds to invest in training through an apprenticeship or other training program, with a community organization or at a community or technical college, to prepare workers who lose their jobs for new jobs created as a result of technological shifts in the workplace.
Governments and and higher education systems should develop and delivers services to ensure that all learners, including those with preexisting personal barriers, have pathways to credential attainment.
Governments should remove obstacles to participating in work and learning by closing gaps in access to medical and mental health care, including for those recovering from substance use disorders. Policies should work toward an ecosystem in which all workers, including those with disabilities, can participate in work and learning opportunities.
Governments should develop a regulatory framework to ensure tha new financing tools, such as income sharing agreements (ISAs), do not further predatory student debt collection practices. Policies can reduce risks associated with emerging financing models by limiting stacked ISAs, shifting risk from students to funders, and banning discriminatory and predatory practices.
Governments should support returning veterans and their spouses transitioning to the civilian labor market by removing barriers to recognition of occupation-specific training completed as part of military service.
States should collect more data from employers to improve outcomes tracking for those participating in the UI system. Additional data points may include hours worked, occupational codes and position titles.
Law- and policy makers should consider new regulations that interpret anti-discrimination laws in light of predictive hiring tools. Predictive or algorithmic hiring technology, increasingly in use by major employers across the world, are subject to human bias and can affect equity throughout the entire hiring process. Current laws and enforcement frameworks must be updated to hold vendors of such technology accountable and ensure that workers and job applicants continue to be treated with fairness in recruiting, interviewing, and selection.
As the number of middle-skilled and middle-paying jobs decline in the years ahead, other jobs like home health aides and personal care aides are projected to grow at an even faster pace. Despite their growth in number, care jobs rank very poorly on various important job quality markers, such as flexibility and safe working conditions. Policy makers can enact steps to improve the quality of these jobs, such as addressing wages, regulating to improve working conditions and safety, and enhancing opportunities for upward mobility and training.
Given the difficulties identified by workers in transition of changing careers, internal pathways to management provide an accessible path toward greater economic stability and resilience to automation. However, women are much less likely to desire and pursue these internal promotions, due to factors such as less scheduling flexibility, greater presumed childcare and family responsibilities, and bad experiences in more demanding roles. Employers should address these concerns directly via scheduling and management changes to make management opportunities attractive and possible for women.
Governments should establish tax credits for employers who hire individuals with criminal records, based on a percentage of qualified wages. The credits should be phased in over time to encourage long-term and stable employment, and should accompany a push to provide apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, and work-based learning arrangements for these individuals. Obtaining meaningful employment early after returning from prison is one of the key factors in reducing recidivism and promoting independence.
Governments should ease restrictions and expand access to quality college educations in prisons. Steps could include expanding tuition assistance and scholarships, allowing the use of computers in prison education programs, and streamlining and updating clearance procedures for college professors to teach in these programs. Maintaining access to college education in prisons has shown to improve employment outcomes and prevent recidivism.
Corrections and labor departments should partner to expand access to effective vocational and training programs for incarcerated people. Research into best practices for corrections-based training shows that longer and more extensive programs focused on in-demand skills, preferably determined with input from employers, and that include follow-up with individuals upon release, are most effective. Employability is a major component of successful reentry and prevents recidivism, but only a small percentage of incarcerated people are able to participate in vocational or other training programs while in prison.
Unions can experiment with a form of membership or affiliation founded on ideological alignment rather than provision of services—an organization of people who want to learn about and support unions but are not currently represented by a union—similar to the American Civil Liberties Union, Sierra Club or National Rifle Association. These diffuse supporters could be a source of leaders and support for efforts by working people to come together in a union or to bargain a fair contract, as well as for pro-worker policy initiatives.
Governments should create “transportation workforce funds” paid for by mileage-based user fees on highly automated vehicles. Eligibility for the use of these funds should include but not be strictly limited to wage supplements, health care premiums, retirement benefits, extension of unemployment insurance benefits, and training or retraining programs. These funds will ease job transitions and bolster economic security for workers as automated transit and ride-hailing services enter communities.
Governments should create support mechanisms to increase youth employment participation rate. This would include reducing structural barriers in labor market regulations, creating incentives to encourage the hiring of youth, and reducing tax burdens. Such measures would help facilitate the transition of youth workers between informal and formal employment.
Policymakers should respond to changing demographics by promoting diversity of labor contractual arrangements. Fostering more flexible and destandardized working conditions will allow increase labor market participation and inclusion by attracting vulnerable groups, such as women, people with a disability, ethnic minorities. For example, population ageing calls for longer working lives but also the need to develop more flexible working arrangements that fit the abilities and preferences of older people.
Employers should use on-the-job training subsidies and tax incentives to hire individuals from underemployed groups. Private-sector recruitment strategies need to better address training and hiring of often overlooked populations of job seekers—including older, long-term unemployed job seekers, adults with disabilities, veterans, individuals with pastconvictions, opportunity youth (out of work & out of school)—and governments often provide underutilized programs and incentives.
Governments should explore new models of workforce development that provide workers with individualized skills forecasting, career coaching tools, and information about skills in demand. Funding should be targeted at mid-skill, mid-wage earning workers (those employees whose jobs will be most threatened by automation and technology).
Government agencies should partner with local governments and non-profits to target training programs to disadvantaged groups, including disconnected youth. If these populations are redirected to education, training, and gainful employment, potential cost savings in public assistance, incarceration, and lost wage costs accrue both to individuals receiving training and to taxpayers.
Governments should evaluate the extent to which psychometric testing—the use of questionnaires aimed at psychologically profiling job candidates—provides accurate insights about whether someone is qualified for a job. Decision-makers should consider regulating or limiting employers' use of these tools to make employment decisions based on their potential to create discriminatory outcomes.
Governments should rigorously evaluate, and consider regulating, employers' use of predictive algorithmic software to make decisions about job recruitment, hiring, compensation, and employee evaluation. In light of the growing prevalence of these tools, which create the potential for unfair profiling and discrimination, decision-makers should have accurate information about what inputs and functionalities produce these outcomes.
Governments should create and enforce provisions to prevent platform economy companies (such as food delivery services) from retaining tips meant for workers.
Governments should take steps to address the recent proliferation of noncompete and similar provisions in employment contracts. Creating and enforcing provisions against the improper use of noncompetes and no-poach/no-hire agreements can improve working people's wages and job mobility.
Governments should support the expansion of worker-owned and -controlled job-matching services, which would give workers power in the job-matching process and allow them to establish floors for wages and benefits and otherwise improve workplace standards, all while creating an empowered worker community.
A Worker Organization Administration should be established to provide technical assistance and counseling to workers interested in starting worker organizations and organizations interested in initiating organizing campaigns. In addition, the WOA could contract with worker organizations to train workers participating in works councils, serving as workplace monitors, and serving on corporate boards.
Governments should create partnership with unions, worker centers, and other worker organizations to enforce labor standards and proactively address issues in the work environment. A partnership with a government agency can play a legitimizing role for a worker organization, encouraging workers to take the organization more seriously and encourage support for collective organizing.
Governments should pass laws to create mechanisms for digital picket lines, requiring employers to allow workers to mirror in-person collective action in online transactions. Functioning essentially as a disclosure regime, the digital picket line would require employers to allow workers to inform online customers about strikes occurring at the employer’s physical site.
Governments should allow workers to express their desire for collective representation by signing a card or petition, whether physical or digital, without the need for a formal election process administered by an external review board. Cards or petitions would be presumed valid and would trigger bargaining obligations until they are actually declared invalid by the board.
Governments should pass statutes mandating that workplaces of a predetermined size have a worker-elected workplace monitor. In workplaces with 500 or fewer workers, there would be a single workplace monitor; in workplaces with more than 500 workers, the workers would elect 1 workplace monitor for every 500 workers. The monitors would be empowered to help ensure the workplace’s compliance with all state, federal, and local employment and labor laws and receive paid time off for their monitoring work.
Governments should expressly protect the right to collectively bargain among any independent contractors who: (1) do not employ any employees; (2) who make little capital investment—roughly defined as investment that is limited to the needs of the independent contractor personally (e.g., one car, one set of tools, one computer, etc.)—in their “businesses”; and (3)who share the same economic relationship with a single company.
Governments should require employers to facilitate workers’ communication by providing workers (and/or worker organizations) with a way to contact their coworkers. This obligation could run either to everyone in the organization, a default that many companies currently use (e.g., because their internal email address books include everyone in the organization); to all of the workers in an organization who are covered by labor law; or to subsets of workers who do similar jobs. This requirement could be as straightforward as requiring employers to provide workers with a list of company email addresses or other contact information, but a communications-facilitation requirement could be more effective if workers had a private forum for online communication.
Governments should significantly increase employer penalties for intervening in organizing campaigns, including making punitive damages available. For example, if an employee is discharged or suffers other serious economic harm in violation of the substantive rights to organize provided by labor law, the new statute should require that the employee be awarded backpay (without any reduction for interim earnings) and an additional award in damages.
Governments should expand access to skills training by making workers who lose their jobs eligible for a Dislocation Reskilling Account. The account would provide public funds to invest in training through an apprenticeship or other training program, with a community organization or at a community or technical college, to prepare workers who lose their jobs for new jobs created as a result of technological shifts in the workplace.
Governments and and higher education systems should develop and delivers services to ensure that all learners, including those with preexisting personal barriers, have pathways to credential attainment.
Governments should remove obstacles to participating in work and learning by closing gaps in access to medical and mental health care, including for those recovering from substance use disorders. Policies should work toward an ecosystem in which all workers, including those with disabilities, can participate in work and learning opportunities.
Governments should develop a regulatory framework to ensure tha new financing tools, such as income sharing agreements (ISAs), do not further predatory student debt collection practices. Policies can reduce risks associated with emerging financing models by limiting stacked ISAs, shifting risk from students to funders, and banning discriminatory and predatory practices.
Governments should support returning veterans and their spouses transitioning to the civilian labor market by removing barriers to recognition of occupation-specific training completed as part of military service.
States should collect more data from employers to improve outcomes tracking for those participating in the UI system. Additional data points may include hours worked, occupational codes and position titles.
Law- and policy makers should consider new regulations that interpret anti-discrimination laws in light of predictive hiring tools. Predictive or algorithmic hiring technology, increasingly in use by major employers across the world, are subject to human bias and can affect equity throughout the entire hiring process. Current laws and enforcement frameworks must be updated to hold vendors of such technology accountable and ensure that workers and job applicants continue to be treated with fairness in recruiting, interviewing, and selection.
As the number of middle-skilled and middle-paying jobs decline in the years ahead, other jobs like home health aides and personal care aides are projected to grow at an even faster pace. Despite their growth in number, care jobs rank very poorly on various important job quality markers, such as flexibility and safe working conditions. Policy makers can enact steps to improve the quality of these jobs, such as addressing wages, regulating to improve working conditions and safety, and enhancing opportunities for upward mobility and training.
Given the difficulties identified by workers in transition of changing careers, internal pathways to management provide an accessible path toward greater economic stability and resilience to automation. However, women are much less likely to desire and pursue these internal promotions, due to factors such as less scheduling flexibility, greater presumed childcare and family responsibilities, and bad experiences in more demanding roles. Employers should address these concerns directly via scheduling and management changes to make management opportunities attractive and possible for women.
Governments should establish tax credits for employers who hire individuals with criminal records, based on a percentage of qualified wages. The credits should be phased in over time to encourage long-term and stable employment, and should accompany a push to provide apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, and work-based learning arrangements for these individuals. Obtaining meaningful employment early after returning from prison is one of the key factors in reducing recidivism and promoting independence.
Governments should ease restrictions and expand access to quality college educations in prisons. Steps could include expanding tuition assistance and scholarships, allowing the use of computers in prison education programs, and streamlining and updating clearance procedures for college professors to teach in these programs. Maintaining access to college education in prisons has shown to improve employment outcomes and prevent recidivism.
Corrections and labor departments should partner to expand access to effective vocational and training programs for incarcerated people. Research into best practices for corrections-based training shows that longer and more extensive programs focused on in-demand skills, preferably determined with input from employers, and that include follow-up with individuals upon release, are most effective. Employability is a major component of successful reentry and prevents recidivism, but only a small percentage of incarcerated people are able to participate in vocational or other training programs while in prison.
Governments should create “transportation workforce funds” paid for by mileage-based user fees on highly automated vehicles. Eligibility for the use of these funds should include but not be strictly limited to wage supplements, health care premiums, retirement benefits, extension of unemployment insurance benefits, and training or retraining programs. These funds will ease job transitions and bolster economic security for workers as automated transit and ride-hailing services enter communities.
Governments should create support mechanisms to increase youth employment participation rate. This would include reducing structural barriers in labor market regulations, creating incentives to encourage the hiring of youth, and reducing tax burdens. Such measures would help facilitate the transition of youth workers between informal and formal employment.
Policymakers should respond to changing demographics by promoting diversity of labor contractual arrangements. Fostering more flexible and destandardized working conditions will allow increase labor market participation and inclusion by attracting vulnerable groups, such as women, people with a disability, ethnic minorities. For example, population ageing calls for longer working lives but also the need to develop more flexible working arrangements that fit the abilities and preferences of older people.
Governments should explore new models of workforce development that provide workers with individualized skills forecasting, career coaching tools, and information about skills in demand. Funding should be targeted at mid-skill, mid-wage earning workers (those employees whose jobs will be most threatened by automation and technology).
Government agencies should partner with local governments and non-profits to target training programs to disadvantaged groups, including disconnected youth. If these populations are redirected to education, training, and gainful employment, potential cost savings in public assistance, incarceration, and lost wage costs accrue both to individuals receiving training and to taxpayers.
Governments should support the expansion of worker-owned and -controlled job-matching services, which would give workers power in the job-matching process and allow them to establish floors for wages and benefits and otherwise improve workplace standards, all while creating an empowered worker community.
Governments should pass laws to create mechanisms for digital picket lines, requiring employers to allow workers to mirror in-person collective action in online transactions. Functioning essentially as a disclosure regime, the digital picket line would require employers to allow workers to inform online customers about strikes occurring at the employer’s physical site.
Governments should pass statutes mandating that workplaces of a predetermined size have a worker-elected workplace monitor. In workplaces with 500 or fewer workers, there would be a single workplace monitor; in workplaces with more than 500 workers, the workers would elect 1 workplace monitor for every 500 workers. The monitors would be empowered to help ensure the workplace’s compliance with all state, federal, and local employment and labor laws and receive paid time off for their monitoring work.
Governments should expressly protect the right to collectively bargain among any independent contractors who: (1) do not employ any employees; (2) who make little capital investment—roughly defined as investment that is limited to the needs of the independent contractor personally (e.g., one car, one set of tools, one computer, etc.)—in their “businesses”; and (3)who share the same economic relationship with a single company.
Governments should require employers to facilitate workers’ communication by providing workers (and/or worker organizations) with a way to contact their coworkers. This obligation could run either to everyone in the organization, a default that many companies currently use (e.g., because their internal email address books include everyone in the organization); to all of the workers in an organization who are covered by labor law; or to subsets of workers who do similar jobs. This requirement could be as straightforward as requiring employers to provide workers with a list of company email addresses or other contact information, but a communications-facilitation requirement could be more effective if workers had a private forum for online communication.
Governments should expand access to skills training by making workers who lose their jobs eligible for a Dislocation Reskilling Account. The account would provide public funds to invest in training through an apprenticeship or other training program, with a community organization or at a community or technical college, to prepare workers who lose their jobs for new jobs created as a result of technological shifts in the workplace.
Governments should remove obstacles to participating in work and learning by closing gaps in access to medical and mental health care, including for those recovering from substance use disorders. Policies should work toward an ecosystem in which all workers, including those with disabilities, can participate in work and learning opportunities.
Given the difficulties identified by workers in transition of changing careers, internal pathways to management provide an accessible path toward greater economic stability and resilience to automation. However, women are much less likely to desire and pursue these internal promotions, due to factors such as less scheduling flexibility, greater presumed childcare and family responsibilities, and bad experiences in more demanding roles. Employers should address these concerns directly via scheduling and management changes to make management opportunities attractive and possible for women.
Employers should use on-the-job training subsidies and tax incentives to hire individuals from underemployed groups. Private-sector recruitment strategies need to better address training and hiring of often overlooked populations of job seekers—including older, long-term unemployed job seekers, adults with disabilities, veterans, individuals with pastconvictions, opportunity youth (out of work & out of school)—and governments often provide underutilized programs and incentives.
Governments should expand access to skills training by making workers who lose their jobs eligible for a Dislocation Reskilling Account. The account would provide public funds to invest in training through an apprenticeship or other training program, with a community organization or at a community or technical college, to prepare workers who lose their jobs for new jobs created as a result of technological shifts in the workplace.
Governments and and higher education systems should develop and delivers services to ensure that all learners, including those with preexisting personal barriers, have pathways to credential attainment.
Governments should develop a regulatory framework to ensure tha new financing tools, such as income sharing agreements (ISAs), do not further predatory student debt collection practices. Policies can reduce risks associated with emerging financing models by limiting stacked ISAs, shifting risk from students to funders, and banning discriminatory and predatory practices.
Governments should support the expansion of worker-owned and -controlled job-matching services, which would give workers power in the job-matching process and allow them to establish floors for wages and benefits and otherwise improve workplace standards, all while creating an empowered worker community.
A Worker Organization Administration should be established to provide technical assistance and counseling to workers interested in starting worker organizations and organizations interested in initiating organizing campaigns. In addition, the WOA could contract with worker organizations to train workers participating in works councils, serving as workplace monitors, and serving on corporate boards.
Governments should create partnership with unions, worker centers, and other worker organizations to enforce labor standards and proactively address issues in the work environment. A partnership with a government agency can play a legitimizing role for a worker organization, encouraging workers to take the organization more seriously and encourage support for collective organizing.
Governments should pass laws to create mechanisms for digital picket lines, requiring employers to allow workers to mirror in-person collective action in online transactions. Functioning essentially as a disclosure regime, the digital picket line would require employers to allow workers to inform online customers about strikes occurring at the employer’s physical site.
Governments should allow workers to express their desire for collective representation by signing a card or petition, whether physical or digital, without the need for a formal election process administered by an external review board. Cards or petitions would be presumed valid and would trigger bargaining obligations until they are actually declared invalid by the board.
Governments should expressly protect the right to collectively bargain among any independent contractors who: (1) do not employ any employees; (2) who make little capital investment—roughly defined as investment that is limited to the needs of the independent contractor personally (e.g., one car, one set of tools, one computer, etc.)—in their “businesses”; and (3)who share the same economic relationship with a single company.
Unions can experiment with a form of membership or affiliation founded on ideological alignment rather than provision of services—an organization of people who want to learn about and support unions but are not currently represented by a union—similar to the American Civil Liberties Union, Sierra Club or National Rifle Association. These diffuse supporters could be a source of leaders and support for efforts by working people to come together in a union or to bargain a fair contract, as well as for pro-worker policy initiatives.
