In Jonathan Weisman’s account in the New York Times, the economic legislation promoted by President Biden and passed by a Democratic Congress is little more than a political quid pro quo. In his telling, Democrats supported legislation that swells union membership with more jobs in sectors like construction and manufacturing; in return, unions are expected to persuade their members to support Democrats in the 2024 elections.
Policy motivations seem simple when viewed through the cynical filter of a political correspondent. Yet, unions’ role in the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act is much more about efficiency, effectiveness, and outcomes than it is about politics. Weisman’s article, on the other hand, offers a valuable insight into the impoverished discourse in the United States around workers, unions, and their value in our economy and policymaking.
Let’s focus on unions’ role in preparing workers with skills. Weisman correctly explains that these laws and others passed during President Biden’s first two years in office, especially the infrastructure law and the IRA, will create millions of new jobs in the construction industry. This increased demand for labor must be met by an expanded supply of skilled labor. The laws address this need by incentivizing registered apprenticeships. Weisman darkly hints this is a giveaway to the construction unions. He couldn’t be more wrong.
Registered apprenticeships are highly valued as a skills-building model. The federal government invested hundreds of millions of dollars during both the Obama and Trump Administrations to copy the success of construction apprenticeships in other industries. These work-based learning programs put apprentices on the job early in their tenures under the supervision of journeyman construction workers as part of the learning process, but also to allow them to earn while they learn.
Apprenticeships are ubiquitous in Western and Central Europe because they are successful pathways for working people to secure a place in the middle class without attending college. They are grossly underutilized in the U.S. by comparison. I remember this topic came up in a private meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, then Germany’s labor and social affairs minister, in the German embassy in Washington when I was Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor. She forcefully argued to me that Germany’s recession was shallower than the U.S.’s Great Recession because of its unions, its works councils, and its apprenticeship infrastructure. She may have overstated the case, but she also made a lot of good points about the immense value of apprenticeships to her nation’s economy.
Most important, registered apprenticeship programs can provide timely help in the implementation of the infrastructure and inflation reduction acts. Construction registered apprenticeship programs can be scaled up quickly and substantially to meet the increased demand for skilled labor. We don’t need to build an entirely new training infrastructure or write new curricula. They are open, operating successfully, and expandable. Further, North America’s Building Trades Unions (i.e., nation’s the construction union federation) and its affiliates are partnering with pre-apprenticeship programs to provide greater access to apprenticeship opportunities for women, workers of color, and others who have been traditionally left out of these pipelines to middle class jobs. These pre-apprenticeship efforts expand the universe of workers available to fill these new jobs.
The bottom line is that there is no controversy that registered apprenticeships, especially when tied to pre-apprenticeships, are the right policy solution to the rising demand for labor caused by these laws. Here’s the rub. Weisman describes these programs as “union apprenticeship and training programs.” Yet, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, only 17% of registered apprenticeship programs are run by labor-management partnerships. These programs train slightly less than half of all apprentices. The majority of apprentices are trained by the overwhelming majority of apprenticeship programs run by employers alone.
In the construction sector, the percentage of apprentices in labor-management programs is almost certainly substantially larger, but there are non-union construction registered apprenticeship programs, as well. The difference is the union programs are operated pursuant to collective bargaining agreements that give workers a voice on the work site, protection from employer unfairness, discrimination, and harassment, fair wages and benefits, and safety and health safeguards. In other words, union registered apprenticeship programs will help to achieve all the outcomes Congress and the President sought when they enacted these laws: strengthening our nation’s infrastructure and renewable energy sector while fighting climate change, and also creating millions of good-quality jobs to rebuild America’s middle class.
This is where Weisman’s hyperpoliticized take on these three laws’ labor protections offers a valuable window into the discourse around workers in our country. Weisman’s critique, like so many that dominate our discourse, treats workers as though they are peripheral to the policy goals of these laws. According to this dominant discourse, these laws’ only goal is to build bridges, replace lead pipes, expand broadband, and develop an offshore wind industry, among other projects. Workers’ aspirations, economic condition, and work lives are unimportant, if they are considered at all. Workers’ unions are mere political actors demanding tribute from their endorsed political candidates. Benefits to workers, like plentiful good-quality jobs, portable skills that give them access to middle class jobs, and rising wages, are achieved only through corruption and detract from our nation’s true policy goals.
This discourse is wrong, anti-worker, and destructive of worker power. If you can see these economic development laws as seeking to improve workers’ lives as a core policy value, if you can understand that helping workers build power is a means to strengthen the economy, and if you recognize that unions are vital to ensuring these jobs will be good and sustainable jobs, then you can reject the premises of this discourse and discuss these issues while treating workers fairly and appropriately. And almost certainly write a different article the next time.
Disclosure: I was deeply involved with the labor policies in the infrastructure law and its implementation, a predecessor to the Inflation Reduction Act, and the American Rescue Plan and its implementation. I have continued discussions about some of the laws discussed in this post since leaving the White House.
