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91
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9
1
�THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
DATE:
TO:
1 o /09/94
Don Baer
FROM: JOHN D. PODESTA
Assistant to the President and
Staff Secretary
FYI
•
�- --.;;,.--
SECRETARY OF LABOR
WASHINGTON
OCT
MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT
9~ ocr 3
P
s : 27
h---
From:
Robert B. Reich
Subject:
Remarks at Ted Kennedy Event September 29, 1994
Great job, and excellent speech. Some small suggestions.
1.
Include school-to-work youth apprenticeships. About half a million young people
will be in them during the next five years. We've got extremely positive responses
from the states, and although this isn't a big outlay I'm convinced that this program
will be among your most important long-term outlays.
2.
Re-employment Act. We're already moving ahead on the start of a re-employment
system (on current authority). You already have signed legislation that
.
.
(a)
identifies workers who won't get their old jobs back, and gets them
quickly into. re-employment services, and ·
(b)
allows unemployment insurance to be used by unemployed workers to
start their own businesses.
Moreover, this year (FY 1994) dislocated workers have $1.1 billion of help getting
skills for new jobs (more than double the $500 million in 1993), and next year $1.3
billion, Finally, we're setting up one-stop job centers across the country, combining
all unemployment and re-employment services:
3.
In general, the "making government work for Americans" theme is too defensive, not
sufficiently affirmative. It doesn't convey sufficient sense of what society needs to
do--what your administration is doing--to help Americans achieve a better life. We're
not simply making government work better. We're restoring the Am~rican dream, .
rebuilding the American middle class, recreating career ladders for people willing to
work hard and study hard, creating new opportunities to prosper in this new hightech, global economy (etcetera).
WORKING FOR AMERICA'S WORKFORCE
�1
REVISED FINAL
ReDJalks prepued for
Secretmy of labor
Robert B. Reich
National Alliance of Bminess
Dallas, Texas
September 27, 1994
TOWARD A NEW SOCIAL COMPACI': THE
ROLE OFBUSINEYS
Not long ago we· all worried about restoring America's "competitiveness." American
industry, it seemed, was short-sighted, slow-footed, and dim-witted, and the American
economy on an inexorable decline. Europe and Japan - the inefficiencies of the past seared
away by World War II - were charging past us.
Now let me read you something that appeared in this city's own Dallas Morning News,
two and a half weeks ago: "The United States has climbed to the top of a list of the world's
most competitive economies, displacing Japan." The source is the World Economic Forum, a
respected Swiss association that each year charts the economic perfonnance of industrial
nations.
What gives? Were the experts crazy then? Are they 9f3ZY now? Has everything
changed completely in just a few years?
Well, for one thing, the United States is enjoying an economic recovery, while other
advanced economies are still struggling to come out of recessions. But beyond the transitory
ups and downs is the more fi.mdamental success of American business in restructuring itself
and investing in new equipment, with the result that productivity growth since 1990 has been
averaging a healthy two percent a year. Factory productivity alone has leapt over 5 percent
during the past year.
And yet, are we really competitive? What do we mean by "competitiveness" anyway?
Rarely has a term of public discourse gone so directly from obscmity to meaninglessness
without any intervening period of coherence. Stn'ely the ultimate test of competitiveness .
should be the standard of living of Americans. And not just the average American: averages
don't always reveal the most telling realities. Shaquille O'Neal and I have an average height
of six feet .
.___ _ _ _ _ _
------- - - ------
--
�2
The reality is that American incomes have barely edged upward, and most Americans
find themselves on the same downward track they've been on for fifteen years. And although
over 4 million new jobs have been added to the American economy, 8 million Americans are
still unemployed and 4 million are working part-time who would rather have full-time jobs. ·
Broad trends that have accelerated since the mid-1970s are splitting America's middle
class into three new groups: An underclass largely trapped in center cities, increasingly
isolated from the core economy; an oyerclass of those who are positioned to profitably ride
the waves of change; and in between, the largest group, an anxious class, most of whom hold
jobs but who are justifiably uneasy about their own standing and fearful for their children's
futures.
For much of this century, Americans of diverse backgrounds and conditions were
bound together by two powerful forces. One was the threat of Soviet aggression. The
looming presence of a rival "superpower" stoked our sense of shared purpose. The other was
a growing economy. Our sense of common destiny was nourished by the certainty that a
rising economic tide would lift all Americans.
Today, in almost opposite fashion,, each of these once-sturdy bonds have come
undone. The Cold War ended dramatically. We watched it on CNN. And now, we
welcome the newly liberated world it has wrought. But America's middle class crumbled
quietly. We watched it happen day by day, but somehow never really SiM it. And now, we
confront its consequences.
Over the next few months, I will be talking about what government and individuals
can do to boost more Americans into a new middle class. But this morning, I want to
address the special role of the private sector. This is both because the private sector is the
most formidable force for recreating America's middle class, and because a clear-eyed
calculation of co1p0rate interests must reckon such a renewal as vital for long-term business
success.
Let me first address the cause of the disintegration of the middle class. What divides
the over, the under, and the anxious classes is both the quality of their fonnal educations and
their capacity and opportunity to learn throughout their working lives. Skills have always
been relevant to earnings, of course. But they have never been as important as they are
today. Today, skills shape the fundamental fault line nmning through the American
workforce. Only fifteen years ago, a male college graduate earned 49 percent more than a
man with only a high school degree. That's a sizable difference, to be sure. But it's a divide
small enough for both men to occupy terrain each would call middle class. Now shift to the
present. In 1992, a male college graduate out-earned his high school graduate counterpart by
83 percent -- a difference so great that they no longer inhabit common territory or share
common prospects. (SliDE ONE) Women are divided along similar, though slightly less
stark, lines.
�3
Use a different lens and the picture sharpens further. Traditionally, membership in the
American middle class included not only a job with a steadily increasing income, but a
bundle of benefits that came with employment. Once again, we see a widening gap, related
to education and skills. Employer-sponsored health coverage for workers with college
degrees has declined only slightly, from 79 percent in 1979 to 76 percent in 1993. But for
high school graduates, rates have fallen further: 68 percent to 60 percent over the same
period. And rates for high-school dropouts have plunged - from an already low 52 percent
in 1979 to only 36 percent last year. (SliDE TOO) Retirement will only harden these
divisions. Nearly two out of every three workers with college degrees get pension coverage
on the job. More than three out of four high dropouts do not. (SliDE niREE)
But earnings and benefits don't even tell the complete story. Merely getting a job and
holding on to it depend ever more on skills. In the 1970s, the average unemployment rate
for people who had not completed high school was 7 percent. By the 1980s, this rate grew to
11 percent; by 1993 it had passed 12 percent. Job loss for high school graduates has
followed a comparable trajectory. By contrast, the unemployment rate for workers with at
least a college degree has remained around 3 percent. [SliDE FOUR]
In a seeming paradox of today's economic news, financial markets fret that
unemployment is too low to contain inflation, even while 8 million willing American workers
remain jobless. Part of the answer to the apparent contradiction is that markets for highly
skilled labor ~ becoming tight in many parts of the economy, creating the conditions that
can kindle iriflation worries. But millions of less-skilled workers remain idle or
underemployed. This wasted workforce is walled off by skill barriers from the leading edges
of the economy where capacity constraints loom. The best way to expand the economy's
capacity and lower the level of unemployment needed to bridle inflation is to dismantle these
walls by preparing underutilized workers for more productive work.
When flashed on a screen in a hotel ballroom, bar graphs and trend lines have a
certain innocuous quality. They're abstract, and they're fleeting. Click a button and the
numbers vanish. But as they take hold in the neighborhoods and workplaces of America,
these forces are ominous. Consider the physical separation they have already helped forge.
The overclass has moved to elite suburbs - occasionally into their own gated communities or
residential compounds policed by their own security forces. The wtderclass finds itself
quarantined in surroundings that are unspeakably bleak, and often violent. And the anxious
class is trapped, too - not only by houses and apartments often too small for growing
families, but also by the frenzy of effort it takes to preserve their standing, with many
families needing two or three paychecks to deliver the living standard one job used to supply.
In other words, even as Americas economic tide continues to rise, it no longer lifts us
all. Only a small portion of our population benefited from the economic growth of the 1980s.
The restructmings and capital investments launched during the 1980s and continuing through
the 1990s have improved the productivity and competitiveness of American industry, but not
the prospects of most Americans. And the people left behind have unleashed a wave of
�4
resentment and distrust -- a wave buffeting government, business, and other institutions that
the anxious class believes has betrayed them.
Consider the striking tmnaround in public opinion. In 1975, according the Gallup
poll, 40 percent of the American public said it had confidence in Congress. Today, the figure
is 18 percent. In 1975, more than a third of Americans said they had confidence in big
business. Today, only a one-quarter do. Nearly every institution in this country -- public
schools, newspapers, television, labor unions, even organized religion - have suffered
declines in public esteem. Nearly every leader in society has become a lightning rod for
public fiustration.
This creates fertile soil for the demagogues and conspiracy theorists who often emerge
during anxious times. People in distress, people who fear their future, natmally cling to what ·
they have and often resist anything that threatens it. People who feel abandoned - by a
government that has let them slide or a company that has laid them off- respond to
opportunists peddling simplistic explanations and sinister solutions. Why are you having
trouble making ends meet? We're letting in too many immigrants. Why are you struggling to
pay your bills? Affirmative action tilts things in favor of African-Americans and Hispanics.
Why is your job at risk? Our trade policies have not been sufficiently protectionist.
Such sentiment transcends ideological divisions. Conspiracy theorists on the left
concoct stories of a cabal of corporate puppeteers pulling the strings of global trade; those on
the right spin tales of a President who orchestrates murder. Talk radio, that otherwise
sparkling tribute to free expression, has taken on a newly malevolent edge - elevating ratings
by escalating rage. And odd alliances have formed to repel the notion that free trade can
produce middle class prosperity. Recall the recent debate over NAFTA, from which I still
carry scars.
So what's the solution? We can't tum back the clock and return to the safe old world
of routine mass production that dominated post-war America Efforts to do so - say, by
keeping foreign investment and goods outside our borders or by stifling technological
advances - would not resurrect the old middle class. They would only inhibit the ability of
every American to prosper amid change.
The real solution is to give all Americans a stake in economic growth, to ensme that
everyone benefits from our newfound competitiveness. That way, we can grow together-and
increase our capacity for non-inflationary growth. 12 million tmemployed or tmderemployed ·
Americans, and millions more whose wages are stagnant or declining must be pUZlled at talk
of an overheating economy. We can do better than that. This economy will not be at full
capacity until we tap the potential of all our citizens to be more productive.
We must together build a new middle class - a middle class based on the power of
ordinary workers to add ever more value because they have the skills to do so.
�5
Individuals and families shoulder much of the responsibility here, of course.
Ultimately, they must face the realities of the new economy, and ensure that they and their
children have the basic intellectual tools to prosper in it. Government has a role, too. It can
clear away some of the obstacles - improving the quality of public education, setting skills ·
standards, and smoothing the transition from school to work and from job to job.
But individuals, however resourceful, and governments, however reinvented, can't
build a new middle class on their own. Business has an indispensable role to play. And let
me put the issue cleanly: Unless business joins in rebuilding America's middle class training and empowering ordinary workers to be productive and innovative -- this task cannot
succeed. I recognize the stakes this sets. But I believe that business :MU, in the end, find
the motives to fulfil its central role. There are two good economic reasons for business to
enlist: First, the members of America's imperiled middle class are key productive assets.
Second, they form the majority of most companies' customers. Consider each of these
reasons in turn.
It is no news to business leaders that a skilled workforce can be a strategic tnnnp
card. Other elements of a business can be replicated by competitors - machines, processes,
raw materials, access to cheap labor armmd the world. But a skilled, flexible workforCe that
can create value in ways that matter in the marketplace can offer enduring competitive
advantage.
Companies throughout America are demonstrating that success often hinges on treating
workers as assets to be developed, not costs to be cut. And they're doing it with front line
workers who are not necessarily four-year college graduates. In my travels around the
country, I have seen the pattern again and again: at an electro-galvanizing steel plant in
Cleveland, a telephone assembly plant in Atlanta, an insurance company in Hartford, an
accounting firm in Chicago, a machine-tool company in Rochester. Many of the companies
represented here in this room are among the pioneers of this approach to creating profits and
productivity in the new economy. In the process, you have helped create the vanguard of this
new .middle class: technician workers with training beyond high school, but not necessarily a
college degree.
Lew Platt, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, told me the other day about HP's integrated
circuit plant in San Jose. Yields had been too low, the reject rate too high, even after HP had
installed state-of-the-art machinery. What was the problem? HP discovered that its front-line
workers in San Jose, most of them without college degrees, knew a lot about what .wasn't
working in the plant. What they needed was an extra increment of training, and the authority
to implement their solutions on the spot. HP decided to try a campaign of training for the
San Jose electronics workers-thousands of them-and it transformed these front-line workers
into technicians. It worked. Quality improved dramatically, yields jumped, and the plant
became enormously competitive. Not only did HP turn its plant around, it also added
thousands of workers to the ranks of the new middle class.
�6
So my first reason for optimism that business will play its part in building a new
middle class based on skills is that workforce investments often make excellent business
sense, and business increasingly knows this.
The second reason also affects the bottom line, if a bit less directly. For most
American companies, their maJor market remains American consumers. In the 1950s and
1960s, the American consumer market was the most buoyant in the world. Selling into a
prosperous, sophisticated home-countJ:y market gave American companies a world-beating
edge in industcy after industcy. Company profits arid middle class incomes climbed in
tandem. Mass production spawned the middle class; the middle class fueled mass production.
But since the mid 1970s - as incomes stagnated, divisions widened, and America's mass
market fragmented -- the U.S. market has become less dominant as a commercial launching
pad A revitalized middle class means stronger domestic demand and a better proving
ground for global business success.
These are good reasons for business to invest in human capital, but apparently not
reason enough. A new sl.U"Vey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that not quite half of
all establishments provipe ~ formal training in job skills. Other recent data show that
employers tend to concentrate training investments on workers who are already skilled. A
third of young workers with college degrees receive work-related training. But only one out
of six workers with a high school degree got such training, and only one out of ten high
school dropouts. (SliDE FIVE)
When nations are wise and lucky-as America has been for much of its history-an
implicit social compact knits together business success, rising living standards, and probusiness politics. But the erosion of the old middle class poses a threat to the bargain that
has paid off so well for so many American citizens and American companies. Business
success no longer automatically brings rising living standards for all. There is a danger that
the interests of corporations playing on a global scale will be seen as distant from the
interests of American citizens, that higher rates of productivity will· not be understood to
mean higher living standards for ordinary Americans. As most Americans find themselves
working harder for less, and the American dream recedes, the much-vaunted competitiveness
of the American economy seems like a cruel hoax.
Now is the time to renew the compact among American businesses, American
government, and American working men and women. Now is the time to reknit the
connections between the two defining national traditions of free enterprise and broadly shared
middle class prosperity.
The Clinton Administration is pledged to deliver on government's side of this new
compact. This Administration's commitment to building a new middle class already has
produced results -- but perhaps because many were born in bipartisan harmony rather than
partisan discord they have gone unnoted. Political conflict is a far more exciting spectator
sport.
�7
An additionall30,000 children each year can now be made ready to learn through
Head Start. About 120,000 disadvantaged students participated in this year's summer job
program. Almost a half million young Americans will be entering youth apprenticeships.
Three and a half million Americans each year will gain the option of repaying their
education loans as a percentage of future income. Twenty thousand young Americans - more
than ever served in the Peace Corps even at its height - will be working on national service
projects in their communities. Fifteen million working families with modest incomes have
gotten the tax relief necessary to make work pay. And - with your help - we've begun
transforming the old unemployment system, built for another era and another economy, into a
modem reemployment system. This year alone more than half a million permanently laid-off
Americans will get the help they need to find new and better jobs.
This Administration has made bold moves, in addition, to get the nation's economic
house in order. Consider the record: The deficit, as a portion of GDP, is at its lowest level
in fifteen years, and is projected to remain there even without additional spending cuts.
Government payrolls are being reduced by 250,000 workers. Inflation is low, and there are
scant signs of overheating. We are committed to free trade. Thanks to the North American
Free Trade Agreement, our exports to Mexico are now growing at three times the rate of
exports to the rest of the world. Soon, Congress will approve the latest GATT agreement,
opening even more markets to more American services as well as goods. And no
Administration has been more vigorous in promoting American business overseas - from
Saudi Arabia's $6 billion aircraft purchase, to Brazil's $1.5 billion contract with Raytheon, to
the Commerce Secretary's recent mission to China, to the Energy Secretary's mission to
Pakistan.
Today, this Labor Secretary embarks on a mission as well. This mission is to
American business, and Dallas is my first stop. The· aim of my mission is to stress the
urgency of the other side of this compact. For the future prosperity and stability of this
nation, American business must reciprocate by investing in American workers.
How should this be done? What should be the specific contents of this compact? I
cannot predict the exact provisions. Obviously, one means of committing American business
to workforce investment would be through a simple requirement that finns spend a small
portion of their payrolls upgrading the skills of all employees.
The administration is not advancing such an option as a formal policy proposal
because we are not convinced it is the best way to achieve the goal of stepped-up investments
in worker skills. Flat requirements like this can invite endless legal pirouettes, resulting
in ever more intrusive regulation. I hope we can discover together a better way-voluntary
commitments to, and disclosure o:t: such workforce investments; cooperative agreements
among finns in an industry to share the costs of basic skill training; agreements between large
finns and their smaller suppliers and customers to do so; employee education as an object of
collective bargaining; awards or certifications for businesses that invest substantially in their
�8
workers; collaborations between high schools and companies to hire school-to-work
apprentices; shifts in the tax code to create added incentives for workforce training. These and
other approaches--alone or in combination-may be more effective than a unifonn
requirement. But if we cannot develop a superior approach, it would certainly be better to
embrace that method than to abandon the goal. Let's get to work on the options.
You in the National Alliance of Business, and the broader business community you
represent, have already accomplished a great deal, and ought to be proud of your
achievements. But the centrifugal forces that are pulling America apart call for even greater
resolve. We can build a new middle class, and new ladder into it for the underclass. You
and I know it's possible. We've glimpsed its beginnings. But without the redoubled energies
of American business -- without the fimdamental understanding that no task is more central to
our future - the sturdy middle class that was once our country's defining quality will continue
its steady erosion.
So as I launch my mission to American business, I ask that you lend your resolve to
the creation of a new compact-for profitability, for shared prosperity, for an easing of
economic anxiety and the social tensions it spawns. Join in the debate over the tenns of that
compact, and the business role in building workplace skills. And commit yourselves to
renewing the American dream, to mnturing a new middle class that is even more inclusive
than the old, and equipped to master the challenges of the new economy.
/
###
�Difference in Average Annua.llncome
College Graduates vs High School Graduates,
1978 & 1992
90% ~------------------------------------------~
80o/o
70%
60o/o
50o/o
40%
30o/o
1978
MEN
1992
Source: Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey
1992
1978
WOMEN
Prepared by: OASP 9/14/94
�Health Plans Sponsored by Employers
Coverage Rates, 1979 vs 1993
All wage and salary workers
80o/o
jD1979 D1993j
70o/o
· - - -. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
60%
----------------------------
SOo/o
40%
Less Than
High School
Source: Current Population Survey
High School
Graduate
College
Graduate
Prepared by: OASP 9/14/94
�Pension· Plans Sponsored by Employers
Coverage Rates, 1993
All wage and salary workers
80o/o
70%
- - - - - - - - - - - - -·_ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -s&o/o- - - - - - - -
60o/o
50%
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -46% - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 49o/o
-------------
40o/o
30o/o
20o/o
10%
Oo/o
Less Than
High School
Source: Current Population Survey
High School
Graduate
Some College
College
Graduate
Prepared by: OASP 9/14/94
�Unemployment Rates by Educational Attainment
1979- 1993
20%
20o/o
15o/o
-------------------
15%.
--------------
1 0%
High School Grads
Some College
College Grads
Oo/o
Oo/o
1979
1981
1983
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
Prepared by: OASP 9/14/94
�---
--
~------------------------
Young Workers Receiving
Formal Company Training
40o/o
35.3%
30o/o
------------------------------------------------ 28%"---------
19.4%
20%
10o/o
------.-&7%---------
Oo/o
Less Than
High School
High School
Graduate
Some College
College
Graduate
Note: Chart depicts workers aged 21-29 in 1986 who received training between 1986 and 1991.
Source: National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
Prepared by: OASP 9/14/94
�'/
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
THE SECRETARY
Remarks Of
Richard W. Riley 1
U.S. Secretary of Education
Education Issues Before The American Public · 1994
George Washington University, Washington, DC
Thursday, October 13, 1994
Good afternoon and thank you, President Trachtenberg. I have come here today to speak to you about the
choices that the American people must make in the upcoming election regarding the improvement of American
education.
The election cycle is now upon us and voters who are looking for answers are beginning the arduous task of
sifting through the many campaign ads to find common sense and good solutions.
This isn't very easy. So many of the ads seem to be drumming on the negative. It's a sorry way.to look at the
world and then we wonder why the American people get to feeling low, like they just ought to go out and kick the
dog for no good reason at all.
You look at the political ads and all you see are attack ads, cell doors slamming and sirens wailing. You listen to
the radio talk shows and America ·· a nation with real problems but so much goodness to it ·· is just about always
written off as a nation near a sudden state of collapse.
Now, our country has its problems and I won't make light of them. But if the only way to get a rise out of the
American people is to get caught up in this cynical, negative, political dog-eat-dog attitude ·• well, in my opinion,
we aren't going to get where we need to go as a country. There isn't going to be much left to our ideals.
I believe that we need to challenge the American people instead of beating them down. Let's quit drumming the
negative. We Americans can lose our focus and get hoodwinked by the slick commercial, but by and large we are
a thinking people with a good nose for what is important and what is not.
So I want to urge all the candidates to be a little more high minded ·· to stop packaging people's fears and
frustrations into 30-second sound bites. And I urge all of us who are in the business of education, public service,
and politics to go out and challenge the American people with practical, positive solutions.
Let's also remember that our children and young people are not learning as Democrats or Republicans. They are
learning as the Americans who are the future of the Country. Parents are desperately worried about their
1
The Secretary may depart from prepared remarks.
400 MARYLAND AVE., S.W. WASHINGTON, D.C. 20202
�2
children's safety, about academic standards, and about how to pay for their children's college education.
So the vital issues that concern you, your parents and the faculty of this university are very close to home ·• even
if they seem far, far away from the campaign agenda of campaign consultants.
Now, education is not a hot issue when it comes to 30-second attack commercials. And that may be a blessing.
Education is complicated, progress takes time, and there are no simple solutions.
If a candidate, Democrat or Republican, tells you that the solution to our education problems is simply more money
for teachers or that the only way to get anything done is to support private school vouchers using taxpayer
dollars .. I will be the first to tell you that they are both wrong.
There is no panacea when it comes to improving American education. Improving American education is hard,
steady work, something that is done day by day, student by student, teacher by teacher, family by family,
community by community.
There is no one silver bullet solution .. be it throwing more money at the problem or chipping away at our unique
heritage of free public education ... a heritage that has done so much good for generation after generation in this
Country.
Public education has always been, and remains to this day, the open door to American success and good
citizenship .. the American way to achievement and freedom for all people ... and I mean all the people.
Many of you here are graduates of public schools, and while there may have been days when you thought you
would never survive the experience, you all seem to be turning out all right to me. As I have said many times
before .. some of our public schools are excellent, some need to get better, and some schools should not be
schools at all. Private and parochial schools are also a very important part of our American fabric of education.
But public education is always on the front line. Public schools all over America are dealing with violence and drug
use, family breakup, racial tension, the continuing need for AIDS awareness, and the influx of new immigrants.
They are also producing hundreds of thousands of graduates who are making the grade at some of the finest
colleges and universities in America, including this one.
So perhaps the first and most fundamental question that the American public should be asking this fall is whether
or not each and every candidate for public office .. Republican, Democrat or Independent .. will reaffirm his or her
commitment to the basic American tradition of free quality public education.
Will they roll up their sleeves and work with us to make public education better across the board? Our critics say
public education is hopelessly broken. They are wrong. I believe that they have simply been swept away by the
latest magic bullet of the moment.
Now, I believe American education cannot stand still. Our schools need to teach the skills for the 21st century
using the best technology. They need to show flexibility and be open to good ideas like public school choice, and
�3
support parents who believe that character education is important to their children's future.
They may also test new concepts such as charter schools and privatization of some services so long as they are
focused on high standards and public accountability, and don't keep out students who may need the most help of
all.
·
Above all, our schools need to recognize that there is a longing for the restoration of standards, a return to
excellence at every level of American education. I am, for example, one of the strongest proponents of more time
in the school day for the basic core academic curriculum. The national average is now just over 40 percent of the
day, and that just isn't good enough. And then we wonder why sales clerks can't make change and why colleges
spend millions of dollars every year teaching remedial classes.
So we need to be a lot more tough-minded about how the school day is used .. we need to think creatively about
using new technology ·• and we need to end the practice .. once and for all .. of permitting young people to just
drift through school just to move them through the system.
At the same time, every child and young person in this country is going to have to learn skills that we didn't even
anticipate 10 or 15 years ago. They must be computer-literate, understand how to use the Internet, and .. with
skill and confidence .. be able to get on line to the Information Highway.
When I was appointed Secretary of Education by President Clinton, I told people that we needed to stop studying
every problem to death and move from being "A Nation at Risk" to "A Nation on the Move."
I said then that we needed to get beyond the status quo of accepting mediocrity for some students .. be they
gifted and talented or behind in reading .. and, at the same time, we needed to avoid getting caught up with every
new fad of the moment .. like new math in the 1960'S and 1970's. For too many years, education has been
driven by the latest quick fix and it·has never done us any good. We need to recognize that making our schools
better has to be done in a meaningful and consistent way. Kids needs to learn how to read and write well to
reach the high standards, and they need to be safe. First things first.
So I believe it is so important to lay out for the American people a clear summation of what has been achieved to
date and to define what I think are the essential questions that we need to ask ourselves as we approach Election
Day.
So what has been accomplished?
I can tell you that in the past 20 months, nine education-related bills were sent to the Congress by President
Clinton and eight have been signed into law. And next week, President Clinton will sign number nine .. the $12.7 ·
billion Elementary and Secondary Education Act .. making it nine for nine.
The list is impressive, but it is much more than just a list. It is a coherent package that fits all the pieces
together .. that tells the parents of a four-year-old just starting school or the non-traditional student going back to
school at 38 that we have an educational system that can help people learn what they need to learn at each stage
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of their life. This is what we mean whenJ we talk about creating a way for Americans to be lifelong learners.
Let me describe very quickly these nine initiatives:
11)
New fundinQ for and the strengthening of Head Start.
12)
The first real funding for taking technology into schools and reshaping the classroom of the future.
13)
A national service program for 20,000 young Americans that can help you pay for college, which is
·already larger than a Peace Corps at its peak.
14)
A redirection of our research arm based on a National Academy of Sciences Report.
15)
A new commitment to high standards and excellence with passage of the GOALS 2000 Act. This
extraordinary act is centered on state academic standards of excellence, and gives all communities some
help to reach for these standards by encouraging and suppor~ing their design of their own action plan.
16)
The Safe and Drug-Free Schools Act, and new money in the crime bill to support safe after-school
programs. We want the guns out of our schools. We simply aren't going to tolerate a 14-year·old out to
prove his manhood by putting other students in harm's way.
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The seventh bill is the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which I already
mentioned ·· an act that places a great deal of new emphasis on giving teachers better training ·· and
opportunities for real professional development.
18)
One of the most exciting things we have done is to pass a School·to-Work initiative that connects what
young people are learning to the world of work. We want to jump start young people into thinking about
their careers, into entering very demanding apprenticeships, into getting a focus on real life.
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Finally, we recognize that the burden of paying for a good college education can be overwhelming.
College tuition has been on the rise and, at the same time, people need to get their education. But how
do we pay for it? We have created a new direct-lending program that will give many more of you the
opportunity to pay back what you can afford when you first get out of college.
You won't get socked with a very large payment schedule the minute you take off your cap and gown. Now,
being responsible to yourselves and your grandchildren means you shouldn't take 30 years to pay it off, either.
But the direct-lending program is now operating in 1DO colleges ·· and next year will be operating in over 1,ODD. I
will also tell you that we will continue to support raising the level of the Pelt Grant program, even as we remain
tough on defaulters.
Our legislative success has been unusual. The President led this effort from the start. He is a President who
seems to have education in his blood. But what is unique is that in the midst of so much political gridlock, a
strong, bipartisan center for progress and improvement in education has emerged in the Congress. And it has held
firm.
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This Congress repeatedly dealt with some of the most important but contentious social issues ·· sex education,
rights of privacy, student testing, and voluntary school prayer·· and in each and every case this "solid center" of
Republicans and Democrats kept its focus on the essentials ·· teaching and learning.
All this is to the good. And I believe it is so important to consider what is at stake in passing this broad legislative
package and how it will sit with the American people. We hear a lot of talk, unfortunately negative, about the
political agenda of this country. So this is a good time to talk about education in the broader public context.
For I believe that passing all this good legislation won't amount to a hill of beans unless we get people thinking
differently about how we educate the young people of this Nation and how we share that responsibility. So, I
want to raise three essential points.
First, the issue of basic civility and setting an example. I believe there is an enormous desire on the part of the
American people to have new rules of public engagement when it comes to how we relate to each other. But we
seem, at the moment, to be increasingly stuck in the old politics of fe'r and narrowness.
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What troubles me the most about the current sour mood of American politics is that in its essence ·· this dog-eat·
dog attitude •· tells us that there are no rules of civic rightness ·· no rules of civic discourse. The values that are
increasingly defining the "public estate" are just about the direct opposite of the values we want our children to
learn. We adults have lowered our own standards. Listen, in contrast, to these words from a pledge that young
people take every day at school in Independence, Missouri.
I heard this pledge recited for the first time last Friday at the White House Blue Ribbon School ceremony by Pat
Henley, the wonderful principal of Cler-mont Community School.
I am the one and only person who has the power to decide what I will be and do. I will accept the
consequences for my decisions. I am in charge of my learning and behavior. I will respect the rights of
others and will be a credit to myself, my family, my school, and my community.
I believe that the rising demand for character education in our schools ·· a desire which crosses the entire political
spectrum •• reflects the American people's sure awareness that we need to reaffirm some basic American values
and create some new rules of public engagement. And I agree with them.
So what does this mean for those of us who are part of the public dialogue about the future of American
education? It seems to me essentially this: we really do need to get beyond the idea that everything in America is
the politics of special interests. We need to lower our voices and make sure our schools, as I have said before, do
not become an ideological or political battleground.
I know, for example, that there are many conservative·minded Americans who have legitimate questions about the
Goals 2000 Act. They are concerned that Goals 2000 will federalize American education.
I may strongly disagree with their belief, but I respect the sincerity of those who hold it. To date, 40 states and
territories have already submitted their applications to participate in the Goals 2000 Act. We are off to a strong
start. Next year, Goals 2000 will commit 90 percent of all of its funding directly to the local level. We don't need
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the federal government sending you a FedEx telling you how to manage your schools.
But I want these skeptical parents, these concerned Americans ·• many of them religious-minded ·• to know that I
will always extend myself to hear their point of view. As I travel around the country, I am meeting with parents,
religious leaders, educators, business leaders, and others trying to build bridges. I may not be able to persuade
them of the rightness of my side, but I will always go more than half way to meet them. They need to be at the
table.
I urge these skeptical parents, by the same token, to pull back from making public schools a political football and
give the process a fair chance. And I encourage them to actively participate in the school improvement process.
Only by participating in the process will they come to understand that high standards are designed to make sure
that parents, teachers, and principals stay in control of the process.
Second, violence. Our society is being crippled by violence. When people ask me why I am passionate about
education, I tell them that a vast majority of the people in America's prisons are high school dropouts ·· minds and
lives that are wasted. I believe that education has been and femains the way out of this lifestyle.
I am particularly troubled by the idea that so many young boys in fourth and fifth grades are giving up on life. The
American historian, John Hope Franklin, has written extensively about this searing problem. It' "is "no small
wonder" he writes, "that the number of black males in penal institutions is greater then the number of black males
in higher education." What a sad and tragic statement. Dr. Franklin was speaking about the specific problem of
young African-American males, but this is not just their problem alone.
This is why the President did not give up on the crime bill which includes support for safe after-school programs,
and why this Administration is committed to high academic standards for all students. About the fastest way I
know to create an unthinking, angry 19-year-old dropout who is spiritually numb and heading down the road to
violence is to give that young person a watered-down curriculum from first grade on.
This is why we have just announced a major new initiative in conjunction with Howard University here in the
District and Johns Hopkins University to begin a five-year, $27.7-million effort to determine just how we can help
to put an end to the cycle of student failure among at·risk youth. So for me, improving education is not just an
exercise in how we raise test scores. The issue is how do we create, in our time, a positive moral climate that
ends the violence, which leads me to my third point.
Young people·· and not just at-risk young people·· are searching for authentic adult connections. Just recently, a
very thoughtful college president, Richard Hersh, wrote an article in the "My Turn" column of Newsweek.
He didn't mince words. He said that more and more young people ·· his students and mostly middle-class students
··are growing up without direction or any sense of personal sense of responsibility. Why? Because they have
"experienced few authentic connections with adults in their lifetime."
It is a rather stunning statement ·· "few authentic connections with adults in their lifetime." He went on to write
that we have created a "culture of neglect" rather than a "culture of responsibility" for our young people and in
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�doing so we have absolved our young people of "any notion of obligation or responsibility." I suspect that there is
a great deal of truth to his assertion.
Too many adults are becoming disconnected from our children and we need to recognize that the responsibility of
parenthood is being taken too lightly by too many people, and young people are suffering.
To my mind, it is important to say up front that our schools can't fix what parents won't do. And, our schools
can't solve problems that a community ignores or allows to fester. Our schools can and often are at the center of
the solution, and I have seen many of them first hand, but they cannot be left alone to handle community crisis
after community crisis.
We have to stay connected to our children and give up the notion that the television is the good babysitter. Our
children shouldn't be growing up in a vacuum without values. This is why I am making such a strong effort to
reconnect families to the learning process and encouraging all of us to think through how we find new ways to
help parents and other adults to get back into the lives of their children.
For it is my very strong belief that the family is where expectations and attitudes about learning are formed,
nurtured and set. To create a "culture of responsibility," we-have to start with the family, be it the traditional
family, the single parent, the caring grandparent or the stepparent who willingly steps in.
And, if we are going to give the coming generation the best education possible, we need to set oar sights high.
We need to commit ourselves to high standards, make our schools havens of order and discipline, recognize that
teachers are at the heart of our effort to reach for excellence, reconnect the family to learning, and find new,
concrete ways to help all of you finance your college and other postsecondary education. That, in a nutshell, has
been and remains our education agenda.
As the election comes closer, I urge Americans not to get to caught up in the steady drumbeat of the negative.
Recognize that easy solutions are often false solutions and don't solve anything. So if we want to get beyond the
sound bites and the negatives we need to start asking political leaders the questions that are on the mind of the
American people.
They just aren't talking about the real issues in education. As a parent, grandparent; and U.S. Secretary of
Education, I have 10 critical questions that you should demand answers to. This is the essence of our
democracy and I urge you to take your citizenship seriously.
Many of you will be the teachers that will have the responsibility of teaching the coming generation of children.
I urge you to stay committed to your ideal of teaching. That's the type of service that is so necessary if we want
to have a real chance to educate America.
Thank you.
�UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
THE SECRETARY
Critical Questions for the American People
to Ask Their Future Leaders
1.
What can we do to stop the violence in our schools and bring discipline back into our
classrooms?
2.
What can we do to provide all children with a quality education that prepares them for
responsible citizenship, further learning and productive employment?
3.
What can we do to help parents and teachers become true partners in children's learning
-- not adversaries -- and make family invol~ement in education a basic community value?
4.
What can we do to end the tyranny of low expectations? We know that high standards,
tough courses, and hard work lead to real achievement and better disc!pline for almost
all students.
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5.
What can we do to prepare and keep good teachers, good principals and quality higher
education faculty when there will be six million more students to educate in the next
decade?
6.
What can we do to bring people together -- parents, business people, educators and every
citizen -- to build the quality public education system that will keep America great?
7.
What can we do to ensure that every student--rich and poor--enjoys the educational
benefits that computers and other new technologies offer?
8.
What can we do to prepare the 75 percent of all students who won't get a four-year
college degree for high-skill, high-wage careers?
9.
What can we do to deal honestly with the issue of race and income and their relationship
to education? After progress was made in the 1970s and 1980s in closing the gap, we
now have a sharp decline in the number of African-Americans attending college.
10.
What can we do to avoid educational fads and quick fix solutions and keep focused on
what we need to do to achieve serious and sustained improvement in our schools?
10/13/94
400 MARYLAND AVE .. S.W. WASHINGTON. D.C. 20202-QlOO
Our mission is to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence throughout the Nation.
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�Secretary of Labor
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I thought the attO£hed would interest you.
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THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE 1994:
THE OVER, THE UNDER, AND THE ANXIOUS
Secretary of Labor
Robert B. Reich
Center for National Policy
Washington, DC
August 31, 1994
On the eve of the second Labor Day of this Administrat~on, there is much
for America's working men and women to celebrate. We are enjoying a robust
jobs expansion, without any signs of inflationary dangers. The unemployment
rate was down to 6.r percent at last month's reckoning. ·There are still a few
hours left in August, and nobody -- including me -- knows what this month's
jobless rate will tum out to be. But ~hat matters is the trend, and the trend is
very good. Between last Labor Day and the end of July, the economy added
over 2.5 million new jobs-- more than in the full four years of the Bush
Administration. In the Clinton Administration so far, the economy has
generated 4.1 million new jobs, 93 percent of them in the private sector.
[Chart 1]
Comparing parallel points in the last recovery gives some perspective on
this accomplishment, and the odds against which it was brought about. Private
payrolls have grown by 4.2 percent in the past year and a half. Over the
correspon4ing period of the much-vaunted Reagan recovery, private job growth
was 3. 9 percent. And this recovery has had to struggle against the anchor of
debt left by the spending that fueled the last one -- the legacy of a profligate
decade in which federru debt grew from $908 billion in 1980 to $3.2 trillion in
1990.
Not only are we delivering job growth while shrinking deficits, but
through expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit we're lowering taxes for 15
million working families with modest incomes. Only a tiny fraction of
Americans -:-- the richest 1.2 percent, who are best able to shoulder an extra
burden-- are paying slightly higher taxes. The dire forecasts that spending cuts
would fail to materialize, or that.a small·tax increase on the fortunate few would
bring the economy to its knees, have been proven dead wrong. The President's
plan has worked.
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And yet our mission is just begun. Getting our fiscal house in order and
reigniting job growth were essential to repair the damage of the recent past, but
they are only the prerequisites to our broader agenda -- reversing the economic
divisions that have undermined our sense of common destiny, and laying the
foundation for a new middle class.
The Fragmentation of the Middle Class
Even though it has been a long time since the picture was so bright for
the average American worker, the experience of the average worker is
becoming less and less relevant. Some workers are surging ahead, others are
treading water, and still others are sinking fast -- in the same economy, at the
same time. The state of the American workforce, in short, is divided.
In the late 1960's, as my generation was joining the workforce, the vast
majority of Americans were middle class, in reality as well as perception.
Their status and prospects differed only moderately from the average. In an
astonishingly short tline, the old middle class has splintered. The erosion of a
sense of shared prospects poses what may be our nation's most critical challenge
of the post-Cold War era. Reversing this erosion, giving .all Americans a .
reason to believe once more that hard work will lead to a better life, is this
Administration's central objective.
Broad trends that have converged and accelerated since the middle 1970's
have split the old middle class into three new groups: An underclass largely
trapped in center cities, increasingly isolated from the core economy; an
overclass of those who are positioned to profitably ride the waves of change;
and in between, the largest group, an anxious class, most of whom hold jobs but
who are justifiably uneasy about their own standing and fearful for their
children's futures.
Despite the progress of the past year, this division still casts a .shadow
over the state of the American workforce on Labor Day 1994. Let me describe
this picture in greater detail - with the help of new data, much of it recently
compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The fundamental fault line running through today' s workforce is based on
education and skills. Well-educated and skilled workers are prospering; those
whose skills are out of date or out of synch with industrial change anxiously
contemplate their prospects; those without education or skills drift further and
further away from the economic mainstream. The notion that we're creating a
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bounty of bad jobs is a myth. Most new jobs are good jobs. The problem is
that the jobs that remain for workers without skills or with the wrong skills are
becoming grimmer and grimmer.
Skills have always mattered, to be sure, but they have not always been
such potent determinants of economic destiny. As recently as 1979, a male
college graduate earned 49 percent more than a similar man with only a high
school diploma -- a sizable difference, to be sure, but not too large for the two
to share the label "middle class". By 1992, however, the average male college
graduate was earning 83 percent more than his high-school graduate counterpart,
and the notion of common. prospects had faded considerably. More recent data
are not available, but there is no reason to believe this trend toward inequality
has been reversed. [Chart 2] The picture for women is similar, if slightly less
stark. At every level of education and training, the pattern holds: r The higher
the skill level, the higher the earnings. And the gap has been growing. [Chart
3]
There is a similar divergence in employee benefits. Employer-sponsored
health coverage for workers with college degrees has declined only slightly,
from 79 percent in 1979 to 76 percent in 1993. But rates for high school
graduates have fallen from 68 percent to 60 percent over the same period, and
for high-school dropouts, the 1979 rate-- already low at 52 percent-- has
plummeted to 36 percent. This inequality is one reason why the Clinton
Administration remains committed to comprehensive health care reform.
[Chart 4] Similar divisions apply to employer-sponsored pension coverage.
Nearly two-thirds of workers with college degrees are included in pension plans
at work, but fewer than a quarter of high-school dropouts.
Not only the wages and benefits that workers can command, but also their
chances .for holding a job at all, are divided along lines linked to skills. This
gap, too, widening over time. In the 1970s, the average unemployinent rate
for people who had not completed high school was 7 percent. By the 1980s,
this rate averaged 11 percent, and in 1993 it was over 12 percent. High school
graduates have also seen their risk of joblessness trend upward. By contrast, the
unemployment rate for workers with a college degree or better has held fairly
steady at around 3 percent. [Chart 5] Over the most recent ten-year period for
which data are available-- the period from 1983 to 1993 --the number of jobs
in sectors that typically require higher levels of education has grown by an
annual average of 2.8 percent, while job growth in sectors requiring Ie.sa
education has been only 1 percent. [Chart 6] This shift in favor of skills
shows up not just in the United States, but in other advanced countries as· well.
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Over the same period jobs in high-skill sectors have grown rapidly in Canada,
Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, while job growth in
low-skill 'sectors has been slow or nonexistent, narrowing horizons for workers
without adequate education and training. [Chart 7]
In a seeming paradox of today 1s economic news, financial markets fret
that unemployment is too ~ to contain inflation, even while 8 million willing
American workers remain jobless. Part of the answer to the apparent
contradiction is that markets for highly skilled labor .am becoming tight in many
parts of the economy, creating the conditions that can kindle inflation worries.
But millions of less-skilled workers remain idle or underemployed. This wasted
workforce is walled off by skill barriers from the leading edges of the economy
where capacity constraints loom. The best way to expand the economy s
capacity and lower the level of unemployment needed to bridle inflation is to
dismantle these walls by preparing underutilized workers for more productive
work.
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The Causes
What lies behind these widening dispariti~s within the workforce?
Manufacturing jobs were once the gateway to the middle class, even for workers
who started off without high-level skills. While it is a myth that international
trade has robbed America of its manufacturing -industries, technological changes
have diminished the role of labor, especially unskilled labor, in the modem
factory. And global trade and investment surely have hastened these
technological changes. Even within manufacturing industries, a rising share of
value is -added before the assembly line begins (in the form of market research,
design, and engineering) and after goods are produced (in the form of precisionscheduled delivery, customized installation, and mainte~ce).
Labor unions have long helped shore up wages and benefits even for
workers without high-level skills. But today, only eleven percent of the privatesector workforce is represented by a union. Let there be no doubt: A
revitalization of the labor movement would help reverse the erosion of the
middle class. This Administration is committed to full enforcement of the laws
guaranteeing workers rights to form unions and bargain collectively.
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But we cannot stop there. The forces unleashed by technology must be
mastered, not merely buffered. As increasingly capable machines join ever
more Americans at the workplace -- join them both as co-workers and as
competitors -- the payoff to education and training has soared, and the penalty
for lacking skills has stiffened .
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The most striking change in the workplace has been the brash arrival of
the computer. [Chart 8] In 1984, about 25 percent of American workers used
computers on the job. Last year, almost 47 percent did. And contrary to the
myth that computer-literate youngsters are running circles around their
technophobic elders, workers between 40 and 54 comprise the group most likely
to work with computers. We're talking about ~ generation. Fully half of
them use computers at the workplace, compared to around a third of workers
between 18 and 24. Even workplace communication.has been transformed, as
one in ten workers now uses electronic mail to communicate with colleagues
around the comer or around the world. Not long ago I arranged for 60 people
at the Labor Department to report to me directly on an e-mail system piped into
my home computer. I haven't had a peaceful evening since.
But the computer revolution has deepened the division of the American
workforce. Two-thirds of college graduates use computers at work, but only
one-third of high school graduates, and fewer than one in ten high-school
dropouts. [Chart 9] The vast majority of managerial, technical, and professional
workers use computers. But people in lower-paying, lower-skill occupations use
them far less frequently. The information highway promises to speed some
people to desirable destinations, but it may be leaving other~ stranded in the
high-tech version of inner-city ghettos. Indeed, a recent study of census data
found that. fully five percent of America's households-- disproportionately poor,
or minority, or single-parent families -- lack access to a telephone, the basic
ticket of entry to the inf~rmation web. Other data show that minoritY children
are less likely to use computers at school or at home. As personal computers
become standard equipment for learning at home, children who are disconnected
from the system will fall further and further behind.
Yet the long-term data also affirm the potential for building a new middle
class. The skill-based divisions of today's workforce are in some ways more
readily overcome than the divisions based on race or gender that have haunted
America throughout our history.
Even as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, the
road to opportunity is often much rockier for people of color. Last month, the
national unemployment rate for black Americans was over 11 percent, more
than double the rate for white Americans. Today, black men hold only three ·
out of every 100 managerial, professional, and technical jobs in the American
economy. The median income for black males working full-time, full-year in
1992 was $22,400 --just 72 percent of the median income for comparable white
males.
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Hispanic Americans seeking to join the middle class have confronted
similar obstacles. Their unemployment rate tops 10 percent, and their earnings
--particularly for Hispanic men-- have been steadily eroding. And Hispanic
workers are significantly less likely than their white counterparts to receive
health insurance on the job.
Closing these gaps requires a long, painful process of national growth and
healing to which we remain committed. But virtually every willing worker can
expand his or her skills; indeed, information technology itself promises to vastly
increase the productivity of learning as it makes top-flight teaching tools more
widely available. In path-breaking training programs in the troubled heart of
Detroit and the barrios of East Los Angeles, I have seen some of the country's
most stigmatized young people learning some of the economy's most soughtafter skills, earning themselves entree into the new middle class.
While visiting one such program, I talked with a young woman who said,
"I used to hate math." But now her perspective had changed. Math class-once a blizzard of abstract equations -- had become a concrete way to build
skills for a good job. Now, she told me, "I love geometry."
Toward a New Middle Class
America has hope enough· to go around. There is no fiXed number .of
good jobs to be parceled out, nor any natural limit to the ingenuity of the human
mind and the new products and services it can concoct. We already see
·emerging all around us examples of the sophisticated yet accessible work that
can form the platform for a new middle class. Some of the most notable job
growth has occurred among technicians, who defy the traditional categories of
the old economy. Their ranks are predicted to grow by nearly 40 percent over
the decade to come. Data released recently by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
show the most rapid job ·growth in high-paying occupations, even within
traditionally low-paying industries -- hinting at the proliferation of :new kinds of
middle-class jobs throughout the economy.
In my travels throughout America, I've met workers who repair vending
machines using hand-held computers to identify problems and communicate with
the home office, or who manage sections of retail stores by periodically tapping
PCs to monitor sales and replenish inventories. Skilled workers use computers
to monitor manufacturing machinery, or to link other computers as they install
and test complex communications networks, or they go online to research cases
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and statutes at law firms. Some technical workers drive trucks equipped with a
computer and modem and make just-in-time deliveries. Others orchestrate
sophisticated spreadsheet and graphics programs to create value in ways
unimaginable a decade ago.
The technician jobs that will sustain the core of the new middle class
usually require some education beyond high school, but they do not always
demand a four-year college degree. Degrees from community colleges -- the
unsung heroes of the new middle class -- are paying off, and their enrollments
are rising. Men with community college degrees earn 26 percent more, on
average, than men with only a high school diploma. Women who have
graduated from community colleges earn 33 percent more than women with a
high school degree alone.
Lifelong Learning
The Clinton Administration's workforce agenda is anchored by the proven
facts that skills matter, and they can be learned. The fruits of our commitment ·
to creating a new middle class are already emerging~ We have begun to
combat the forces dividing America's workers with an armory of new
approaches to lifelong learning. (Ironically, many of these accomplishments
have been little noticed because of the bipartisan consensus supporting them.
Bipartisanship summons less attention than ideological brawls.)
Consider: An additional 130,000 children each year can now be made
ready to learn at school through Head Start. School systems throughout
America have millions of dollars in new incentives to improve their
performance. During the summer just ending, some 120,000 disadvantaged
young people who otherwise would have been on the street instead combined
jobs with classroom instruction. Over the next six years, almost half a million
young Attiericans will be entering youth apprenticeships during the last two
years of high school, many of them receiving special skill training beyond high
school.
Starting this fall, 20,000 young people will enter National Service,
earning money that they can apply to a college education. The three and a half
million people who take out education loans each year now have the option of
repaying their loans as a percentage of future income. We're delivering on our
promise to make work pay-- offering tax relief for 15 million working families
with modest incomes. We've begun transforming the old unemployment
insurance system into a reemployment system, ensuring that this year alone an
additional 150,000 Americans who have lost their jobs will get the skills or the
job-search help they need to find new. ones. (Community colleges are quietly
�.
.
8
evolving into a core component of the emerging reemployment system, as
thousands of experienced workers who have lost their jobs are able to rejoin the
middle class thanks to community-college training.)
And we remain committed to staying the course on health-care reform,
not least because the workforce stakes are so high. Without delivering on the
promise of health security, our mission of turning the anxious class into a new,
more secure, more productive middle class cannot be completed.
American business also has a crucial role to play in building a new middle
class. Skills learned on the job, or in a work-related setting, tend to be
especially well-tailored to the requirements of the workplace. New data on
work-related training -- even though they do not capture the vital but hard-tomeasure effect of informal on-the-job training --.show that the impact of such
training is of the same magnitude as more traditional schooling. In fact, men
and women who graduate only from high school, but who have received workrelated training, earn more than people who have attended some college but who
have not received any additional training, and almost as much as college
graduates who lack additional work-based training. [Chart 10]
A positive sign is the growing readiness on the part of labor unions to
include training benefits in bargaining. A contract negotiated this year between
Nynex and the Communications Workers of America encourages workers to
earn a two-year technical degree. Employees can spend one paid day a week
,building their skills, with the guarantee of a $50-per-week raise upon
graduation. Workers employed for five years or more qualify for up to two
years of education ,leave, and up to $10,000 yearly for tuition.
A New Social Compact
Yet ·most companies are not yet doing enough training, and what training
they do provide is not being directed to workers who need it most. .Among
young college graduates, about 35 percent now receive work-related training.
That's nearly double the rate for high school graduates and more than four times
the rate for high school dropouts. The workers most likely to receive training
are white, male, well-educated, and working in high-paying occupations. This
imbalance serves only to harden the divisions within the workforce.
The payoff to work-based training, and the inadequacy and uneven
distribution of such training,. highlights the need for a new social compact
among American workers, business, and government. In its first year and a
half, the Clinton Administration has delivered much of what business has· sought
in order to bolster its competitiveness -- lower deficits, low inflation, more open
�9
world markets, promotion of American companies abroad. Now business needs
to do its part. in this new compact by bringing all workers along on the route
to prosperity, investing aggressively in their skills and making them partners in
productivity. For American businesses, this new social compact is an
imperative not only of corporate citizenship, but also of their own long-term
interests.
A constant theme of American history has been the challenge of forging
unity out of diversity. Over and over, we have had to affrrm our identity as one
nation, even in the face of profound differences. We are at such a point once
again. This time, though, the deepest divisions aren't based on race or on
national origin or on geography. They're based on the ability of individuals to
make their way in an increasingly turbulent economy. The overclass is doing
fine, but questioning its connection to the rest of America. The underclass is
isolated in marginal enclaves walled off from hope. The anxious class is being
pulled and stretched -- by the need to work two or more jobs to keep a family
solvent, by uneasiness about health care, by the specter that today's job will
disappear tomorroW·j·~ and by fears that their kids will be denied the opportunity
for a better life.
If unchecked, these divisions can corrode our society. Unlike the citizens
of most other nations, Americans have always been bound together less by a
shared past than by shared dreams of a better future. If we lose that common
future, we lose the glue that holds our nation together. Even now, some
aspiring demagogues, feeding on the fear and anger unleashed by the splintering
of the old middle class, stoke the fires of hate on the airwaves, and conspire to
conceal their own agendas behind the banners of fear and division. This
Administration proudly claims these cynics as adversaries.
Nothing is more vital to fulfilling our nation's defining promise than
preparing all Americans for mem,ingful, productive working lives. This is no
simple undertaking -- especially with the most austere federal budget in a
generation. But if we pleqge our common efforts -- business, labor, government
at all levels-- we can clear the path to opportunity for today's working men and
women and their children.
In this century's waning years, in the hopeful, fearful confusion of the
Cold War's end, our most important mission is to restore hope to the anxious
class and lift despair from the underclass, to afftmi with conviction that the
American dream of broadly-shared middle class prosperity still endures.
- ###
�Average monthly change in nonfarm payroll
employment
·
Jobs (in thousands)
250~----------------------------------------~
226
200
150
100
51
50
0
L----------'-
Jan 1989-Jan 1993
Source: Cmrent ~loyment Statistics program
Jan 1993-July 1994
�Ratio of average annual earnings of college graduates
to high school graduates
2.2~--------------------------------------------~
II Women D Men
2
1.8
1.73
1.6
' 1.49
1.4
1.2
1
1979
1989
Note: Worlrers 25 years and older, year round, full time. Data on educational attainment
for 1992 are not directly comparable to those from prior years.
I
'
I
I
;
Sowce: Current Populatio~ Smvey
1992
�Annual average earnings of workers by gender and
educational attainment
-Less than high school
1992 dollars
-
4 years of high school
-
1-3 years of college
-
4 years or more of college
Men
Women
1992 dollars
60,000
60,000
50,000
50,000
40,000
40,000
30,000
30,000
___..,..,.-
_.....
20,000
~
.......
-
20,000
.......__
10,000
10,000
o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992
............_..........__.___...__.__.........._.___._.......__.___.._............___.__..........__.___.__. 0
1974 1977 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992
Soorce: Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey
Note: WOikers 25 years and older, working year round, full time. Data on educatiooal attainment for 1991 and 1992 are not
directly comparable to those from prior years.
�Health care coverage rates under eiDployersponsored plans by educational attainiDent
Percent of all wage and salary workers
100~--------------------------------------~
20
o~------------~----------~--------~--~
1979
Source: Current Population Smvey
1983
1988
1993
�Unemployment rates of persons 25 to 64 years of age
by educational attainment
Percent
20
~----------------------------------------------------------~
Less than 4 years of
high school
15
10
4 years of
high school
5
College, 4 years or more
1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
Note: Data on educational attainmmt for 1992 are not directly comparable to those from prior years.
Source: Current Population Survey
�Employment growth by higher and lower educational
attainment sectors in the United States, 1983-93
Average annual percent change
5
~--------------------------------------------------~
4
3
2.8
2
1.0
1
0 ,___ __
Higher education sectors
LowereducaUonsectors
Note: Higher educational ~ainment sectors are those in which 30% or more of the full-time worlrers hacf college
degrees in 1985.
Source: Current Population Survey
�Employment growth by higher and lower educational
attainment sectors, 1983-93
Average annual percent change
5
~----------------------------------------------------~
• Higher education sectors D Lower education sectors
4
3
2
1
0.0
0
-0.3
(1)~--~----~------~----~------~----~------~--~
United States Canada
Japan
France
Germany
Italy United Kingdom
Note: For France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, the data are for 1983-91.
Higher educational attaimnent sectors are those in which 30% or more of the full-time worlrers in the
United States have college degrees.
�Percent of workers who directly use a
computer at work
Percent
80~----------------------------------------~
60
46.6
40
20
0
1984
Source: Current Population Survey
1989
1993
�Computer use at work by educational
attainment, 1993
Percent of employed persons
80~--------------------------------------------~
67.4
60
40
20
0
Less than high
school
Source: Current Population Survey
High School
Some college
College degree
�Average weekly earnings of full-time workers by
educational.attainment and training received, 1991
Dollars
1,000 . . - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ,
N 0 tr . .
liiDliig
D
SkiD
impnM:med ~
II n...,~;n.;,...
....,;.,;,..,
-.c-,7-- - - -
Ill
Both types
of~
'
800
785
600
400
200
0
High school
Somce: Cwrent Population Swvey
Some college
College degree
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Don Baer
Creator
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Office of Communications
Don Baer
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1994-1997
Is Part Of
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<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36008" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431981" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Identifier
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2006-0458-F
Description
An account of the resource
Donald Baer was Assistant to the President and Director of Communications in the White House Communications Office. The records in this collection contain copies of speeches, speech drafts, talking points, letters, notes, memoranda, background material, correspondence, reports, excerpts from manuscripts and books, news articles, presidential schedules, telephone message forms, and telephone call lists.
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
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William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Extent
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537 folders in 34 boxes
Text
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Paper
Dublin Core
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Title
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Reich, Speeches/Memos
Creator
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Office of Communications
Don Baer
Identifier
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2006-0458-F
Is Part Of
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Box 2
<a href="http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/2006/2006-0458-F.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431981" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
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William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Format
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Adobe Acrobat Document
Medium
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Reproduction-Reference
Date Created
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1/12/2015
Source
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42-t-7431981-20060458F-002-008-2014
7431981