Issues

The Economic and Political Context

Over past thirty years, New Jersey’s economy has changed dramatically: it has become an hourglass, with growing wealth at the top, a fast-disappearing middle class, and more and more working families living in poverty.  A service economy has replaced manufacturing, technological change and outsourcing have deskilled many professions, and jobs in many sectors have mutated, with full-time positions replaced by temporary and contingent work arrangements.

In this difficult economic context, public decision-making about the economic direction of the region has, too often, served to support rather than to contest the trend toward a bifurcated economy where it is less and less possible for those at the bottom to build a future for their families.  As union density has shrunk and a conservative, free-market ideology has dominated public discourse, elected officials have been increasingly wary of supporting the rights of workers to form unions.  Even as significant public funds are spent, economic development decisions are too often driven by the narrow interests of developers and elected officials, rather than by consideration of broad public benefits.

The recent financial crisis offers an opportunity, as a new administration takes office, to shift the terms of the debate.  As faith in unfettered free-market capitalism has been shaken, public officials and the American public are open to new models of how to build a sustainable economy that offers hope and opportunity.

Labor cannot seize this opportunity, cannot succeed in broadening the middle class, if it acts alone.  It is too weakened, too isolated, and too clearly defined as a special interest in the eyes of the American public.  The work of GANE, and of labor-community coalitions like it across the country, must be to build support for labor’s organizing efforts and at the same time help progressive unions to become a broad transformational force at a time when the country so urgently needs one.