The Mobility Agenda

Want to see a news article that proves the serious need national progressives – and especially “anti-poverty” advocates - have for a new communications model? Check out the new issue of National Journal magazine. It's all about “Wish Lists”, that is,“demands by traditional liberal interest groups as Democrats begin to map their long-term agenda for the 110th Congress."

There are so many problems with the way this article will likely be perceived by readers, it’s hard to know where to start.

Some of these problems aren't found in the article's direct quotes or statements from advocates. For example, the editors chose to organize the magazine with a series of articles about a bunch of issue silos which the magazine identifies on the web as environment, education, labor, gun control, abortion, minorities, gay rights, trial lawyers – and the subject of this posting: “entitlements”. Why did the magazine leadership take this approach? Because this is how progressives describe themselves. But this is the worst possible kind of frame for public consumption – a bunch of self-interested advocates working to pass legislation on a series of controversial issues. And describing the category of employment benefits for low-wage jobs as “entitlements” is as close to a “welfare” category as I can imagine, not to mention it’s just plain inaccurate since so many of the benefits are not guaranteed to all low-wage households at all.

Take a close look at the article about “interest groups” for entitlements, which the reporter unfortunately describes as a “variety of anti-poverty groups”. Here are a just a few examples of evidence that a year and a half after Hurricane Katrina, DC groups still need a new approach.

• Listing the programs The reporter says: “A variety of anti-poverty groups are appealing to the new Democratic-controlled Congress. They want lawmakers to expand government health insurance and access to food stamps during debate this year on several federal program reauthorizations. They also want Congress, through the budget and appropriations process, to increase funding for housing, child care, child-support enforcement, and other federal "safety-net" programs for the poor.” This is a list of programs. We don’t want to communicate our goals as a list of programs that may be associated with welfare in the minds of readers, a list of new spending priorities for people readers may well assume are just not working hard enough to make it. Our goal is opportunity, not program expansion, and we should say so. Otherwise, readers who don’t agree with our policy solutions may stop reading before they ever hear about the outcomes we expect from the program policy.
• Health care Apparently, this is how proponents of health coverage expansion are choosing to state the case: "It's morally intolerable to have 9 million uninsured kids in this country, and 90 percent in working households…. As the SCHIP bill comes up, it would be a tragically missed opportunity to not cover all children.” For the second time this week, I’ve heard or seen almost these exact same words describing the campaign for health coverage. Hello? Everything we know about communications designed to build the public will for the policy results we seek tells us not to throw data as our opening move, and not to go directly to program acronyms. We have to start way up high with the big ideas and values we all agree on – opportunity, economic mobility, then go to issues, health coverage in this case, and finally talk about the specific program. And don’t say “SCHIP”. How many voters know what that means? it sounds like you want a computer in every kitchen or you're fronting for Microsoft and Bill Gates!
• Child care Oh my. We are now caught in the conservative corner; advocates sound like they agree with the fiction created by conservatives that child care benefits are exclusively for welfare recipients, current and former. Why do conservatives do this? They know that adequately funding child care for low-wage workers, who don’t get the same tax breaks to pay for care as everyone else, is expensive. And they don’t want to pay for it. Their effort to taint child care benefits with welfare stigma is still alive – and now we’re caught in that frame too. That's apparent when the reporter notes that the advocates “seek more money for child care subsidies that make work possible for welfare families.” Most people who get these child care benefits are stuck in the low-wage economy, and that's all we should say about that.
• Temporary Assistance The reporter writes “anti-poverty groups are hoping to do some damage control from last year's reauthorization of TANF. Congress increased the number of hours that welfare recipients must work to receive cash assistance, and the Health and Human Services Department subsequently issued regulations that advocates say make it harder for people to get education and training and still qualify for cash assistance. It might take legislation to force HHS to change the regulations, the groups say.” Why would anyone even say this out loud? Does anyone think that the election was about reducing work requirements for welfare? Seriously, whatever the underlying merits of this issue (and I happen to know there are some) this article should be the clearest evidence possible that there’s no way to effectively put it under the media spotlight. Just stop it already!

I have no doubt about the good intentions of the advocates interviewed for this article. Our goals are shared. And I understand that the audience for an article like this is not so much the general public or all voters, but policymakers in Washington DC. Yet, why would anyone think that we can have a conversation with elected and appointed policymakers about these issues, when they will surely read the article (if they are at all inclined to read an article about anti-poverty interest groups’ wish list for entitlements) and understand that since their constituents aren’t clamoring for an “expansion of entitlements” for “welfare recipients”, these issues can be ignored? If we ask for better jobs, more opportunity, and economic inclusion, decision makers might be more interested in acting. Sadly, other media outlets—those more often seen by the wider public—are now likely to pick up the essential narrative in this issue of National Journal for reporting on the new Congress. This all the evidence anyone needs that we have to change our communications strategy.

If you’ve read my bio, you know that former Rep. Eric Fingerhut of Ohio is the guy who brought me to Washington. (Full disclosure – we’ve been friends for a long time.) In the 1990s, Eric was ahead of almost everyone with his ideas for changes to the system of job benefits for low-wage workers. Now, he’s on the cutting edge of linking education and better jobs. And Ohio’s new Governor, Ted Strickland, appears poised to appoint Eric as the first Chancellor to guide higher education as a member of the Governor’s cabinet. Eric is the kind of guy that the first Democratic Governor of the state in a long, long time can appoint with the full support of the legislature’s Republican leadership. And here’s the kind of thing Eric says about education and jobs:

"Higher education has to be central, has to be the driver of economic development, and that's obviously part of what we've been doing here," he said.

Fingerhut said B-W called his bluff a couple of years ago by offering him a job that directly dealt with the ways colleges can create and expand businesses. The link between education and jobs became clear to him when he returned to the Ohio Senate in 1999 after being out of elected office for four years and saw how much trouble the state's economy was in.

"I really started immediately saying to my friends in the social-service world, 'Do you want to spend your careers fighting over 5 percent to 10 percent cuts and considering a 5 percent cut to be a victory?' " he said, "Or do we want to get back to an era of growth? It was a direct line to understanding that this old economy wasn't coming back."

It’s great when good friends make it to important places for policy development and implementation!

A good review from today's CongressDailyPM:

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is headed toward its first partisan collision this year, as HELP Chairman Kennedy plans to reintroduce next month a bill that would require employers with 15 or more workers to provide seven days of paid sick leave annually for full-time workers. The leave requirement would be prorated for part-time workers.

....

When the committee considers the proposal, it is likely also to raise questions about the Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave annually for serious medical conditions or the birth or adoption of a child. Democrats, particularly Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, want to expand the law to cover workers in firms with 25 or more employees. In previous years, Dodd has proposed a pilot grant program under which states would experiment with ways to help employers offer six weeks of partial or fully paid leave for workers. Under Dodd's proposal, states could use wage insurance programs or state unemployment compensation to help fund the paid leave.

Kennedy's paid sick leave proposal also comes on the heels of a Labor Department request for information from businesses about family leave. Comments were due last week. A coalition of women's groups and civil rights organizations is concerned that the Labor Department's action is a precursor to scaling back the act. For example, businesses have complained that the provision requiring workers to be granted intermittent leave is difficult to administer and is abused by workers with physicians' notes attesting to "chronic conditions." Employers want medical certifications for chronic conditions to be renewed every three months and the ability to consult directly with workers' physicians. Women's groups oppose such changes, saying they would impose barriers to workers using family leave.

Seems it was a big weekend for union bashing in the nation’s major newspapers.

Warren Brown, a Washington Post business page columnist who writes about the car industry, took the UAW to task in a column over the weekend. Explaining that corporations are “greedy….It is what it is”, Brown goes on to note that the union workers at Chrysler who are about to lose their jobs are paid the same as non-union workers in a couple successful US car plants. While Brown acknowledges that the Chrysler workers are not responsible for dumb choices made by executives (making the kind of trucks consumers no longer want, for example), he apparently thinks these workers should have taken some action since they must have known the execs were about to eliminate their jobs. Brown seems to be suggesting workers should be willing to take a pay cut when it turns out executives aren’t so swift at decision-making and business planning. Now there’s a new definition of pay for performance!

Brown says: When you're getting paid as much as someone who is making popular, profitable products, and you're making unpopular and unprofitable products, that's a really serious problem. Something's got to give, and more than likely it is going to be your job and your plant, and maybe your company.

Say what? This article doesn’t make much sense. Maybe Brown left out some of his supporting argument, but it reads like a reflexive conservative slam on democratic workplaces with negotiated job benefits, even as Brown simultaneously acknowledges the real reason the company is in trouble stems from bad business decisions completely out of control of workers.

What’s really going on here? Any ideas? Maybe conservatives are nervous about all the movement in the other direction, what with businesses like Cingular volunteering to work with organized groups of workers to create a successful business venture for ALL of the actors involved.

Brown asserts that consumer “purchase decisions aren't based on what is good for the community, or the country, or the UAW. In that regard, they are much like corporations. They are in it for the money.”

But, consumers do weigh social responsibility in their decision-making, particularly when all other things are equal. This Washington Post columnist overly simplifies consumer decision-making. Readers should know that all consumers do not make decisions solely on the basis of price.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if the Post ran an article about a recently released list of employers utilizing socially responsible business practices and paid for a survey of consumers about how these influence purchasing? A socially responsible media outlet would provide better analysis of the reasons for Chrysler’s decision, and more reporting on businesses practices regarding human rights, employee relations, job standards, environmental impact, community accountability, transparency, and so on.

After being focused on upgrading the site in advance of last Thursday's annoucment of our new partnership with CEPR, I'm now catching up on what happened in Congress last week. The big news was the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act by the House Committee on Education and Labor. EFCA will almost certainly pass the House—a majority of members already are co-sponsors—but it faces a tougher road, and a well-funded business lobbying campaign against it, in the Senate.

Also worth noting is a hearing the Seante Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held on Paid Sick Days legislation. This chart, included in the very good testimony of Jody Heyman, caught my eye:

Along with all of the other changes on the site, you’ll notice the new button and tab for The Mobility Agenda.

For the past year, Shawn, Rachel, and I—with research assistance from Sarah Sattelmeyer and Amelia Dietrich—have designed and developed this new initiative with the goal of strengthening the economy with better jobs. The Center for Community Change provided crucial support for the Agenda by hosting us through the development and implementation year.

Nearly one-third of all jobs pay around $10 an hour or less, often providing no employment benefits and little flexibility. Even though the U.S. is among the wealthiest nations in the world, workers in these jobs are paid less than workers who hold similar jobs elsewhere.

The last decade has seen some progress on advancing a number of well-known policies to improve job quality by boosting the minimum wage and expanding publicly subsidized employment benefits, like child care and wage subsidies such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. Similar progress has been made to address education and advancement strategies to prepare workers for skilled jobs.

However, when one worker advances out of a low-wage job and another worker takes it, the job does not change. Across the nation, state and local stakeholders are experimenting with a host of new initiatives to improve low-wage jobs. These innovative ideas are far less well known and aren’t commonly incorporated into an anti-poverty agenda.

We will identify and promote new ideas and strategies to improve jobs in this large and growing segment of our labor market.

For more information about The Mobility Agenda, including findings from our national scan for ideas and our recent roundtable in Illinois, click on The Mobility Agenda button or tab. And let us know what you think—the search for new ideas goes on!