How to give working families the tools and opportunities to prosper in the new economy: a call to action for families, business, labor, and government. Many American families have not prospered in the new knowledge economy. The layoffs, restructurings, and wage and benefit cuts that have followed the short-lived boom of the 1990s threaten our deeply held values of justice, fairness, family, and work. These values -- and not those superficial ones political pollsters ask about -- are the foundation of the American dream of good jobs, fair pay, and opportunities for all. In this call to action for families, business, labor, and government, Thomas Kochan outlines ways in which we can empower working families to earn a good living by doing satisfying work while still having time for family and community life. We cannot make the transition to a knowledge economy, writes Kochan, with a workforce that is stressed, frustrated, and insecure. Businesses need to rebuild relationships with their employees based on trust. And working families need to take control of their own destinies. First, we can take action that goes beyond the workplace buzzwords flexible and family friendly to design systems that support productive work and healthy family life. We can invest in better basic education and life-long learning, and we can work toward strategies for creating and sustaining good jobs with portable benefits. We need organizations that value investors of human capital -- their employees -- as highly as they do investors of financial capital, and we need a renewed labor movement to give workers a stronger voice. Kochan lays out an agenda for working families in the twenty-first century that calls for business, labor, government, and workers to come together to make the changes that will allow us all to benefit from the new economy. The solution to our problems, he points out, is too important to be left to the market.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
MIT Press Ltd
ISBN-13
9780262612166
eBay Product ID (ePID)
95047340
Product Key Features
Subject Area
Social Work
Author
Thomas A. Kochan
Publication Name
Restoring the American Dream: a Working Families' Agenda for America
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Publication Year
2006
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
272 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
229mm
Item Width
152mm
Item Weight
386g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Thomas A. Kochan
Series Title
MIT Press
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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