Imagine: How to retool, prepare workers for 21st century?

• How do we take people with 20th century skills and retool them for the work world of the 21st century which is changing by the nanosecond?
• “We are getting more and more productive with fewer and fewer people," said Sue Schurman, a labor studies professor
• The educational system wasn't prepared for this shift of how things get done, she said
• The workers of previously closed economies, such as the Soviet Union and Latin America, have now entered the world labor pool

Editor's note: Imagine is a monthly column that explores ideas, insights and discoveries made in New Jersey that are shaping our future.    

One of the bleakest experiences anyone can face in this world is the inability to earn a living. I faced the situation a number of times throughout my life, but somehow, in the eleventh hour — an opportunity always came my way. I was one of the lucky ones.

But what happens to the individual whose skills become obsolete because the job they have been working for decades disappears because of technology and automation or simply streamlined management systems?

The recent presidential election brought to the center of attention a stark reality facing workers in our country — jobs are disappearing for a variety of reasons and a significant number of citizens are feeling that their lifeline has been cut.

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Where did the jobs go and whose responsibility is it to prepare American citizens for a rapidly changing work world?

Labor and management expert Sue Schurman, Distinguished Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, believes that education, job training and preparing citizens for the future world of work is clearly the responsibility of the government.

She cites the philosophy of Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism who believed that education is a public good.

Where did the jobs go?

For Schurman, there is no simple explanation for the disappearance of certain jobs in America.

“Some jobs have been exported to other countries — particularly those jobs that require less skill and can be easily transported to a country where the cost of labor is extremely low,” she said. In addition, the factories that remain are being streamlined through technology and management systems.

“We are getting more and more productive with fewer and fewer people. And then of course the jobs that remain are highly skilled,” Schurman said.

She said when she visited Volkswagen in Germany recently she was astonished at what she found.

“What we saw was a vertically integrated operation. They make the parts and assemble the car. I was amazed at how automated the system was. There were few workers putting bolts on cars, but rather operating the machines that assemble the cars,” Schurman said.

There is another factor in the disappearance of American jobs, she added..

“While we in the U.S. developed the most advanced educational system in the world, it was developed largely for the 20th century organization — which were large organizations geared to mass produce goods and services,” she said.

“We essentially developed an educational system to prepare 75 percent of our citizens to work on factory floors or in lower level management jobs and 25 percent were prepared to work in upper levels of the organizations,” she said.

Schurman said, due largely to the advent of the computing technology, the landscape rapidly changed and flattened many organizations that were previously layers deep. She said some auto manufacturers, that decades ago had 43 positions between the worker on the factory floor and the CEO, collapsed to just a few layers because processes became streamlined.

Another critical factor, according to Schurman is that we now have countries that were previously closed economies, such as the Soviet Union and Latin America, whose workers have now entered the world labor pool.

All this means that there are now approximately 2 to 3 million manufacturing jobs in America that cannot be filled for a number of reasons, Schuman said.

According to a report titled "The skills gap in U.S. Manufacturing 2015 and Beyond," conducted by Deloitte and published on the website of The Manufacturing Institute,  the skills gap is widening for a number of reasons — including the retirement of baby boomers, and younger generations being less interested in working in manufacturing.

The report also attributed the gap to “Loss of embedded knowledge due to movement of experienced workers, and a lack of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills among workers, and a gradual decline of technical education programs in public high schools.”

What are the solutions?

How do we take people with 20th century skills and retool them for the work world of the 21st century which is changing by the nanosecond?

One solution put forth is the formation of associations designed to help one another make the transitions needed in their respective fields.

“The goal would be to build a kind of mutual insurance. Through associations of employees in various fields, members could help one another structure networking, share information and form new projects together when they are unemployed,” said Charles Heckscher, director, Center for the Study of Collaboration in Work and Society Labor Studies and Employment Relations (LSER), Rutgers University.

Heckscher said he also believes the answer to preparing for the rapidly changing work world is taking a broad perspective when considering the development of one’s skills.

“Any particular technical skills you develop are likely to be outmoded. You can't rely on that, but if you have an ability to think broadly about industries, and futures, and so on, then you're more likely to figure out how to position yourself as things change,” he said.

He offered the example of long-distance truck driving jobs, which could begin to disappear with the advent of driverless vehicles.

While he doesn’t believe that Artificial Intelligence and robots will put vast numbers of workers out of jobs as rapidly as had been predicted, he does believe that every individual should think about what human beings can do — that machines will not be able to replace, for example, the work of a landscape designer.

Heckscher added that the trend in higher education to move away from liberal arts and focus on occupational training is misdirected.

“Particular occupations cannot be counted on and are likely to change, whereas a liberal arts education teaches you to think actively, and analyze situations, and that’s what is going to be needed,” he said.

According to Heckscher, a guaranteed minimum income is a possible solution that may seem radical but actually has its roots in the philosophy of Milton Friedman, an American economist, statistician and Rutgers University graduate.

Heckscher said there is an increasing number of economists who believe we need to look at the idea of a guaranteed income again because if you are going to have a society in which careers are unstable, you've got to give people a basis they can work in order to build their careers and form new ventures.

Part II of this special edition of Imagine will appear later this week.

If you would like to be featured in the “Imagine” column, email MaryLynn Schiavi at marylynninc@ gmail.com.