Time to rethink the American dream — protect our skilled workers

Diane Sawyer reported a piece on the challenges facing working class America, “My Reality: A Hidden America.” Profiles of working individuals and families across America who are struggling to stay in the middle class.

There were many important points including an important argument that people are working more, earning less, and The American dream — the long-accepted belief that hard work leads to prosperity — is receding out of reach.

{mosads}But what constitutes hard work in 21st century America? As an associate professor of Leadership Studies at Loyola University Chicago who previously hired many workers as a corporate executive, and now teaches adults as a business professor, I understand that one committed to public service, or one who builds products, is the skilled worker in the American economy.

Protecting the job of the skilled worker is, arguably, the purpose and important work of labor unions and the country’s leadership. Protect the worker and therefore protect the dream.

Less than 50 percent of American families are considered to be living middle class lives. Some estimate that 30 percent earn $54,000 per year or less. Fifty-five percent of young workers earn less than their parents.

The truth is there are those working 40 to 80 hours per week yet struggling to make ends meet. Some are workers previously employed in manufacturing jobs; skilled workers who found themselves released from manufacturing as technology advanced without them. These workers look to earn a living wage using the skills they developed over time.

Yet the American livable wage is now being made in a different way. An important consideration is the shift on the part of employers from paying a livable wage or high wages for skill to paying a livable wage for knowledge.

President Trump suggests that we must bring jobs back for the middle class worker and get America back to work; that we must force manufacturing jobs to stay in our country. The loss of manufacturing jobs causes the American dream to be more and more out of reach? In order to truly get America back to work, we must recognize this important shift: no longer are skills the basis for a livable wage; skills and knowledge in the new economy must be continually sharpened and acquired.

In 1994 Peter Drucker suggested that the nature of open trade, the global economy will drive the need for the knowledge worker. That practically none of the decline in U.S. manufacturing employment can be attributed to moving work to low-wage countries.

He goes on to suggest the primary advantage to developed countries is the application of knowledge through techniques and customer service. Drucker intimated that the worker of tomorrow would need to develop the ability to gain knowledge continually. This is how we must think about work.

The reality is that the American worker must shift focus, not the American workplace. The American workplace recognized long ago that in order to compete in the global economy it would have to shift from skilled worker expertise to knowledge worker expertise. The ability to analyze and apply knowledge, understand team dynamics and to effectively communicate is what is more effectively used in organizations.

Technological innovation has been the driving force of workplace change for over two decades. Workers must know how to adapt, to problem solve, to learn and do, quickly. This is what companies pay a living wage for

The knowledge worker earns a salary with benefits, such as flex time to volunteer at the kids’ school; the skilled worker earns an hourly wage, fights for overtime and pays union dues to help protect the job.

The American dream isn’t fading, it’s just time to re-tool. The phrase, don’t work harder, work smarter, seems crude. It sounds like a judgmental statement. In this context, it is intended to rethink how to reach The American dream.

Many adults are re-training, re-tooling, and developing critical thinking skills; re-learning how to learn in a way that is perpetual. Developing ways to analyze, lead others, and communicate complex matters propels one forward and is what companies pay for.

Granted, there are many complex social issues facing this country and the political climate is intense. But, to imply that the solution for the middle-class is to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is unfair to the American worker; a distraction. The time, money, effort, energy spent fighting for jobs can be better spent figuring out what it takes to re-tool them entirely.

The worker must not look to hold on to an industrial economy way of thinking, but a knowledge economy shift in understanding. To re-capture the dream, we must get back on the path and find solace in the certainty of change, by plugging into 21st century knowledge jobs.

Dianne M. Dawson Daniels is an associate professor of Leadership Studies at Loyola University Chicago, where her research focuses on business ethics, organizational leadership, and management. She is a Public Voices fellow.

The views of contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.