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A version of this piece first published on May 6, 2025.
The issue
There is a bankable way to create good jobs that improves the fortunes of workers and employers. Many employers hate it.
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Explain.
During my last year at the Department of Labor, I had a conversation with a stakeholder about good jobs where they asked a question that kind of went like this:
This sounds great, but it’s also a lot of work. Is there some way that we can put all this stuff in one package that guarantees it will take off?
In other words, they were looking for the killer app ofgood jobs—what Netscape and Internet Explorer were to the World Wide Web, Super Mario Bros. and Pong were for video games, and Twitter was for being mad online.
The good news is that my experience and research showed that there is one.
Before getting into the answer, it’s important to know what is a good job and why they work for workers and employers. I think there are too many “good jobs” definitions and prefer simplicity: they pay and treat workers well enough to stick around. Getting assurances of a good job is a good investment practice for the limited resources America puts into workforce development.
Good jobs are good for employers because they save money on labor costs and produce higher quality products. They’re good for workers because they get money, benefits, and security that move them to a cozier socioeconomic nook where they don’t have to worry about, you know, housing and feeding themselves or the people they love. Given that people making money tend to spend it, good jobs aren’t half bad for the economy, either.
It’s a neat concept. It also is intimidating as hell for some stakeholders and employers.
That said, there was (and I hope is) a slice of employers and stakeholders I worked with in the last administration that wanted to go above and beyond in good jobs. They noted there are a lot of hard-to-wrangle-for factors—benefits policies, hiring, stability—that go into providing a good job.
Hence, the stakeholder asking if there was a nice tidy package for creating good jobs. And there was:
Unionization.
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Opening the lines.
Two things to note:
One, no, I, a representative of the federal government, wasn’t pressuring or cajoling unsuspecting employers and stakeholders to unionize. Yes, the Biden-Harris Administration was an exceedingly pro-labor era of the federal government, but someone asked me a question and I answered it based on what I saw minding the models and evidence on good jobs.
Two, unionization creates good jobs outcomes for workers and employers because it opens conversations that workers and their managers aren’t likely to have in the day-to-day rush of keeping the operation going. Sometimes bargaining doesn’t go well, obviously, but it can lead to management and staff talking about things in the workplace that wouldn’t get oxygen otherwise.
Under the law, most American workers can be fired at any moment for any reason—or no reason at all. Strangely, that can make a worker think twice about, say, suggesting how unloading deliveries would go better if the company addressed a huge problem. If they say nothing, their boss won’t get offended. Yet, the boss also will never see the issue, meaning a potentially huge idea for cost savings never gets heard.
Put another way: unionization can drive employers and their workers to think proactively through how the workplace is run and how it can be better. Because many companies do whatever worked at the start until it doesn’t work anymore, this means the beat created by bargaining conversations can be game changing.
You see a similar effect in a more specific lane of organizing also embraced by the last administration (and hated by management groups and Republican lawmakers): project labor agreements, or PLAs, which are collective bargaining agreements that cover the hiring and operation of construction projects. PLAs require making a clear plan for the project and working out labor issues in advance to avoid delays. One study comparing a small group of PLA and non-PLA projects found that the PLA projects finished with fewer issues in construction that can delay or cause budget overruns.
Obviously, American employers tend to dislike unions—to put it mildly. As I heard in many conversations about good jobs, that dislike can get awfully… spirited amid the politics of “right-to-work” states with laws that disfavor or discourage unionization.
I’m not going to ignore the last several generations of labor-management relations in the United States. I also won’t pretend that organizing isn’t a confrontational process, with workers often coming together because their bosses provide poor, if not dangerous, working conditions.
I will say, however, that not tapping into the benefits of unionization because of the business orthodoxy that “Union = Bad” has caused downstream harm for American businesses. For one, unions have tended to be the best at skills training—for nearly a century, it turns out. That seems especially relevant at a time when we are talking again about employer struggling with skilled jobs they just can’t seem to fill.
Yet, even leaders at Costco, a good employer known for its embrace of better jobs in its business model, told their managers this when one of its stores unionized:
Costco’s former CEO Craig Jelinek and current CEO Ron Vachris tag teamed on a memo sent to employees in late December in which they said they were “not disappointed in our employees; we’re disappointed in ourselves as managers and leaders.”
“The fact that a majority of Norfolk employees felt that they wanted or needed a union constitutes a failure on our part,” they wrote in a memo dated Dec. 29, and sent to all US employees.
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What do we do about it?
Well, the past 150 years of management-labor relations in the United States can’t be rolled back.
In lieu of that, what I will say is this:
At the end of the day, the workplace works best if you treat workers like the partners they already are in your operation. Unionization makes that official.
Card subject to change.
Hope you enjoyed this piece from deep in the JTW archives. Given that the likely future Labor Secretary told senators a couple weeks ago he’d really like to learn how trades unions get people good-paying jobs, this popped back up in my head.
Plenty happening in the Senate this week: the Appropriations Committee put together bill text that not only keeps workforce funding stable through mid-December, it also temporarily shelves the White House’s attempted redo of federal grants rules. Plus, Keith Sonderling’s Labor nomination made it out of committee last week, and Ed is doing Ed things. I’ll have at least most of that in Thursday’s edition of THE MONEY. See you then.