Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down?
“Week 2 Intro … The New Deal … The Post-War Social Contract … Around the World: Social Contracts, Past and Present … PDC: Early Childhood Education for All … PDC: Careers and Competencies with Professor Lee Dyer”
Summaries
- Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > Week 2 Intro > Intro Video
- Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > The New Deal > Video
- Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > The New Deal > Video
- Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > The Post-War Social Contract > Video
- Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > PDC: Early Childhood Education for All > Video
- Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > PDC: Careers and Competencies with Professor Lee Dyer > Video:Careers and Competencies, Professor Lee Dyer
Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > Week 2 Intro > Intro Video
- A lot of discussion about the future of technology and how it’s going to affect work and some of the worries that many of you have about this.
- So we’ll continue these discussions we’ll go into more depth on technology and work down the way in about the fourth week of class.
- We are about to start a big project to see if we can put some of the ideas of this course to work in practice, where we shape the future of the textile and fabric industry with high technology jobs, hopefully, good quality jobs, with new training programs.
- First, the videos that are posted for this week will give you a bit of a history of how the social contract played out and worked well in the United States and in some other countries around the world in the past.
- Some colleagues of mine in the universities over there who study and work on these issues.
- Before we finish here, let’s take a look at what you told us last week about your goals and your aspirations for work.
- Here’s the results of the poll that you filled in about your top priority for your work and your career.
- Notice that the top item comes out to be having a good work life balance, followed very closely by having a big impact on problems that are important to you and to society.
- Unlike your parents, as many of you told us who focused over here on earning a good living and having a stable job, you want to be able to both have a big impact on work.
- You want to have a good work life balance so you can have a good opportunity to raise your children and be a good spouse at home or a partner at home and also earn a good living.
- As one of you said, “I dream of a well-balanced work family environment, where I can develop my skills put them to service for my community, and as well get a wage that allows me to have a decent life so that I can provide for my family and my offspring.
- That you wanted to work and live in a culturally diverse yet an integrated workplace and lifestyle, and that you want to push your children to be curious about their world and to push the limits of what they can do as they grow up.
- Here’s another one that says, particularly about young millennials and their interest in working with the digital revolution.
- “My dream is to be part of the digital revolution driven by millennials working at innovative companies,” and “to make the world a better place to live and work.
- This week, we’ll focus on your responsibilities to make sure that you are prepared to have the right educational levels to achieve your goals and your aspirations, and then we’ll also look at what made the world of work more effective in sometimes in the past in our countries so that we can spring forward to think about how we build a new foundation for the future of work.
Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > The New Deal > Video
- You’ve just come off what we call the roaring ’20s. And while you should feel better because the economy was going so well in the 1920s and profits were up and the stock market was at record levels, you probably don’t feel very optimistic.
- There was steady loss of income, especially for those people who were working in small businesses or working on the farm.
- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932 with pressure from the population to bring us out of the depression and find new ways to protect workers’ jobs and incomes.
- When he interviewed her about the job, she said, Mr. President, you don’t want to choose me as a secretary unless you’re willing to think about new forms of unemployment insurance and minimum wages and social security for people when they retire.
- So we did see what was called the New Deal come to pass in the 1930s, with a lot of work with the Congress and with the Roosevelt administration.
- Unemployment insurance was first put in place to try to provide temporary assistance for people who were out of work who would get called back to work when the economy got better.
- Well, that worked for a long time, but today almost nobody who gets unemployed expects to be called back.
- It’s not just to provide temporary financial assistance for people out of work.
- We need to help them find new jobs and get new training opportunities and assistance to move to where the jobs happen to be.
- The same with rules around overtime- through the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s over 60% of salaried workers were still eligible for overtime.
- Today that number is down to about 10%. And so we’ve got to find ways to allow low-wage salaried workers, assistant managers at McDonald’s and other places, to be able to get overtime if they’re working 50 and 60 hours a week, as many of them are.
- That law promised workers a right to gain access to a union and collective bargaining, and it worked quite well for many years.
- Today if an employer wants to resist a worker’s right to organize, over 90% of the time the employer is going to win.
- So we need to find new ways to modernize that law to provide workers with the voice that they want.
- We passed the Social Security Act in 1935 that provided a retirement income for all workers, based on the hours that they worked in the labor force over the years and the salaries that they earned.
- All of these laws need to be updated to catch up with the changing workforce and the changing nature of work, but perhaps we have to go farther.
- Maybe it’s also time to pass some new legislation, to recognize that today it takes two working parents to earn a decent living for their families.
- We can do it again if you put your creative ideas and your collective energy together to modernize employment policies to fit today’s economy and today’s workforce.
Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > The New Deal > Video
- You’ve just come off what we call the roaring ’20s. And while you should feel better because the economy was going so well in the 1920s and profits were up and the stock market was at record levels, you probably don’t feel very optimistic.
- There was steady loss of income, especially for those people who were working in small businesses or working on the farm.
- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932 with pressure from the population to bring us out of the depression and find new ways to protect workers’ jobs and incomes.
- When he interviewed her about the job, she said, Mr. President, you don’t want to choose me as a secretary unless you’re willing to think about new forms of unemployment insurance and minimum wages and social security for people when they retire.
- So we did see what was called the New Deal come to pass in the 1930s, with a lot of work with the Congress and with the Roosevelt administration.
- Unemployment insurance was first put in place to try to provide temporary assistance for people who were out of work who would get called back to work when the economy got better.
- Well, that worked for a long time, but today almost nobody who gets unemployed expects to be called back.
- It’s not just to provide temporary financial assistance for people out of work.
- We need to help them find new jobs and get new training opportunities and assistance to move to where the jobs happen to be.
- The same with rules around overtime- through the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s over 60% of salaried workers were still eligible for overtime.
- Today that number is down to about 10%. And so we’ve got to find ways to allow low-wage salaried workers, assistant managers at McDonald’s and other places, to be able to get overtime if they’re working 50 and 60 hours a week, as many of them are.
- That law promised workers a right to gain access to a union and collective bargaining, and it worked quite well for many years.
- Today if an employer wants to resist a worker’s right to organize, over 90% of the time the employer is going to win.
- So we need to find new ways to modernize that law to provide workers with the voice that they want.
- We passed the Social Security Act in 1935 that provided a retirement income for all workers, based on the hours that they worked in the labor force over the years and the salaries that they earned.
- All of these laws need to be updated to catch up with the changing workforce and the changing nature of work, but perhaps we have to go farther.
- Maybe it’s also time to pass some new legislation, to recognize that today it takes two working parents to earn a decent living for their families.
- We can do it again if you put your creative ideas and your collective energy together to modernize employment policies to fit today’s economy and today’s workforce.
Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > The Post-War Social Contract > Video
- We’ve used the term social contract several times already, so let’s take a look at what did we mean by this post-World World War II social contract? And why did it work so well for so many? If you were born between 1946 and 1964, you’re a member of what we call the Baby Boom generation.
- Chances are you did quite well, because you were able to follow your parents advice of working hard, staying in school, and being able to improve on the standard of living you achieve for yourself and for your family compared to what your parents had. So was this all just a matter of luck? Is there some iron law of economics that achieved it? Well, neither are true.
- It took a lot of hard work and a lot of invention on the part of labor and management leaders of the time.
- So we had to convert from factories that made tanks and military airplanes to factories that made cars and other kinds of goods and services that were in high demand in the post-World War II economy.
- So as the economy got better, so too did wages and living conditions for the vast majority of families of that time.
- Here’s a picture of how Ford and General Motors and other companies were able to produce millions of vehicles for the mass market, largely similar kinds of goods and services that people were looking for.
- This is an example of Walter Reuther, here, negotiating and signing an agreement with General Motors which was called the Treaty of Detroit, where the parties agreed that they would increase wages by the rate of growth in the cost of living and the overall average rate of growth in productivity in the economy.
- What would happen is, you negotiated a wage agreement at, let’s say, General Motors; and then the union would carry that same agreement to Ford and say, if you don’t want a strike, then you should agree to the same wage.
- Ford would agree, and the pattern would spread to Chrysler and others in the automobile industry.
- So you got oil and gas and household appliances and the steel industry and aerospace, rubber, electronics, all of these growing industries, basically following a similar wage pattern- not exactly copying but fitted to the economic circumstances of their particular setting.
Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > PDC: Early Childhood Education for All > Video
- The reality is the education model that we have inherited today was built for the farming economy, and maybe the industrial economy of the last century.
- You, as members of the next generation workforce, are going to have to have your own strategy for addressing how, when, where, and how much over the course of your life of education you are going to invest in.
- Let’s start with early childhood education, and I’ll start with a story.
- I asked them, when did your children start school in your countries? And one said, right after I finished maternity leave, and the other said, at age three.
- That return is measured not only in lifetime earnings, it’s measured in lower dropout rates, less violence and less criminal records, the ability to achieve one’s objectives within one’s career, a whole set of data tell us that getting children into school early is very, very important to their success.
- So from Seattle to New York to Boston and many other cities, we’re seeing mayors take the lead and saying let’s figure out how we invest in early childhood education, and let’s get on with that task.
- For every parent, it’s critical that you think as you can about what do you need, what do your children need, what’s appropriate for different age groups from early childhood right through elementary school, what can you afford, and how can you make it fit into your work and other family responsibilities.
Class 2: What made the Old Social Contract Work and Why did it Break Down? > PDC: Careers and Competencies with Professor Lee Dyer > Video:Careers and Competencies, Professor Lee Dyer
- Experts agree that it will take a special set of competencies to succeed in tomorrow’s organizations, which will be even more globalized, digitized, collaborative, and agile than those we see today.
- One of the best sources, we think, is a small monograph published by the Institute of the Future, titled, The Future of Work Skills 2020.
- Here is a brief synopsis of the 10 competencies that the Institute suggests will be essential for your career success and the years ahead. First, relating to globalization.
- One is the ability to work effectively with those from other cultures, perhaps in teams made up of many different nationalities.
- We will be even more inundated than we are now, so it will be necessary to have the capacity to work through tons of information and see the big picture.
- So we need to develop the capacity to decide when to rely on computers for assistance and answers, and just as important, when not to.
- One is on the front end, to frame questions and problems in ways that the data scientists can analyze a model.
- In the future, many folks will be working remotely and will be called upon to create and share content through these technologies, and to do so in ways that not only help solve complex problems, but also engage and persuade our colleagues and other important people, such as customers and clients.
- How to evaluate, rank, and tag content so that we keep our eyes on what’s really important and let the rest go.
- They have the ability to sense when we are becoming overloaded or tired, and then, to automatically intervene, to slow down or simplify the flow of information we’re getting.
- This refers to the ability to connect with others in an emotional and deeply personal way to quickly assess the feelings of others and then adapt our words, tone, and gestures accordingly.
- Further, the Institute talks about virtual collaboration, meaning the ability to work effectively with, and eventually, perhaps, lead teammates we may never meet or even see in person.
- Important tools helping to enhance a sense of camaraderie and social presence among colleagues who are all over the map.
- In a world of rapid change, it is essential that we never let the tried and true get in the way of being open to new ways of doing things.
- Most important, be on the leading edge of developing unique and creative ideas and solutions to deal with these challenges in real time.
- Even more important, it refers to having the ability to make useful recommendations for redesigning the work environment as well as the processes and procedures being used to get the work done.
- Success in the future will depend on our willingness and ability to keep growing and developing to become more global in our thinking, more comfortable with the digitisation of everything, ever better it collaborating with colleagues and others, and above all, staying deeply committed to being adaptive, lifelong learners.
