WHEN BILL Clinton ran for the presidency, his campaign emphasized three economic issues: a stimulus package to create new jobs, workplace reforms to foster a more productive economy and middle-class tax relief. In a desperate effort to resurrect his presidency, he has jettisoned more controversial aspects of his program on the assumption that government no longer needs to promote new jobs or a better workplace. The new obsession with middle-class tax cuts and spending reductions represents a self-defeating retreat from a promising agenda.
It would come as news to many Americans that we are at full employment. While the official national unemployment rate has now reached 5.7 percent, this figure is still high by the standards of many previous economic cycles. More importantly, official statistics count as fully employed all those who hold part-time jobs but are looking for full-time work. This statistical gerrymandering always makes the jobless rate look smaller than it really is, but the distortion today is especially pronounced. Labor market economists estimate that for the economy as a whole, nearly a quarter of current jobs are part time, temporary or subcontracted. A more realistic accounting of the unemployment rate would place it at around 10 percent, with unemployment disproportionately concentrated among minorities.
Many full-time office and factory workers are, of course, working the longest hours of their lives during this boom. Long hours at these jobs are, however, a mixed blessing. Many work overtime either because they fear future unemployment or because they are forced to do so by employers who can and will easily replace them if they refuse this overtime. Forced overtime injures both workplace productivity and family life. More broadly, several recent studies of factory and office workers show that a substantial majority feel that they are completely powerless in their workplaces and that their best talents are not being used. Management -- driven by short-term concerns of pension and mutual fund managers -- shows very little interest in investing in the kind of worker training and job redesign programs which would make workers genuine partners in corporate growth. As a consequence, neither productivity nor wages grow.
Government is not powerless in the face of such trends. A new stimulus package, especially one emphasizing mass transit, energy conservation, infrastructure repair, education, preventive health and job training, would both create jobs for many poor and underemployed Americans and make for a more productive and competitive economy.
Workplace cooperation is also crucial to this goal. Real cooperation, however, is possible only among equals. Strengthening labor's right to organize independent unions, a promise this president has apparently forgotten, would be a good step in this direction. Unions -- with the encouragement of the president -- could gain more support and legitimacy by moving beyond narrow wage issues to demand more equal treatment in the workplace, including the right to profit sharing and job redesign. Rather than constituting more "big government," this program would amount to a genuine supply side revolution by empowering workers to help manage businesses in a competitive and more productive economy. And just as an earlier generation outlawed child labor, unions and government could work together to improve workplace productivity and family morale by outlawing forced overtime.
Mr. Clinton's new tax cut proposal, especially one financed by reductions in assistance for the poor, domestic housing, transit and environmental clean-up programs, will not improve the quality of life for either poor or middle-class Americans. Job security for full-time workers will remain tenuous at best even as commuting and broader environmental problems are exacerbated. The needs of the underemployed poor will grow and will remain a convenient if fruitless target for both conservative politicians and a fearful, overworked and underpaid middle class.
Now is not the time for retreat on Mr. Clinton's best campaign promises. A number of recent polls have shown that while Americans are concerned about the deficit and government spending, they place economic growth ahead of deficit reduction in their priorities. Government spending to allow cities and states to plan and modernize their social and physical infrastructure -- especially in the context of more productive workplaces -- would help the economy move to real full employment without triggering major increases in inflation. The real task of this president is to show the American people that upgrading our infrastructure and worker empowerment, unlike the old liberalism of spending billions on battleships, superhighways, relief for the poor and prisons, are the only way both to create economic opportunity for the poor while improving the quality of life for everyone. Making such a case would require some political courage, but it may be Mr. Clinton's best remaining hope.
John Buell is a free-lance writer living in Southwest Harbor, Maine. He is author of "Democracy by Other Means: The Politics of Work, Leisure and Environment," to be published by the University of Illinois Press in June.