What You Need to Know About Work and the Future (Collision 2018)

A Collision Conference panel on unions, wages, automation and abundance, with Liz Shuler (AFL-CIO), Allan Grant (Hired) and Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks).

Why it was kept

Kyle’s notes record union membership falling from about 30% of the workforce to under 7%, engineers’ rising wages alongside unfilled jobs, automation as a coming source of discontent, and Burning Man held up as a model of artificial abundance.

As Kyle captured it

• What You Need To Know About Work and The Future at Collision Conference #Unions
  • (Liz Shuler (AFL-CIO), Allan Grant (Hired / Talkable), Cenk Uyur (The Young Turk)
  • Uyur - “The great American robbery” where our wages have been stolen
  • Now, we only see less than 7% of the workforce belonging to a Union, where we used to have 30%. In unions, we see higher wages, and better quality work.
  • Hired focused very specifically on technical engineers, and for them, wages keep going up. Engineers are overpaid and every year they’re getting paid more and more. We simultaneously have educated engineers that can’t fill jobs, and tons of jobs that aren’t getting filled.
  • Automation is coming and it will wipe out a lot of jobs, how will we deal with that discontent?
  • Allan is a big fan of Burning Man because it’s an example of artificial abundance, where there is no money and everyone can get what they want.
  • His Utopian view is that we can be creators and consumers, where you don’t have to worry about the economy because we’ll have a society of abundance.
  • It’s hard to remain positive about a utopian future when we’re worried about short term job destruction. This is where job training comes up.
  • People need to be constantly learning to make sure they have skills that will serve them in the future.
  • If we’re going to be creating so much wealth and technology and abundance, we can decide what we’re going to do with that wealth, and we have to answer the question of whether we’re going to keep that wealth with a few, or if we’re going to invest it in education, and healthcare, and infrastructure.
  • Why shouldn’t these businesses be scared of unions?
  • There is a negative connotation where unions are thugs
  • AFL-CIO is focused on being very solutions driven, where they can often see opportunities in a workforce that the company themselves wouldn’t see.
  • “Don’t be afraid of the changing economy, embrace. Let us build a worker-perspective economy.”
  • Encourage people who are trapped in a job they don’t love and explore the world around them, and the resources available online.

Connections

Unions · Automation · Utopia