I Salute American Labor

As many Americans celebrate Labor Day with a long weekend, a cookout with family and friends or a final trip to the beach, we should take time to reflect on the extraordinary contribution American labor has made to turn our country into the world’s economic and technological superpower and global defender of freedom

Across our nation’s history, we faced pivotal moments when much was asked of our labor force and, if our people had not answered the call, we would not be the world leader we are today.

Muscle Builds America’s Industrial Might

In 1880, nearly half of American workers were farmers and only one quarter of our population lived in cities. Yet at the turn of the 20^th century, the convergence of electric power, the expansion of U.S. rail and the scaling of mass production created tremendous demand for factory labor. Millions of American workers took a risk, uprooted their families and rural lives and moved to cities that were developing into centers of manufacturing in search of a more prosperous future.

The population of my hometown of Akron, Ohio was less than ten thousand people in 1870 — that is until the invention of vulcanized rubber. Thousands of men poured into the city seeking jobs and the tire and rubber companies couldn’t hire them fast enough. We became the “Rubber Capital of the World.” Akron’s rubber labor force of 50,000 made nearly half of the world’s supply of rubber goods at the time—30,000 of them, from the tiniest washers to the giant hulls of dirigibles. We became the fastest growing city in the United States and by 1925, Akron grew to 200,000 people.

By 1920, U.S. employment in manufacturing had grown fourfold, from 2.5 million to 10 million workers, with more than one half of the population living in cities. Without this big injection of talented, dedicated people in Akron and America’s burgeoning manufacturing centers, the United States would not have been able to capitalize on the convergence of new infrastructure and mass production as quickly and fully. This ultimately transformed the United States from a rural agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse and drove a rising U.S. standard of living, underpinned by an expanding supply of lower cost goods.

Women Join the Labor Force in the Fight for Freedom

When men left to fight a world war across the Atlantic and Pacific, women stepped in to work in the factories and shipyards that produced the weapons, machines and goods needed in World War II. Four million women were employed by the U.S. war industries, while 15 million worked in other jobs that released men for the armed services. In many war plants, women represented more than half the workers; in some plants they accounted for 70 percent. At the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia, 500 women worked as mechanics, welding, operating lathes and drill presses, assembling engines, and repairing radios, generators and electric starters. Without these women, machines would have sat idle, jobs in shipyards unfilled and the war effort hampered by slower production of critical equipment and supplies essential for victory, costing many more lives.

American Labor Answers the Global Competitive Challenge

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. industry began feeling the heat from expanding global competition, after losing market shares in apparel, steel, machine tools, autos and electronics. American labor stepped up its game, joining labor-management committees to solve problems and take on new roles in multi-skilled, self-managed work teams. As competition from Japan grew based on high product quality, our workers joined quality circles and learned statistical process control and formal problem-solving techniques. Their efforts helped to launch a “total quality” movement that dramatically improved the quality and global competitiveness of many U.S. products.

U.S. Workers Embrace the Digital Revolution

At the dawn of the digital revolution, U.S. secretaries embraced the transition from electric typewriters to new word processors like Wang, WordStar, WordPerfect and Word. Clerks moved from card files to data bases. Accountants and budgeters adopted electronic spreadsheets. Machinists who operated lathes and milling machines transitioned to computer numerically controlled machine tools. As the revolution unfolded, American workers flooded training programs in computer programming, networking and computer support. The number of professional-level IT workers more than doubled between 1991 and 2001, expanding from 1.2 million to 2.5 million. In an early IT certification program, the number of MicrosoftMSFT
Certified Engineers grew from 35,000 in 1997 to 463,000 in 2002.

This early embrace of digital IT helped propel the United States as an enduring world leader in the Digital Revolution. Since 1998 (when we started measuring the digital economy), our digital industries—digital-enabling infrastructure such as computer hardware and software, e-commerce and digital services—have punched above their weight, with the average annual GDP growth greatly outpacing overall growth in the economy. The digital economy’s real value added grew at an average annual rate of 9.9 percent over 1998-2017, compared to 2.3 percent growth in the overall economy. Today, our computer related workforce is more than five million strong and our digital economy has grown to $2.1 trillion or 10.2 percent of U.S. GDP, accounting for more than a trillion dollars in total compensation.

With the Country in Dire Straits, American Workers Come to the Rescue

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept the United States, millions of American workers shifted to telework. They rapidly re-engineered work processes, reworked communications, reconfigured work team operations and scaled digital strategies to keep businesses operating. With the American people under lock-down orders and supply chains stretched to their limits, millions of new “essential workers” put their lives at risk, in addition to the heroes in medical professions risking their lives every day. Grocery store clerks and checkers, delivery drivers, and production workers in food plants provided a lifeline, enabling our population to access needed goods that kept the fabric of our society intact.

American labor met these historic changes and challenges head-on. But this doesn’t just happen during crises. Every day and in every corner of our country, American workers go the extra mile—taking a double shift to stand in for a sick co-worker or working overtime to meet a crucial deadline. A plumber shows up after hours to fix a leak flooding a basement, an appliance repairer comes on a holiday to ensure a customer can cook that special family meal, a teacher stays after work to help a struggling student, and a firefighter puts his or her life at risk to save a child trapped in a burning building. This is routine in America, a workforce that demonstrates dedication and commitment to getting the job done every day—and that’s something to celebrate.

Looking to the future, our workforce will face challenges again. Multiple technology revolutions are converging on the economy and workforce simultaneously, with the potential for significant disruptions. Rapidly advancing technologies could change labor at every level of the economy—task, job, labor market and the mix of skills needed in an industry or community. Today, such impacts on the workforce are coming at a rapid pace and are likely to accelerate in the years ahead. Our workforce must be agile, resilient and ready for change. As I look back on history, I have every confidence that our workers will, once again, rise to meet the challenge.