• At a time when many employers are curbing coverage, how to expand healthcare insurance has become a top domestic issue in the race to win the White House in 2008.
•Voters have given Democrats, generally the party of labor, control of Congress. And the party also appears to have a strong shot at the White House. One result could be laws to make it easier for unions to organize new workplaces.
•This summer, after years of stalemate in Washington, the first nationwide hike in the minimum wage went into effect.
•The politics of free trade are changing. A pact to expand trade with Peru, now under review in Congress, will include new labor provisions. And lawmakers are considering bills that would crack down on China for alleged unfair trade practices.
“There's a very decent chance that labor-law reform will take place in some form or other after the 2008 election,” says John Schmitt, an economist at the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “That's a source of cautious optimism in the labor movement.”
National healthcare reform, while facing difficult political hurdles, is also possible, he says.
In some cases, unions and employers have stood on the same platform to call for an overhaul. In the current system, many workers do without coverage, while many employers see their competitiveness threatened by rising insurance costs. Those costs were the prime concern for GM in the contract talks. It remains to be seen whether the deal will be ratified this week by the company's UAW workers. But the plan – centered around a healthcare trust that GM will fund and the union will manage – offers a creative effort to solve a difficult competitive problem. GM will still pay a lot, but it sheds a rising liability.
That could be vital at a time when lower-cost foreign carmakers have been gaining market share in the US.
While most economists believe that freer trade has been very positive for the US and world economies, concern about workers left behind has been growing. Even some of the strongest proponents of free trade are calling for more programs to help workers adjust to the pressure of a global job market – if only to prevent a protectionist backlash that might hurt the economy.
