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EARNCon 2023 in Detroit is two weeks behind us, yet I’m still processing the many opportunities this year’s conference provided to learn, connect, and act.
From the opening plenary featuring ambitious Michigan legislative campaigns to early mornings on the picket line with striking Blue Cross Blue Shield workers, to UAW President Shawn Fain’s rousing address, EARNCon 2023 raised BIG questions for our work ahead.
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Will we achieve a just, inclusive transition to clean energy, or watch low-road employers drive a race to the bottom in emerging sectors of the “green” economy?
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Will the next decade of major infrastructure investments create living wage union jobs for new generations of historically excluded Black, brown, immigrant, and women workers?
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How will we create and fund the childcare, health care, and public education infrastructure that children, families, workers, and employers across our economy need and deserve?
On the final day of EARNCon 2023, Heather Boushey, member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, shared a dazzling overview of how historic federal investments in infrastructure, energy, broadband, and manufacturing are already reshaping labor markets across the country. These investments present tremendous opportunities to accelerate goals EARN groups and partners have long fought for—good jobs, worker power, a strong public sector, and progress on racial, gender, and climate justice.
Of course, none of these outcomes will be automatic without smart, strategic state and local implementation centered on empowering and educating workers. As EPI’s Josh Bivens put it recently, the “industrial policy revolution has begun” – but for most workers, rebalancing power across the economy will require a concomitant worker power revolution.
As we learned from Wilhelmenia Hardy-Dance’s inspiring story of unionizing an electric bus factory in Georgia, even industries receiving massive federal investments won’t voluntarily create good jobs or advance equity. Winning those outcomes will require persistent organizing to leverage pro-worker policies embedded in federal funds, state and local policies to raise labor standards, and labor and community coalitions powerful enough to hold private actors accountable to public interests.
The opportunities and challenges ahead are already placing the expertise of EARN groups in high demand and pushing many of us to expand our work to reach new geographies and include new partners. We’re grateful so many of you are ready to join us to meet this moment!
In solidarity,
Jen Sherer
Director, State Worker Power Initiative
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