The labor movement in this country is quietly strengthening the skills and professional capabilities of our workforce. Some are urging it to do much more.

America: wake up! This could turn into something big!

Forgive the late August raillery: we are actually talking here about serious book on an important subject. (Workforce Development and the New Unionism, The New Economy Information Service, 210 pp, $12.50, September, 2002.) Of course, it doesn't seem very exciting -- until you begin to think about it.

America faces a skills shortage. Our technology is outrunning our capacity to use it. As a consequence, we are losing jobs to lower wage countries, and missing out on the potential for much greater prosperity. That's what several authors of essays in this just-published collection contend.

So why aren't we training our workers in the skills and knowledge that can put our productive capabilities to work?

One reason: businesses are reluctant to invest in training their employees when the cash outlays can make their quarterly reports look bad. There is also risk that those they invest in will be so in demand they'll be hired away by a competitor.

Another reason: the anti-big government mood of recent decades has soured us on using government, even when it may only be to orchestrate voluntary cooperation among businesses, unions and our educational institutions. After much hoopla in the mid-90s we passed the workforce buck to the states, and created a bureaucratic tangle of training programs aimed at special groups. Everyone still talks about how workers need "lifelong learning," but we save most of our training dollars for people who have already lost their jobs -- or couldn't get one.

Where can we look for an answer? One place is the union movement, which was founded on developing skills and standards in the early 19th Century, and continues to manage innovative training programs at many levels of our labor market today.

Morton Bahr, President of the Communications Workers of America, introduces this collection of essays with a description of how his union turned telephone operators into telecom technicians.

Sandra Feldman, President of the American Federation of Teachers, outlines that union's effort to upgrade teachers' skills. Many workers in the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees of Las Vegas have modest incomes and little formal education. Jeffrey Waddoups of the University of Nevada describes what their union's impressive Culinary and Hospitality Academy has done for them -- and the industry. Rex Hardesty explains how environmental and safety rules in the maritime industry have put a premium on union-trained workers.

Several authors note that union involvement in workforce training reduces employee turnover, encourages candor and trust, and promotes efforts to address the needs of the worker -- not just the needs of the employer.

Richard Hurd explains how professional development and standards lie at the roots of the rapid expansion of professional and technical associations, and how unions and these associations can learn from one another.

Marie-Louise Caravatti points out that employment trends, baby-boomer retirements and demographic shifts will give us a net deficit of 12 million more educated workers by 2010. The only way to fill the gap is to provide learning opportunities for incumbent workers. There is now no strategy for this.

Sam Leiken's closing chapter describes an approach being tested by the British Trades Unions Congress, one that suggests a direction U.S. unions might consider. After decades of class-war labor relations, some in business and labor in Britain have turned to partnership, skills development and strategies for improving productivity. There are even union-based "learning representatives" at job sites to help workers understand their needs and choose their educational programs. Sometimes rocky relations between Blair's Labour Party government and unions complicate the picture, but these are ideas that Americans should study.

"Workforce Development and the New Unionism" was edited by Penn Kemble, a head of the United States Information Agency during the Clinton Administration.

For more information, or a copy of the book, call Victoria Thomas, 202/347-2348, or e-mail her at: postmaster@newecon.org .