The Business Case for Good Jobs

quick mic check okay great good afternoon good afternoon i'm caitlin walker mooney director of the good jobs initiative it's so great to hear you all have you here with us thank you for joining us at our first dol good jobs initiative employer engagement event recognizing that our mission at the department of labor is about fostering promoting and developing the welfare of workers job seekers and retirees the department provides a multitude of services to businesses including compliance and technical assistance to ensure employers have the information they need to follow the law but the mission of the department also instructs us to advance opportunities for profitable employment so work should not stop at compliance so what role does the department play in advancing these opportunities well let me tell you a little bit about that secretary walsh after reflecting on his countless interactions with workers and employers in their communities recognized that dol needed a better tool to better engage in good job creation as you'll hear secretary walsh knows the importance of finding common ground between workers and employers he's had great success as doing it as mayor and has been committed to engaging all sides of workforce issues as secretary good jobs initiative private sector engagement is intended to reflect this common goal through collaborations convenings and opportunities for shared learning and promotion of best practices in january of this year secretary walsh announced the good jobs initiative which provides critical information to workers employers and governments as they all work toward improving job quality to create good safe and healthy jobs free from discrimination and harassment for all heavy emphasis on the all working people good jobs initiative coordinates work done since the beginning of the administration and for many decades before under one umbrella to promote good jobs as a part of this work we are asking you employer stakeholders to be our partners in improving job quality on the whole workers wages and benefits are not where they need to be adjusted for inflation the typical male worker earns the same as his counterpart did 40 years earlier all while productivity was rising and for more and for women people of color and many others low and stagnant wages unpredictable scheduling and poor working conditions have been a common experience due to a long history of discriminatory labor exploitation and over-representation in certain industries some of these dynamics have existed for many years but today we are seeing new patterns emerge that provide even more insight into how the workforce is valuing job quality data shows that workers in low-paid industries are leaving their jobs at record rates and they are seeking good jobs the vast majority of people leaving their jobs right now are doing so because they already have a better job lined up what this data suggests is that in order to recruit and retain a skilled workforce it's critical that folks focus on improving job quality better job quality is a win-win for workers employers and communities workers in good jobs have lower turnover higher productivity and their employers spend less time and money hiring and training new workers i know that you folks are well aware of these dynamics our secretary being the pragmatist that he is kindly reminded us that we are not actually experts on how to run successful businesses so we took his advice to heart and we have invited four experts folks who actually know what they're talking about to discuss the ways that they've prioritized job quality and how it's been critical to their successful business models we are joined by our moderator carolyn pincus vice president of strategy and development for the american sustainable business network a member organization with over 250 000 businesses and by our four panelists first we'll have darren jones president of the central plains district for the united parcel service a global shipping and receiving supply chain management company headquartered in sandy spring georgia we'll have fleck rivera ceo of sustain energy cooperative and energy efficiency and solar installation business based in cincinnati ohio we'll have sandy weaver general manager of ba auto care a small family owned auto repair business in columbia maryland and we'll also have liz richmond general counsel of eileen fisher a national retail company headquartered in irvington new york thank you all for being here we're excited to turn it over to you in a moment but before we do it is now my honor to introduce secretary walsh somebody gave me a book the other day um that was written about her life in fdr's life and i started to read the book and um it was a pretty big book but i went through it so fast i just got caught up in the book and it told the story of her in her early days it told the story of her working in new york uh in fighting for the 40-hour work week actually was a 52-hour work week for women in in in better work protections and textile mills and all this other stuff and the different events that shaped her life and who she was and then she got when fdi got elected president brought her in obviously as the first woman to be the secretary of anything and she was a secretary of labor in in the work that she was able to accomplish while being discriminated against because she she's a woman at the same time and everyone doubting her and questioning her and learning the ability to use her techniques to have other have allies in in politics to be able to get things done and when you think about at the end of her career as the secretary then she came back and worked in in the civil service agency under harry truman i thought to myself as secretary of labor you know she set the tone the bar pretty high for secretaries of labor and how do you as a secretary come up with new ideas and i was as i was reading the book i was thinking about what can we do what's what's an area that hasn't been tackled yet because you know creation is social security creation unemployment insurance creation wage now creation of osha creation of the 40-hour work week like how do you how do you how do you do that and and i realized you know you can't you can't you know come up with a new deal type of 21st 2nd century new deal but what you can do is a couple things number one you can strengthen what you have and make it work better and then you can think about how do you expand what you have and make it work for everyone and that's what the good jobs initiative does and when you think about the good jobs you most people like what's the good jobs initiative even sometimes i'm sitting there like can you remind me again and it's it's it's the beginning it's the beginning of the new deal it's the beginning of social security it's the beginning of unemployment insurance it's the beginning of wage now at the beginning of osha it's beginning of whatever it might be because 20 years from now if we do it correctly there'll be somebody at this table uh this seat as secretary of labor and there'll be somebody here uh as an advisor to the secretary of caitlin is talking about how do we expand what we did with the good jobs initiative and what in 2022 it was what accomplished and why it was so important so this is an important conversation our workforce and our economy certainly have been through a historic disruption over the last two years due to the pandemic both workers and businesses are rebuilding and really reevaluating and my role uh before i was here was the mayor of boston and you know i i was the mayor in boston that had to shut down businesses and had to send people home and started to worry about our ecosystem in boston being a pro-business mayor and also a pro worker mayor what happens now we're shutting things down will restaurants go out of business will retail stores go out of business what's going to happen to all the buildings we're building in downtown our business is going to go in them are they going to build ever build the building again because at that point everyone's talking about working virtually and we're never going to be in town again what's going to happen to downtown we just made all these investments in downtown and all these different things that we had in the city so we thought about that so when you when you're here you're thinking about what we're doing here in the federal government and what president biden plans and his policies uh we're experiencing historic recoveries and creating an economy in record numbers so the people that left all the cities around america urban and rural and suburban the people coming back to work people are looking for new opportunities it's making people reevaluate exactly what it is where they were in their life and what what opportunities are for them in the future the businesses you're experiencing every day probably with your teams that came back and working with you and teams that are looking for other places and allows you the opportunity to attract more new people more in other people to your opportunity employers are hiring we see that every day at the same time the nature of work and expectations around work are certainly changing in america and in the world not just america europe and other other countries are facing the same challenges and same same conversations that we're having here right now at the department of labor our goal is right now to meet everyone at this moment uh not not create something new and not think about how it's happened in the past but meet this particular moment and how do we do that and how do we make it work we want to build a more inclusive resilient and competitive economy we want to make sure we continue to move forward the fact is that we're in a period of great opportunity and very deep challenge that we have at the same time for both workers and businesses alike i hear it as i travel around the country i've been to about 36 states now i've been to about 75 cities and wherever i go you know the stories might be a little different but they're similar uh the underlying story is all the same when you talk to whoever you talk to about the challenges and the good things they're seeing we see it in the data that we collect on labor dynamics uh we see labor force participation came back first in the area of anyone between the ages of 25 and 54 which that would make sense right we think okay those folks are looking for work or well they want to work and they want to go to work but there are big waves we saw big waves of retirement about 2.4 million people more retired last year than we expected to retire so we're seeing twofold that those people leave the job market and we've got to figure out how do we how do we what do we do then we need to think about whether all the workers and workers with disabilities need to stay and how do we get them back into the job market or return to the workforce and how do we make sure that they return back in and uh successful in 2021 we saw record levels of entrepreneurship in the united states of america americans applied to start 5.4 million new businesses in our country that's 20 higher than any other year that we've ever ever seen uh and that's that's a lot of opportunity which means that there could be 5.4 million if they're all successful more businesses in america and and they're going to grow and expand and they're going to need support um small business boom has been especially strong in the black and latino community something that when you look at unemployment numbers in the black and latino community there's always lower than the white community but what we've seen in entrepreneurship this year is the black and latino community is higher and that's great so people are saying wait a second i can't find a job or i'm not being satisfied in a job so now it's an opportunity for me maybe i can start my own business and create my own job and create my own industry which is going to also help us with creating more opportunities for people of color in this country we've seen small businesses create jobs at a higher rate and higher than we've ever seen another good positive sign and at the same time we know the pandemic was incredibly hard on our small businesses some of our small businesses did not survive the pandemic they were wiped out during the pandemic because they weren't able to keep their doors open we need to be more attentive than ever to the role in the needs of small businesses right now not just here at the department of labor but throughout the entire government and through commerce and education and all the other departments that we work with we're also we're also seeing workers looking and seeking more flexibility in the work life balance in some companies that's working really well because people accept it and adjust to it in other companies people want to go back to the seven day five day a week work day for eight hours a day and they want to go back to that and there's there's an opportunity here with flexibility to really think about what model should we be moving forward and i think that that's something that a lot of people are looking at families are struggling to meet child care needs and elder needs they struggle before the pandemic they're really struggling now because we've seen a lot of our child care facilities gone because the pandemic write them out we saw up until this month and our jobs report number every month we saw more and more people leaving the nursing home industry and this is a living industry than than going into that industry what does that mean that means that everyone in this room is getting older and eventually we're all going to need potentially assisted living in nursing home well if we don't do something about that they're not going to be there for us and that's going to add another burden to the family to the mother or the father or the family structure that's going to have to take care of their loved ones in their homes if we don't address those needs as a as a bigger issue uh the president has proposed investing in the care's economy and that's something that that we need to do i was at the chamber this morning i spoke to the national chamber of commerce and they were asking me questions about mental health services and what's the role of business the role of business in mental health services the role of business in cares economy is is is important if not more in some cases than the role the role of government in those economies because you are the folks that educate and you the folks that hire and employ those folks people we need to make sure that we're working collectively together on that on that on those proposals um we need to work together for solutions many workers are changing jobs we're seeing the greatest movement in industries with the lowest wages workers who are disproportionately women and people of color and immigrants are moving around quite honestly because they haven't been respected or treated fairly in the past and we need to change that dynamic i'm not accusing anyone of that i'm just saying it's a global issue that we're seeing including in governments quite honestly in the government space an issue of job quality is an issue of equity we need to look at more how jobs can become careers my father came off my island in 1956 he became a laborer construction labor he retired as a construction laborer uh in in the in the 80s and you know we don't see that that often when somebody goes to a company anymore and stays there their entire career we need to think about that how do we how do we limit the jumps from job to job to job to have a little more consistency for companies and for workers it helps companies as well if you have employees that that are there and stay uh we need to make sure everyone has a pathway into the middle class in the in the fifth forties and fifties and sixties we had more people in the middle class than we do in two thousand twenty twenty two if you look at the economy in 2022 you'd say it's stronger than it was in the 50s and 60s and 40s and 30s but we had more people having better opportunity during those times and we need to look at that and creating opportunities the president is focused on that as well our big focus here is workforce development policies the reason why i'm late we had a meeting i was just in a meeting talking about workforce development job training and what are the industries that we can expand and what what industries can we expand apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship when you hear a printer should be thinking construction i did always construction apprenticeship no why not i.t why don't health care why not nursing why not mental health why not other other areas other fields we have in trucking and other places there's opportunities for us in this country that nothing says we can't do that and when i say apprentice program i'm talking apprentice programs that at the end of your apprenticeship or during your apprenticeship you have a job in the company you're apprentice with you stay with that company and you work with that company as an employee moving forward models that we see in switzerland models that we see in austria and other european countries that work pretty well in those countries to build up that that that loyalty and and and and connection to those companies we're looking at job quality in many ways people are showing us they need to the the choices they need they're looking at all these different things i just spoke about i talk about the mission of the department of labor and quite honestly our mission here at the department of labor is empowering workers morning all workers morning noon and night uh because it cuts across a worker's whole life from from the beginning when you it goes back to francis perkins the 40-hour workweek making sure that if you have a pension when you retire the pension's there for you making sure that you're tired the social security is there for you making sure your job site's safe making sure that we now are doing workforce development job training we're making sure all these different things child care adult care elder care all the things are there we're working to figure out solutions knowing that they can't fall on workers alone or employees alone employers excuse me alone you can't employers we can't expect you to do everything your government we work the department labor we work for the employer in the employee making sure it's better connections because if we don't have good strong employers in this country we don't have strong employees in this country and if we don't have employees in this country the department of labor doesn't have a function so we really need to work collectively together it's a challenge facing every industry and every level of government it's on all of us across the departments i work very closely with gina raimondo the secretary of commerce boot secretary buddha judge transportation kaidona everybody we're working across the board the good jobs initiative has been presented and is working into the different departments as we move forward it the good jobs initiative it's a collaboration collaborative effort to improve job quality drop equity across our economy we are working with federal agencies to build job quality into government grant making this isn't something new this isn't a burden this isn't rule making or this isn't going to be something that you're going to have to be oh my god what are they talking about now no it's about working with you and creating opportunities within your companies it's us learning from you about what we can do to create better opportunities and better job quality and better pathways for people that are working in society today in america and this is the time to do it coming out of the pandemic i'm not saying it's a reset but it's an opportunity for us to kind of wait a second we've gone through this for 250 years we've done it this way it's worked for some it hasn't worked for all how do we create if we want to create a pathway into the middle class create good opportunities for families get better productivity for companies have companies be profitable but also respect their employees how do we do this we can do it all at the same time we're providing workers with information that they need to find good jobs and get in demand skills we're pledged to engage employers like you all in this room and the folks that are watching i think this is being streamed that are watching a stream if you're not watching it we're going to we're going to get to you anyway somewhere and talk about a little bit to help attract and retain the talent that we need and you know the needs of your company better than anybody and you know i think i think it's fair to say the companies they're going to speak in today uh depending on the length of you've been around for you've evolved and changed and during the pandemic you've had to change the way you do things again and sometimes you'll wait a second this is actually better than it was the day before the pandemic and create pathways out of the pandemic and sometimes it might not be better but we want to get you back to those good days again you're engaged we want to continue to engage with local and regional labor markets we want to make sure we know what's working and what the obstacles are and that's why this conversation is so important today caitlyn joked and she was kind of serious when she said to me we talked about the good jobs initiative and we talked about all these great things we want to do and everything else and i said in the room i said have we talked to employers because the other ones are going to tell us what they need because if we come up with proposals and tell you what it is there are some people in this room probably today saying i'm here because i'm told to be here and i'm sitting here but that's not the intention of the meeting today the meeting today is to hear what employers need and how we can better help the employer whether you're a worker for a company or ceo of a company we want to be supportive we want to hear what we can do to make this initiative good across the board so we can create pathways into middle class pathways into better paying jobs pathways into helping people in this country to be happy when they go to work every day so we're here to listen we're here to learn and move the conversation forward and as caitlyn said this this is a side of what we hope a much deeper engagement with the private sector on this on this issue it's a time of rapid change there's no better way to learn from the businesses than listen to the business so we're taking steps to succeed right now so we want to lift employers up we're investing in job quality and getting results done and we want to take what we learned from you and help other companies in america to be successful and how they can be successful as well we want to identify solutions today that we hear and share them to move workers and businesses forward together ultimately we want to bring the full potential in our work bring out the full potential in our workforce because that's going to help us be more competitive as a country we're hearing a lot today about competitiveness in our country we're hearing a lot today about supply chain and opportunities in our country that aren't here that we want to bring back to the united states of america at one point our manufacturing base was our largest largest industry in the united states of america and quite honestly it hasn't been quite some time we have opportunities which will benefit every business in this country so i want to thank you all for being here i want to thank our model my moderator and panelist and i look forward to the conversation i want to give a special shout out to caitlin who actually um you know came to me with this idea probably about five months ago and it's it's taken on a life of its own now and it's great to see so thank you very much [Applause] does that work is that on yeah all right great thank you and thank you secretary for those comments um it is an honor to join you all here today and moderate this important discussion on making the business case for good jobs i want to thank the department of labor for the invitation i'm carolyn pincus vice president of american sustainable business network asbn's long-standing commitment to the high road economy is centered in the high road workplace we know that many employers care deeply about their workforce and want to invest and innovate to support them even in or especially in difficult times we have seen many initiatives over the years resonate with both employers and employees so initiatives like paid leave livable wage the right to organize competitive benefits the right of employees to choose where they invest their retirement flexible scheduling and so forth we think it's important to lift up best practices and to hear from employers directly to better identify opportunities and solutions including public policy so the three aspects of high road workplace that resonate with businesses are the ability to retain employees and reduce turnover which increases both the quality of life for employees and the quality of business performance talent attraction our businesses receive record numbers of applications for positions in these organizations because of their commitment to the high road and three companies that are messaging externally their commitment to quality jobs increasingly resonates with consumer bases of those company of those businesses so as a former small business employer myself for 12 years i employed hundreds of people i've seen firsthand the positive impacts of providing quality jobs and benefits on attracting retaining and growing business at a time when the economy we engage with is ever dynamic with many variables influencing how and where we work i am proud to moderate a discussion that is no longer a luxury at this urgent time it is a business imperative so with that we are going to dive right in liz i'm going to start with you so to kick off our conversation i'd like to start with some global context we want u.s businesses to better compete

globally but we also know how important our global supply chains are now more than ever so i'd like to start by asking about eileen fisher's commitment to job quality here and abroad domestically women and people of color are over-represented in the retail industry often have lower wages fewer benefits higher turnover eileen fisher has sought to adopt a model that prioritizes working conditions along with community and environmental impact across the countries where you operate so liz why did the company make the decision to focus on job quality with your own employees and across your supply chains and how has this impacted your bottom line um thank you first i want to thank everyone for the opportunity to be here and to have this conversation it is all of you have said it but necessary and important and you know everyone at eileen fisher is thrilled to be represented and i'm personally thrilled to be here so thank you um i had some answers jotted down but i want to respond to some of the things that the secretary raised in his opening remarks because you know eileen's commitment to her workforce um and the larger community through the supply chain uh is grounded in her values in respect and fairness and inequity which are i think the three values that you called out and our idea is that you know none of us can thrive individually unless we are all thriving together um there are some complexities to bringing high job quality into our supply chain given that we don't control those organizations and given that they are far away kovit has increased that because we used to go out and visit our factories but obviously being on the ground in the in the larger world is challenging for the last couple years so we partner right now with an organization called better work unfortunately they don't operate everywhere but where they operate they do a phenomenal job of bringing workers voices into the conversation and ensuring the factories that they operate in have the infrastructure needed to give their workers predictable hours health and safety benefits and grievance procedures closer to home and i'm going to focus now on the word investment um that you mentioned this is our store teams our retail teams who i'm here to talk today about um are a core part of who we are as a company our store teams are out there talking to customers you know they know our clothes they know our customers and they can talk to them and then present feed prevent excuse me send feedback back to us eileen has known that since day one and values that relationship and that conduit for information flow and one of the things that i think is really special is that you know we have a corporate headquarters in irvington and we have a boutique about 50 yards from our corporate headquarters and our store teams will come back to headquarters and they'll say hey you know we've heard that you guys really need to do x differently and that directly impacts the way we make our product and that happens because we place such value on our store teams and frankly every single person who brings our product from ideation to reality great okay thank you for that and um i guess just to follow up with that how do you think eileen fisher's focus on job quality has affected your ability so what you were talking about has affected your ability to recruit and retain those workers so in the us and also you know in the in your stores in corporate and especially in this particular dynamic labor labor market um so we as a company have had generally low turnover relative to the retail industry and we still have relatively low turnover um however you know it is higher given that that's the world we live in but i think about um a moment that the secretary also touched on when we had to close our stores and you know two years ago when none of us knew what the world was going to look like and we had a lot of products sitting in stores that people wanted to buy through our e-commerce site and our store associates despite living in a very scary world would go in and pack the product and ship it out so that we could continue to do business and i think that level of dedication is an example of the power of being committed to your workforce because people who know that as an employer we're committed to them will turn around and do what's needed to make sure that we can stay in business great okay that's very um that's great okay so now i'm going to turn over to um fleck rivera from sustain energy cooperative so just a little bit of background there is a common misconception in the us that unions and employers always have an adversarial relationship there is a long history of collaborative labor management relationships that have supported workforce development robust pensions and safer workplaces across industries including during the pandemic there are also important examples of successful labor management partnerships in smaller businesses so i'll turn to one now flecker the clean energy sector is still largely non-union why do you think that might be and how and can you share how your union has helped make sustain energy more competitive in an industry where this is unusual yeah thank you for the question first it's an honor to be here with svn u.s secretary of labor um flickr vera i'm a green construction worker ceo sustain energy cooperative so i think one issue is um um lack of resources unions want to organize larger companies that they are familiar with and then going after a small business you need a lot of resources and they don't have it the numbers have been decreasing so yes trying to sustain their own membership you have right to work estates you have you have to get out the vote and all those things that they do they don't have a capacity to organize the green construction that is mainly the residential sector i think that's that's one big one another one is that um in our industry uh we compete with a lot of employees that do wage theft that's 1099 in their employees as an epidemic makes it difficult for employees that want to do the right thing to repay the watches the workers good benefits and uh make it more challenging but in terms of how the united steelworkers union which is a unit that our workers have helped us we are able to leverage the 1.5 million workers to get affordable healthcare for our workers we pay 65 percent of our costs in the marketplace is tax deductible so we can stretch those dollars for our business we get an awesome um i think an example is a short-term stability 60 26 weeks 60 of your wage for like 20 bucks a month we pay for that especially in construction uh you get benefits like free college like the worker that is a member of the steel workers union can go to college for free online their children can go for free online and get a bachelor of their parents can go to free online and even their spouses so we will not be able to afford that by ourselves but through the union we can actually leverage that and all those things together with us being a worker on business it's a worker co-op so where he goes working on a business is owned and controlled by his workers giving your workers ownership that's a real that's real equity um i'm bringing also that the value of the business like the of the unions actually help us to create good paying jobs good family sustaining jobs and uh so along those lines actually you were starting to talk about equity so um you know just in terms of the data showing that the value of unions you know for addressing race and gender-based pay gaps so how can you talk a little bit more about how the cooperative model at sustainergy um supports that equity yeah so um we are working on business that means that after a six month period that worker can become an owner you get common stock like voting powers tax no retirement plan like any subs and now what happened is that um when workers see themselves like they have a career and they i work at a warehouse where many years ago i loaded trucks i never thought of ownership working there i got a bad job got wages and then people don't think of beyond that but when they come to work for us and they're like you can also be an owner and then get dividends and that's a different that's a game changer and that's not uncommon in other countries you look at spain in montreal that's mondogan city 70 percent of the economy based on worker co-ops york ireland romania is something very similar so the way we make sure that equities is fair is by making sure that people get ownership the dividends are paid based on hours work regardless of ethnicity age sex you work 2000 hours you get 2 000 hours of dividends based on how much effort you put it's not based on how much you invest in the co-op so that's what that's one uh one very clear one um our income inequality or this priority is one to one point seven not even double so we we have a cap a ceo cannot make in our businesses can you make more than five times the lowest wage you wanna make even more that's fine bring everyone's wages up and then the ceo can get more and that's very uh tangible but there are many other examples but i think that if we want to respect workers and and then talk about equity we have to bring in a contract and if workers have control of the business and actually how much money they want to make i mean that's that's what we're talking about and has happened successfully in italy and in spain that's great thank you all right so we'll turn now to secretary walsh mr secretary in addition to your government leadership roles you also had a long career in the building trades the strength of unions and the trades has helped make quality jobs for many people and communities the construction industry has continued to grow and innovate and benefits from strong partnerships with its unions so from your perspective as a former laborer and head of the boston building trades how do you see the partnership between unions and employers improve projects and firms overall it does i mean when you think about con union construction um you work for an employer who's a union contractor uh and having that relationship and advocating on behalf of good paying jobs helps everybody i mean it doesn't i've been around the country now i've seen the open shop world i've seen the right to work states and the non-union world and i think the difference is when you're a union member and you work for a union contractor and you're doing work you're basically a stockholder in that company because you're working towards a pension you're working towards health care you have annuity you have investments uh you're getting good paying jobs and sometimes some sectors of non-union world too that treat their workers really well so i can't say it's just union but but but it it is it's a partnership and i think that you know you're investing in that company's success as a worker you you want to make sure that company's successful that you're working for the subcontractor successful because you you want that contract subcontractor or contractor to continue to get good jobs and continue to have a bench there so that they're getting more and more work so it really it has to be i think viewed as a partnership and much to what you heard already here today uh you know the sales rep the the the sales um associates uh at the store if they're doing well the company's doing well and the fact that they took the time during the pandemic say we want to go back in to keep this company successful that's that's that loyalty is important i think part of the good job initiative quality too is is about building that trust and that that that want your company to be successful and if you get employees employees that want their employer to be successful and there's a there's a mutual respect there for each other that that's that's a win-win for everybody and i think that you know that's what we want to see in this company it's one of the things in this country i should say that's one of the things now the good jobs initiative is about treating your employees fairly but also respecting the employer and i think that that doesn't happen enough across the industries in the united states well i'll speak to the united states today and i think that that's important because if your company goes out of business no matter whether you're union worker or non-union worker or whatever you work at that doesn't help anyone you've just lost so i think that that's that's something that that's important i just want to do a quick follow-up question here during the pandemic did you were able to you retained a lot of your people yes yeah and have you seen your business grow because if you look at the numbers retail in america what i thought initially was going to happen retail was going to be online but now retail actually stores are doing better after the pandemic with business they were a prey pandemic thank you our business model changed a lot um because of the pandemic or i guess the pandemic accelerated a lot of changes the same way i'm sure it did in many industries but yeah our stores we were very lucky we did not have to close any stores off plan we had some natural lease expirations but those were planned closures and our stores are now doing really well knock on wood and we largely have retained our workforce we had to make some we did some restructuring at the corporate level but our stores um are going strong and we have i have in my phone somewhere the average tenure of our store employees and i apologize i can't access it but um our store teams are doing well we have retained a lot of workers we've brought in some new people as you know we are experiencing some turnover but um we are seeing really revitalized kind of brick and mortar retail right now just to follow up that helps an ecosystem of a neighborhood your store's doing well people going out that means there's be a coffee shop next door maybe another store competitor will come in because of they want they want to you know just keep going and that's that's what i think this country was seeing the trend the other way pre-pandemic so that's a that's a case of the pandemic response from the pandemic or after the pandemic changing the dynamics again in the community a little more are you seeing more um interest now with this administration in in in solar panels and clean energy last year uh with by the white house with coming harrison and um some other folks there to look into how to build working-class power again and another big piece of this is solar pv solar panel centers the jobs are are there every hundred and fifty thousand dollars in sales creates a good family sustaining job and that and this is humongous there's no way to be able to do all the work by ourselves we need to have we have 11 million immigrants that are documented i can easily have the skills that can easily come and start selling a lot of those panels and create more jobs so there's a lot of a lot of rebates and you know a lot of things coming from the government okay um let's see i want to be mindful of the time here but actually no i want to actually do this question mr secretary so um going back to the building trades uh you know have a long tradition of workforce training and apprenticeship programs i think we all would like to hear about this how can other industries adopt these practices to strengthen training in their own workforces yeah i think the first thing i'll say don't be afraid of it i was at a meeting i was at a roundtable a month ago where i heard a business stay that they can't they don't want to put the apprenticeship together and they're afraid they weren't afraid they didn't say the words afraid but they didn't want to invest in it and and it just didn't make sense to me because the building trades model is it's it's all employer employee investment in the training and you have state of the art training and you which means you have world-class craftspeople working in these different industries so when you're hired by a developer to build a building they want the building built correctly because they want to charge the rents that they need to be supportive and they don't want like things breaking down and electrical systems so we'll we need a better world craft world-class apprentice program in the country is as a whole to help our workers and skill them up for the skills of the future and i think that you know it's it's really important when you think about our communities in america we have right now 12 million jobs open six million people working ready to go into those jobs and you hear all the time i can't find good people no there are good people all over the country they just need to find the skills to get into those jobs that's that's the bottom line in urban america you go you go to the street corner down the street here in washington dc there's plenty of young people that might have gone to high school and they're not doing anything why not figure out a way to get those folks engaged in the workforce you have folks that that are re-entering in society that were incarcerated that that if you take away the arrests for the problem they cause they're generally great people how do we help them a pathway into good careers you have immigrants in this country obviously immigrant questions are a whole different issue we need immigration reform in this country but we have undocumented we have documented people in this country they can't find work we scale them up for for the jobs like there's so many opportunities here and i think that when you have a training program like the building trades that is you know it's it's education school you go in there you graduate that that that career whatever it might be you're prepared for for a job in the industry to work in a construction site but during during slow times you can also pick up side work and and help people work in their houses i don't know how many people in this room have a plumber or an electrician in their phone most of us don't like it's hard to find them but if you know connected to a plumber electrician you will always keep them busy because you always have to put a ring bell on your front door fix your light do something here i mean this is the stuff i go to all the time so anyway um you know i think don't be afraid my my advice to businesses is don't be afraid of apprenticeships and start thinking about well if it's worked in switzerland and it's worked in other countries why couldn't work here yep totally agree okay so let's move over to darren uh ups um ups is a leader in supply chain services we know that there has been a surge in consumer demand and other challenges in our global supply chains since the start of the pandemic these can be demanding essential jobs yet you didn't just have to retain workers you had to grow your workforce in a very tight labor market so what do you think helped position the company to recruit and retain workers in this difficult time and what policies were already in place or did you introduce others during this time got it first of all thank you for inviting us um i think i'm going to steal a couple of your phrases we've had a long history of collaborating with unions um and partnering with them and as a result we've been able to provide what i would call economic security for employees and workers and to put it in specifically with the teamsters and if you put it in context we provide the best paying jobs with the best benefits in the industry and if you've given examples of people familiarize ups with packaged cars or the brown trucks that deliver the packages to your home those drivers make 90 000 a year on wages plus and with benefits and pension contributions it's another 50 so it's 140 000 package so a tractor trailer drivers 110 000 wages and 160 000 in total benefits um and those are just the full-time jobs if you talk about part-time jobs the average wage weight for a part-time job at ups is 18 an hour in some locations with what we call attendance bonus etc it's about 23 an hour and in addition to that they have full health care benefits pension contributions our drivers get 23 000 a year in pension contributions the part-timers get pension contributions quite frankly the health care package is for part-time is better than mine right um in addition to that tuition reimbursement up to 25 000 a year tuition reimbursement so you can go work at ups and not have student debt or loans when you finish your college career so we've been able to [Music] create opportunities by continuing to pay people what they're worth yeah so um [Music] let's see yeah let's go ahead we've heard about the distinction between offering jobs and offering careers so the intersections of what you were talking about right with education with retirement you know looking at the cycle the entire cycle of a person's um employment with you so what do you see as the key distinction here so from both your employees and the con and the company's perspective so i could use my personal stories i started ups as a part-time employee um went to became a driver went through various iterations of management at some point decided to go to law school went to law school practiced law with ups for 20 years ups paid for my education undergrad and law school and i was i think so far i've had about 16 different jobs at ups is either i'm real good or real bad it depends on how so sort of how you look at it but i think to your comments we're able to create different pathways and different careers and it's and it's i hadn't thought about it in that context until i listened to the secretary's opening comments but a pathway to middle class literally if you come work at ups come to work every day and have a clean driving record you have an opportunity to 100 000 your job in a reasonable amount of time and we've been able to to keep that environment i think the other piece that makes ups unique is that from a community perspective we're engaged in the community in the operation that i'm responsible for we do things like financial literacy where folks come in and what made us start to do it is i came out of my office one day and the check cashing uh store was up the street and the line from the check cash and store to my office was like a two hour wait so we decided to offer financial literacy something simple as how to open up a checking account right how to um get a car no get a car loan etc so we're we're trying to do more things in the community it's about wages it's about benefits but it's also about teaching them skills and giving people an opportunity to understand that the corporation cares about not only their productivity right but them as human beings as well so we've been able to sort of merge all that together and that's why we've had some success and we're continuing to have success because people ups is a lifestyle it's it's a job but it's it's a lifestyle as well because people work hard and they take pride in coming to work every day and performing and providing services for our customers just that's another opportunity for a good job initiative is financial financial literacy for your employees to to so so they're not always looking for another job if they understand how to manage what they're making and be successful on it building their credit be able to buy a house because those are that obstructs people for me will buy a house to credit so bad because when they're younger they might have had a lot of credit cards and jammed them up like i did or or you know just different things like that that's all part of like the whole good jobs policy and employee employers should be able to in reinvesting back stocks in their own company if it's a stock company there's opportunities there to really think about that so all of that's part of good jobs and how to help people with their jobs yeah and actually just um as we move into the small business thing i mean that's one of the things about coming from small business is that we had to be completely financially literate you know the managers everybody had to know how to keep a ledger old school and you're able to then explain to your employees what they're going through so i just i completely agree on financial literacy all right so we'll turn to sandy uh small business um for the small business perspective so over 99 of america's firms are small businesses and almost half of all u.s employees work for small business small businesses are the backbone of the us economy but we also hear from small business owners that they have trouble competing to keep workers providing the same wages and benefits that the larger companies can so ba auto care has managed to provide quality jobs while competing as a family owned small business how have you been able to integrate good quality job dimensions like pay and benefits into your business model and how has it helped your business grow oh thank you good question and thank you for having me here um as a small business of we have 16 employees at the moment one of the biggest things especially when my father started the business was to make sure that auto mechanics were treated and had the same benefits that others have as well just like corporate jobs as well so um making sure our employees are paid well you know minimum wage is we've been fighting for increasing a minimum wage none of our employees are minimum wage but it's still very important to have a livable wage it takes the stress and anxiety off of workers we also you know we've been able to offer health insurance not just for our employees but for most of their family as well for all employees we pay 100 and most of the rest of the employees who partake in health insurance we pay for their families as well that is very unheard of at least in our industry in the trades but we understand that again it's peace of mind knowing your family is taking care of an emergency comes up we're able to offer short-term disability long-term disability life insurance um you know flexible hours come into that as well not having to work five days a week our industry is usually six or seven days a week and spending time with our with families is number one and the pandemic definitely told us that our family is the most important thing um and one thing um we've also hired we found out that the most mental health is obviously very important and when things go wrong in our company we found out that it was mainly to do with communication breakdown communication breakdown between employees and between employees and customers so we actually hired a communication coach to help work with us and help build everybody's leadership abilities up to give them someone to talk to someone to give advice to and help them work together in a better environment and that's really probably one of the best thing that's happened to us in the last two years so yeah that is great okay and actually similar to what the secretary was talking about so your founder was a proud product of apprenticeship workforce development so as we've heard dol sees job training in career pathways as a key component of job quality so how does ba auto care you know as a small business in your particular industry support skills development for your workforce and how can other small businesses do the same um one thing yes my father was an apprentice he started working on cars in england in when he was 15 years old he brought that over with him and his first employee when he opened the company was an apprentice so you're helping train somebody while they're going to school and also learning how to do this particular trade our senior technician started with the company over 20 years ago he started as an apprentice as well he is now our lead technician and probably one of the best technicians or is out there to fixing a car um very fortunate to be in maryland where they came out with the youth apprenticeship program about four years ago and that is for all people across the world like you had said or across the state like you had said that with banks um any type of job you want to get into starting in your junior senior year of high school as somebody i worked with our local trade association or my father did as well to bring to try and do something like that similar about 15 years ago with a local um another repair shop in our area you know teaching by teaching while you're going to school so we pay for school and you're learning on the job so you're not left to go to school now you have all this debt to pay off and now you can start working and hopefully pay off that debt to be able to buy a house or whatever so the apprenticeships program is probably one of the best things that's ever happened to every industry so if you don't have it take advantage of it that's fantastic so let's do that everywhere okay um all right so i want to get to a few i think for a couple questions i think we have time for it awesome so we'll just go through maybe like a minute each because i think these are important um you know for the dol to hear about so i'll just start with liz and we'll go um we've got the ear of many government officials right now including one right here so how can government help support employers of all sizes and offering good jobs and supporting their workers what is the potential for public-private partnerships in this space um well one i do think that just holding a place for this conversation is very helpful um to give people who are interested in expanding you know the policies that we have for our employees like this so i brought my little notebook this conversation has been full of fantastic ideas so thank you for that um and you know again secretary walsh you said it that employers can't do everything and so there is a role for government in things like child care in things like paid parental leave and those are things that we strive to you know give our employees the best of but everybody really needs them in order to succeed in this economy um this the support from the from the government side is you know helping [Music] we've noticed a lot of help with paying wages for apprenticeships as well to be able to teach somebody a new trade that's been extremely helpful an improvement on that making it even making it known to people that they have that ability

2022-05-16 00:38

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