Book Description

This book examines the causes of worker displacement in the United States in the context of national economic change. It discusses the promising, through scattered, efforts already underway to help dislocated workers and outlines more far-reaching steps that can be taken with assistance of the federal Job Training Partnership Act of 1982. The book is a collection of essays and other comments by more than 50 contributors, including representatives of business, labor, and government who attended the National Conference on the Dislocated Worker convened by the National Alliance of Business. The contributors include the President of the United States, a governor, three mayors, a cross-section of the nation's corporate and union leadership, and high-ranking labor-management administrators from Germany, Sweden, and Canada. These contributors' works reveal the depth of the problems of industrial change and worker displacement and trace them to their root causes, while offering a showcase of programs and projects already under way to help dislocated workers. The writings are organized into 15 chapters covering the following broad content areas: mobilization of the public-private partnership, the economy in transition, labor-management models for dealing with the needs of dislocated workers, the Job Training Partnership Act, some private sector approaches, state responses to industrial shifts, community responses to economic dislocation, economic development strategies, lessons from abroad, lessons from pilot projects, strategies for preventing or delaying job loss, unemployment and stress, job search clubs, use of labor market information, and research and evaluation. (KC)