MIT's Paul Osterman has a provocative piece in the Boston Review about some myths standing in the way of turning lousy, low-wage jobs into good jobs. The conventional wisdom, he says, is "to let the economy generate jobs of whatever quality firms choose and then, if necessary, compensate by enabling people to avoid the bad ones or by shoring up people who are stuck. The nature of available jobs is a given." His arguments bolster the union movement's case that we need direct intervention in the labor market to make bad jobs into good jobs through collective bargaining, labor standards, public-sector leadership, training and career ladders and more.

The first myth he busts is the "rising tide lifts all boats" saw.

Just as we can’t expect aggregate growth to improve jobs by itself, we can’t expect low-wage workers to move up without changes in policy. There is considerable evidence that U.S. adults remain confined in low-wage jobs over the course of their working lives.

The second myth is that good-jobs policies hurt the economy. In fact, he says, U.S. poverty rates are higher and key employment rates are lower than in European countries similar to ours because the European nations have "higher minimum wages, stronger unions and more egalitarian social norms. Economists often argue that more egalitarian wages reduce incentives to work and that a higher minimum wage increases the cost of labor and therefore encourages unemployment, so the European job market should suffer as a result of lifting the bottom. Does it? In fact, among both women and men, the fraction of the “prime age” (25-54 years old) population that works is higher in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands than in the United States."

Finally, he takes on the concept that higher education is all workers need to move up. Education definitely improves earnings for individuals, but only marginally affects the quality of jobs. Combined with strong unions and fair labor standards, training and job quality improvement can be combined to make a greater impact.

At its most ambitious, a career ladder program works with employers to create better jobs and then trains low-wage employees to fill them. A less ambitious, but possibly more realistic, strategy is to help firms augment the training low-wage workers receive as they attempt to climb the existing job ladder within their firms.

The bottom line, Osterman says, is:

...We know how to improve job quality, and we have the tools to make progress. The challenge is political. Good policy is within our grasp, if we can see past the myths and muster the will to move forward.