One-on-one with Professor D.W. Livingstone of OISE

D. W. Livingstone is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and Work and is director of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work and leader of the Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) research network. His book Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press

We’ve been hearing a lot about the loss of manufacturing jobs in the current recession. When workers are laid off there are often calls for retraining programs. Has there been research on retraining? Does it work?

Since the mid-1800s, every time we’ve had an economic recession, public schooling has been looked to as both the cause and the cure. In the current economic recession, which may be one of the greatest ones we’ve had, it’s not surprising that policy experts have once again looked to education as a source of the problem—and as the solution.

The basic causes of economic recessions in market economies are essentially the strong market competition between different firms over market shares, negotiation between owners and employees over profits and wages and continual technological innovation, animating the ups and downs in productivity, financial and labour markets.

It is true that technological innovation is contingent on having a knowledgeable labour force. But the fact is, that throughout this whole epoch the general tendency has been for the knowledge of the workforce to be considerably greater than the opportunities workers have had to utilize their knowledge in work places. If we look at the appeals today for job retraining we are looking at the wrong end of the problem. We should be looking at economic solutions to economic problems, rather than educational ones. We’ve got a highly-developed and educated labour force at this point and one of the most intelligent strategic things to do is to look for better ways to utilize that workforce in a reorganized job structure.

So you’re saying that contrary to what we often hear, Canadian workers aren’t lacking the right sort of education?

That’s correct. The problem is the reverse of what the dominant rhetoric is. Many people who have relatively high levels of formal education—university degrees, community college diplomas—are in jobs that don’t recognize or reward their formal qualifications. This has been well-documented by research. Some of this is readily available at the WALL website.

The mantra that we hear regularly is that it’s imperative for people to gain more knowledge, more skills, to be able to cope with the demands of this emerging knowledge-based economy. I’m saying that the facts are the reverse. Particularly in a country like Canada where we have the most highly formally-educated population in the world—we have a higher percentage of post-secondary completion in our labour force than anywhere else.

The problem is to design decent sustainable jobs for an already-highly educated work force. There is a creativity gap, but it’s the creativity of jobs rather than the creativity of people that’s the problem.

How do you change jobs so that the economy can benefit from this highly-educated workforce?

You have to reverse the optic of what most policy experts will tell you. Here are examples of what you could do.

First, deal with the maldistribution of work time. We now have an hourglass economy in time terms. That is to say, we have a lot of people working more than they want to and a lot of people working less than they want to. The resolution to that is moving toward more equitability in terms of time that people are working. Then we have fewer people being exhausted by overwork and more people getting enough decent work to keep themselves together.

Second, we need more democratization of the work place, so that people who do have creative capacities that are unused get jobs that allow them more exercise of their creativity and decision-making capacities. Again, there’s a deficit of jobs in our economy rather than a deficit in people.

Third, there needs to be a movement toward green jobs. We have a burgeoning ecological crisis around us and there needs to be more concerted effort to design jobs that are going to facilitate sustainability of our environment.

But what would you tell a guy laid off from his job in an auto-assembly plant in Windsor, Ontario? Even if you accept that the structure of jobs needs to change, that doesn’t solve his problem.

Education is inherently good. I would never discourage people from gaining more knowledge. We live in a credential society. Credentials are being used as screening devices for entry into jobs even if they’re not being fully used in the jobs. We’ve created an educational arms race.

As for the guy who’s laid off in Windsor, the most logical thing he can do as an individual under the current circumstances—without job restructuring—is to go and get some more credentials, to get back in the educational arms race.

There are some logical ways to do that. The first is to get skilled trades training. We still have a major shortage in skilled trades in this country because we have historically depended on immigrant skilled labour and underdeveloped our apprentice system. So if he has the wherewithal and support to gain an apprenticeship in a skilled trade, that might be the best thing to do. It would take him several years, but if he’s a young guy that may be his best strategy.

More generally, it’s obvious that in terms of sectoral growth, the area of health care is growing and will be for the foreseeable future. If he can get any kind of training and experience in that area, that would be likely to lead to a secure job. He could also look to a variety of fields related to ecology. Ecological sustainability is going to be one of the most vital areas for us to deal with in terms of work.

If he’s an older worker, work sharing might be a partial solution—if his employer doesn’t want much of the tacit workplace knowledge to quickly walk out the door. Training subsidies to upgrade quickly in lateral areas of growing need, such as ecology, are also a good idea.

But the dominant reality is that most workers, through a combination of further education and informal workplace learning, are keeping ahead of the curve of knowledge required for existing jobs. Restructuring jobs rather than job retraining should be the societal priority to address the employability problem for growing numbers of highly educated individuals, including many autoworkers with college diplomas.

If you think that restructuring jobs is what’s needed, are recessions actually opportunities?

Any crisis provides openings and opportunities for restructuring through destructuring. What I’m saying is that it is logical for us, particularly in Canada at this time with a surplus of highly-educated people, to examine more concertedly the ways in which we can restructure jobs along the lines I mentioned earlier, rather than presuming or fixating on an educational solution for an economic problem. Educational reforms coupled with financial bailouts will not resolve the fundamental problem of inadequate distribution, design and objectives of paid work. We need more concerted public debate and public policy initiative around the issue of job redesign.